APRIL 2018
“April is a promise that May is bound to keep.”
Holly Woodhouse as Stacey in DeadZone, a film by Nocturnal Pictures
The Official Trailer for DeadZone is available to watch now…on this link https://youtu.be/83QdkMLgI5w The film premiered at the London Independent Film Festival on 14 April to rave reviews. I am delighted that Nocturnal Pictures (https://www.nocturnalpictures.co.uk) are getting the recognition they deserve and I am certain there will be plenty more festivals in the coming months.
The Sunday Mail. Brisbane, Queensland (Australia)
Throwback Thursday...this month on social media I posted this photograph of me which was taken to accompany an article in The Sunday Mail about my career, specifically my real-life role as Managing Director of KPSM P/L - looking after the business and legal affairs of World, Olympic & Commonwealth swimming champion Kieren Perkins. Do I miss those days? Truth be told, yes, sometimes I do. I worked very hard to achieve the knowledge, skills and experience which led to me being appointed to such a senior role at such a young age. It is definitely a lot easier to succeed in the business world than it is to succeed as an actress, that's for sure! Of course, it was never my dream to be a lawyer. I had always wanted to be an actress, but as a teenager my parents took that choice away from me when they moved to New Zealand. I had to leave behind my blossoming career with Scottish Television. By then I had appeared in the popular Dramarama's Silver and had a small but regular role on Take the High Road thanks to Producers Robert Love and Leonard White who remembered me from my audition for Stookie, setting up an audition for me with Director, Jim McCann. I also had to leave behind my hopes of auditioning at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Fast forward to Sydney 2008, a time when I had finally found my 'happy place' with regards my career in Australia, the same time my husband was given a too-good-to-turn-down opportunity to relocate part of his business to the UK, and once again I found myself having to leave it all behind and start again. However, I have never been the type of person to live a life of regrets of what could have been. I've always believed the only way to be happy in this life is to play the hand you're dealt and sometimes, if you stay positive and work hard, things can work out much better than you could ever have possibly imagined. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would find myself living back in Scotland and pursuing a career as an actress. I may not succeed in making a career out of it but it's certainly an adventure and I'm having a lot of fun along the way. So, my advice to you is dream big, work hard (like really hard), be honest, be kind and stay positive, and maybe you will achieve your dreams but if you don’t you will still have led a full and meaningful life. And at the end of the day, that's still not a bad result, is it.
April’s been a great month for…auditions but nothing is in the bag yet, so please keep your fingers crossed for me and lets hope that, true to the words of Hal Borland, May does keep the promises that April has made and I get some good news soon.
And April's also been a good month for Acting Workshops...I had the great honour and privilege to attend a Shakespeare Workshop with the brilliant award winning Benny Young, thanks to Unsub Actors (you can find them here https://twitter.com/unsubactors and here https://www.facebook.com/unsubactors/). The last time I studied Shakespeare was at school and I had forgotten how hard the language was. Add to that the fact that I haven't done any theatre for a similar length of time. So I was really out my depth in this workshop and consequently I was rabbit-in-the-headlights-cotton-wool-in-the-mouth nervous, which kind of took me by surprise. I think part of the problem was that whilst I had memorised my monologue, I didn't know it automatically and so occasionally I ended up paraphrasing the tricky turns of phrase with modern language or, mortifyingly worse, forgetting it altogether! Add to that the fact that, even although Benny and my fellow workshoppers were so supportive, it still rattled me to be performing to real people, people that were all watching me, in broad daylight! Recently, my acting career has extended only as far as indie films and an episode in BBC One's Armchair Detectives. Most of my auditions are self-taped, so it's just me and my iPhone. And on the indie films and tv show, all the members of the crew have been focussed on their equipment. Even the directors are watching my performance on a monitor, so it's easy to forget that they're there. The upshot is that, clearly, I need more practice and so I'm going to move heaven and earth to get it. Theatre was my first love, so it's time we became re-acquainted!
On that note remember "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players..." so I hope you play your part with all your heart and live May to its fullest!
