Coincidence, Ripple Effects, & Fortuitous Fails

What a fun holiday season we’re having! Feeling VERY thankful for my many blessings as I bought my first Christmas tree (since I will be staying in LA for Christmas I felt it was an absolute MUST on the budget list) and have made a few different holiday arrangements to spice up the home.  Not to mention I have baked more desserts in the last 30 days then I have all year! It started with a small pumpkin craze addiction and then moved onto holiday cookies and cakes. Don’t worry I have had a pretty good work out routine to counter act the damage lol

Onto the real news. One of my favorite projects I played the lead on was for a music video with an extremely talented artist, Dom Liberati, http://www.domliberati.com/. The music video should be out hopefully by the end of the year. It’s called “Goodbye Summer.” I played ‘Summer’ get the idea? 🙂 It was a total unexpected answer to prayer because after becoming fast friends he introduced me to his manager at one of his shows a few weeks later. His manager and I met to talk about him managing me soon afterwards and we’ve been working together ever since!

Before I share these next two stories I just want to preface them with this. “You never know what past encounters can effect a future opportunity.”

This has never been more significantly true after working on TWO projects with TWO people I worked with after the first couple months of living in LA. I’ll talk about one for now.

I worked with a friend of a friend when I first moved out here on a student project called “Solo Dale Gloria” and I was ‘Gloria’. The writer and I on that project then became friends which later led to him being roommates with my brother….long story. And this last month he was working on his first independent film that he wrote and directed. He asked me to play the lead female character which ended up being a really enjoyable experience. I played opposite an Armenian man and we both were parents to a young teenage son who was struggling with his identity of being half Armenian and half American. SIDE NOT: One of the best parts about being an actress is all the history and present day facts you learn about cultures, habits, prejudices, etc. And your job is to study them and ask questions. What could be more fun then that right? So that project was a fun full circle experience.  We’ll have a screening in February I’ll let you know how it goes.

If you have followed my fan page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arianna-America/244724342235651?ref=hl You would have seen that I was working on a webseries called “Dreamers”. The project was on hiatus for a long time because there were some serious differences of opinions between the director and producer. I thought the series was lost because it was supposed to be filmed early fall and they hadn’t reached out to us at all. By now I’ve learned not to hold onto anything until I see a paycheck. Nothing is ever finalized until you see it in your bank account. Even then sometimes they never release the project! However in this case I got a call from the director that after almost 6 months, it was back on. And since certain peoples had been taken off the project they decided they wanted to give me more screen time, strange how things sometimes work out for the better. The project should also Taft Hartley me which means I will be eligible for SAG and can therefore work on Blockbusters sooner than later. Of course this is all still in the works and “you never know” what will happen. If at first you don’t succeed! I let you know in my next blog how it progresses fingers crossed!

Oh, that’s right I promised to tell you a few celebrity encounters because that’s what really excites you guys isn’t it lol

Well I served Larry King at the Cheesecake Factory. Between you and me he’s one of the frailest smallest men I’ve ever encountered. I don’t think he even touched his sandwich. He looks much different in person. That desk really covered up a lot. He was sharing lunch with family I believe. He seemed very reserved and polite,  I get the feeling he’s a little bored, I can imagine after interviewing everyone in the world that there was to interview.

I’ve also run into Josh Dallas http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2796047/?ref_=tt_cl_t5 Who plays Prince Charming on “Once Upon A Time” We’ve actually seen eachother several times and usually have a couple of witty banters back and forth mostly making fun of him of course lol He definitely lives up to his charming role and you can tell he’s very down to earth and has been raised with a good head on his shoulders. I appreciated his warm personality and the fact that we talked like we were old friends.

Let’s see…Oh I ran into Jeremy Renner http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0719637/?ref_=tt_ov_st Though that doesn’t really count to me because I didn’t really have a conversation with him more of an awkward meeting in the Target elevator and then second run-in in an aisle. I like to avoid these types of encounters mostly because I don’t want to be remembered as the girl they bumped into at the grocery store before they remember me as the girl who starred in “_____” but it’s still funny how tiny this city is.

One of my favorite celebrities that I enjoyed running into was Kate Beckinsale. This was likely because she was as genuine off camera as I expected her to be on camera. She’s very relaxed and we shared a couple laughs. It’s fun chatting with a woman who is so tied to her own home country of Great Britain that she still doesn’t possess a driver’s license here in the US.  She’s very quick and intelligent and fairly easy to talk to once she lets her guard down a little bit. I can’t imagine the way most of these stars have to run from paparazzi on a routine basis. Privacy is a luxury.

Until next time!