Interview with actress Tracey Birdsall

Interview with actress Tracey Birdsall

November 1, 2015 0 By EVA

From television to modelling to movies, Tracey Birdsall has done it all and with numerous projects coming out in the next year, shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. We had a chance to talk to Tracey about her long career so far and what drives her in such a tough and competitive industry.

You started out at a young age to life in front of the camera. What are your earliest memories of those experiences?

My father did photography on the side when I was a kid just to make ends meet, so I was always in front of a camera. I did a lot of theater and things growing up but my first time on stage was when I was five, I was a dancer and a singer and I got to do a solo, there was about a thousand people there, and I just remember that moment. It was like wow, I love entertaining these people. The first professional job I did was when I was fifteen, I did a Sunkist soda commercial and ever since then, you kind of thrive on it. I sang in multiple churches, I’d go back and forth on my bike, because I liked to sing in churches so I’ve always liked being on stage and always liked performing. Once you get in your teen years and know what it is you like to do, then it becomes more fun as you begin to explore those areas. I find every job is more fun than the last job.

So when did modelling come along as a possible career opportunity for you?MV5BNzA2MDA5MDIyNF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMTA1MTg5NTE@._V1_UY317_CR16,0,214,317_AL_

I worked at a store called Teenie Bikini in Malibu when I was a teenager. It was quite the place, everyone who visited Malibu dropped into Teenie Bikini, it was really well known. I loved working there, I got to wear all these different swim suits and lay out in the sun! After working there for about a year I stared doing a lot of print work, such as catalogues, and then a lot of opportunities came around. I was the Coors girl for a while, they had cut outs of me everywhere, and it was just something that kind of morphed into being. Then when I started doing commercials I had different advertising agencies that would hire me over and over and they had different print jobs that were associated with them so it just kind of all came together in my life.

Was acting then a natural progression for you once you were in front of the camera for a while or was it something you were always interested in from the beginning?

Acting was always my main goal but you do what you have to do in order to pay the bills and not have to say you were a waitress. I did commercials back when it was very unpopular to do if you were an actress but I did it because I had to pay the bills and go on auditions and I didn’t want to take a job at minimum wage. I would get offered a print job and whatever I could do that would make me money and help me going forward in my career and keep my going to my classes, fight training, voice classes, acting classes, I did so many things so I didn’t have a lot of time. I didn’t turn things down but took what was offered to me at the time. It was quite a journey but it was always acting that drove my soul.

Do you remember your first audition and how do you approach auditions in general?

Well you know I got my first job without auditioning for it, it was kind of my first union job. I do remember my first auditions for The Sound of Music, which I did more times then I care to admit, and different theatrical productions, I remember all those auditions. I didn’t audition for my commercial, I was in the right place at the right time when they fired somebody, but I remember my first experience on set almost more than the auditions. Auditions don’t really phase me because I did so many when I was doing commercials but I do approach them differently than other people. If I don’t have that character down I won’t go because if I can’t do that role like I would do it in front of the camera then I don’t feel I want to show somebody less than my best work. I actually haven’t auditioned in two years, how crazy is that? I’ve been so busy working I haven’t had time to so that’s a good thing!

Starting in 2010 with the short film Tick Tock to present day you’ve had a pretty full schedule. Was there something that changed that led to the huge increase in your workload?

Yes, there was twimageso things. One was that I had taken a break, I’d been working straight since I was fifteen and I wasn’t suffering from burnout in my career but I found I was being short with people and I knew that wasn’t me. I had to get up in the morning and like who I saw in the mirror and so I sold my production company and decided to take a little break, which originally was going to be only two years but ended up being six years. The day finally came where I knew I had to get back to L.A. because I really missed the work and all of friends. However, when I got back the industry had gone and changed on me by going digital. All of a sudden I’m not competing against the thirty people that get called in but I’m competing against the three thousand people that were submitting online so I needed a game changer and that’s when I created Tick Tock. I needed to make something shocking to put me back on the map. It wasn’t an inexpensive short to make either, it was extremely well done and it did, it kind of sky rocketed me back out there. It won many awards in many countries in many festivals and then I started going back to auditions, people started sending me scripts and so that was part one.

Part two was when a friend of mine Mark Sykes, he teaches and is also a casting director in L.A., he was sitting with me over lunch one day and I said ‘I can’t believe I can’t get this moving any faster. This movie has one all these awards and I’m working harder than anybody else’. He said ‘Tracey, if you want to get to where I think you’re going you have to do something every day, you have to treat it like a full time job, try that for a month’. So for a month I woke up, got dressed and made sure I did something to advance my career each day even if I didn’t have a call or script. A month later I had made so much progress that I’ve done it ever since. So now I’ve got twelve scripts I haven’t read that people have sent me, it just changes your perspective on it, as in this is my job to get things moving, let my team know, talk to my manager and publicist and just keep on top of it each and every day.

With such a hectic schedule for so long, was there ever a time that you thought about doing something else besides acting?

No, because in my down time I have hobbies. I was a big boater all my life, I build houses, I’ve built six houses the last being a couple of years ago, so when I have time in between things I use my time wisely. I love playing the stock market as well so you don’t quit what you’re doing, you just keep feeding your brain and feeding your life. I work out in the gym most days of the week with a trainer so my life is in motion, even if I don’t have an acting gig at the time and I think that’s the whole idea, to brain busy and my life full.

As an actor, what has surprised you the most about the industry and what would you like to see chanrobotfighter2ge?

I love when I watch something and it seems so real and a lot of the movies I see now, I don’t like the degree in which the CGI is done to the point that it’s almost animation. For example, I was really disappointed in the last Planet of the Apes because it became so CGI rich that I no longer felt what they were feeling. That is one of those things where we’ve taken leaps and bounds and just because we can do it doesn’t mean we necessarily should, especially to that degree.

Another thing is I just like seeing really, really good actors really get into their roles. I love it when the people I work with hire people that are amazing to work off of because their living it as well. One of the things you see now is a lot of actors studying audition training and not actually living the life, so they really don’t know how to feel the role. You get a lot actors now who get booked for jobs who did an amazing audition but when you work off of them they don’t feel it so all of the other actors suffer. It’s become a huge problem in our industry and I think it’s really hurting a lot of films. You can probably get more audition training in L.A. now than you can the more important nuts and bolts training. It’s terrible because you get these people who do fabulous auditions and then you get them on set and it’s like oh no, we’ve got a problem here.

Can you tell me a bit about what you’re working on now and what you’ve got coming up in the future?

Sure. What I have been working on is Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter which is in post-production, we have Who’s Jenna?, which is in post-production on the east coast. We have Diary of a Fat Man which is in post-production in Australia and here we have At the Edge of Time which is also in post. There is also a series spinning off of Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter called The Gods of War, we’re not sure if we’ll be getting six or eight episodes but we’re developing it for television for next year.

I want to thank Tracey for taking time out of her busy schedule to talk to us.