text: Hollywood: Not a Meritocracy?
  
  My adorably naïve history as an actor and why, in my mind, I was destined to "make it" in Hollywood based on several community theatre chorus girl parts.
  
  For some reason I always knew I wanted to be an actor. I think it was because I read too many fantasy novels as a kid. There was always this nebulous feeling of destiny, like I was the Chosen One, foretold to vanquish auditions for One Life to Live and Hannah Montana with talent bestowed by the gods. In my heart I was certain: The sword of stardom would be mine!
  
  My aunt Kate was the one who got me hooked on performing. She was the coolest person I'd met by the age of preschool, and that's pretty frickin' cool. With big permed '80s hair, she drove a yellow Datsun fastback and let me ride in the front without a child's seat. The sound track to Cats was permanently stuck in the tape deck, and we'd sing "Memory" at the top of our lungs when we'd sneak out after bedtime to get curly fries at Hardee's. Together, at the ages of six and twenty-four, we were practically Thelma and Louise.
  
  Aunt Kate had briefly moved to New York City to become a musical theatre performer after college but was forced to return home because of health reasons (type 1 diabetes, the worst). She got a job as a librarian but kept acting locally, because no matter how many times you have to sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" for bored senior citizens at an Alabama dinner theatre, once performing is in your blood, you can't get it out.
  
  She also introduced me to the concept of a "work ethic" nineteenth-century-early. Aunt Kate developed horrible cataracts because of her disease, and for a summer became partially blind. She needed several surgeries to fix her sight but couldn't afford to stop her job. She had to keep her health insurance. So, as a seven-year-old, I was recruited to go in every day and basically do her job with her. Shelving. Scanning in books. Chiding people: "Mrs. Bertram, you have to return that new Danielle Steel. Someone else has been waiting for it for weeks!" The best part is that her tiny branch was located inside the local mall (must have been a weird Alabama phenomenon), so she paid me for my time in items from the Hello Kitty store across the way. A Little Twin Stars pencil case was my first legitimate wage payment.
  
  No job since has left me feeling so well rewarded.
  
  When my aunt found out that a local Huntsville theatre group was staging To Kill a Mockingbird, she decided that I was absolutely perfect for the lead part of Scout. Mainly because my haircut matched the kid's in the movie (through no fault of my own; again, my mom made bad choices).
  
  "If you wear overalls to this audition, Felicia, you can become a star!"
  
  I won't lie. "Star" sounded super appealing to my seven-year-old self. If I couldn't be reborn a princess, this sounded like the next best thing.
  
  There was only one catch. "The audition paper says ages ten and above, Aunt Kate."
  
  "If they ask, just tell them you're ten."
  
  "But that's a lie."
  
  "You want them to hire you to be someone you're not. So if you lie well, you're showing them how great you're gonna be at the job!"
  
  I thought about it for a few beats and couldn't argue with her logic. It was pretty confusing. So the next day I lied and got the part! It was a great lesson to learn so young: Never let the truth stop you from getting what you want.
  
  Rehearsals started up, and I loved every minute of it. Not the work of acting necessarily, that was all right, but the feeling of becoming part of "The Theatre." (Say it with a British accent, that's how I wrote it.) No matter your age or race or background, all actors are treated pretty much equal, which is heady stuff for a seven-year-old: "equality." I found out that being treated like I was important fit me like a glove!
  
  The kid who played my older brother in the play, Jackson, was not so taken by my adorableness. He was thirteen and despised me because he didn't like my upstaging him with my dazzling performance. (At least that was what my aunt told me.) I was great at memorizing my lines AND his lines and never hesitated to yell out when he flubbed them. I couldn't understand why he was so sensitive about it! After all, he was the old one who should have better neural connections; I was only SEVEN. (Revealing that at rehearsal one day was quite the hat trick. Everyone was impressed. Except Jackson. He hated me for that, too.)
  
  During one dress rehearsal, he screamed "Shut up!" when I helped him out with his dialogue ("You forgot the 'eats raw squirrels' line again, Jackson, jeez!"), and after that incident, the line was drawn, Hatfields and McCoy–style. Our families started sitting on the opposite sides of the auditorium, and we referred to his mom as "Old Fat Thighs." The atmosphere got tense.
  
  It all caught up to me during our first matinee performance. There's a section in the play where Jackson's character says, "Run, Scout, run!" and he pushes me to get away from the scary Boo Radley dude who turns out to be... well, it's only been fifty years, no spoilers. Anyway, this almost adult (in Arkansas) kid pushed me SO HARD that I flew eight feet across the stage, tripped, and hit my head.
  
  THUMP!
  
  The audience gasped. Time slowed. As I staggered up, I remember noticing how everyone was leaning forward in their seats. It was suddenly very exciting to be an actor.
  
  "Is she hurt?" "Was it part of the play?" the crowd murmured as I stood there, stunned. My aunt had told me a true thespian never breaks character. So I decided to use the moment like Meryl Streep: I burst into tears and ran offstage yelling, "MOMMY!"
  
  The screaming match between my mom and his after the show would rival any sweeps-winning episode of Dance Moms. Carnations and Chips Ahoy! were used as projectile weapons in the greenroom. The fight went on so long that eventually I started feeling guilty. Because Jackson looked so miserable sitting on the opposite side of the room and... okay, I'll admit it. He was cute and I had a crush on him.
  
  WHATEVER, YOU GUYS!
  
  Nothing got friendlier between us after that, but he never shoved me like an MMA fighter again, and I never corrected him on his lines again. (Even though he DID mess them up. A lot.) For years after that play, my family would tell the tale of how "That kid Jackson tried to murder Felicia," and we were pretty convinced he was going to grow up to be a serial killer. I recently looked him up on Facebook. He became a dentist, so same difference.
  
  Here's the awesome irony, though. A local newspaper critic attended that specific matinee performance. Afterwards, we got an amazing review that singled out the "fantastic physical performance of the young actress playing Scout." I even got an award that season! So basically, what I learned was that I love the stage, and that it's advantageous to have slightly older men physically assault me. (Just KIDDING! Gawd.)
  
  I'm sure my aunt would have mentored me through many a great role after that, helping me conquer the Northern Alabama theatre scene with my glorious skills, but it was not to be. My family moved to Mississippi right after the play ended. But I'd developed a taste for the stage, and I wanted to keep doing it. I couldn't let go of the idea that I was pretty amazing.
  
  We moved a lot during my childhood because of my dad's medical training, but whenever we'd arrive in a new city, I'd immediately search the Pennysaver or community center bulletin boards for auditions. Of any kind. And no matter what little backwater town we landed in, people were putting on a show! Usually a revival of Oliver! (I was in that play four times as an orphan. I also played a prostitute twice in Sweet Charity before the age of fourteen.) Sometimes the productions were very small, like an 8x8 space behind someone's garage, or at an old folks' home where the star was an eighty-five-year-old with Alzheimer's, but as long as they accepted me, I joined up. I couldn't help it. Like tuberculosis, once you catch it, the need to perform is always inside of you.
  
  Unfortunately, when you're the "new kid," you don't get the juicy roles right away. There's usually a seniority system, and sometimes I was passed over for a speaking part by someone who wasn't great, which was disappointing to me but enraging to my mother.
  
  "They only picked her because she was Jewish!"
  
  Well, Mom, I was auditioning for Anne Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank at the Louisville Jewish Recreation Center. I think maybe there were justifications.
  
  As I mentioned before, my mother never had the follow-through to be a true stage mom, but she was supportive in pushing my performance career in strange and arbitrary directions. Around twelve, she signed me up for singing lessons with a woman named "Miss Hilda" who led a church choir and looked like she'd been a spinster since the late 1890s. The woman wore dickies with her sweat suits.
  
  Miss Hilda taught me German art songs, which is SUPER useful when you're auditioning for Tannhäuser, but if you're trying to rock a solo from the Who's Tommy, not so much. My mom couldn't tell the difference. Singing was singing, and her daughter was amazing at it, therefore everyone must listen! She became alert for opportunities for me to shine with my newfound skill, on stage and beyond.
  
  One day we got in the car and started driving to Ohio. Randomly. My brother and I were confused.
  
  "Where are we going?"
  
  My mom had a copy of the newspaper in her lap and thrust it at me. "They're rebooting The Mickey Mouse Club and searching for new talent! You're auditioning!"
  
  Panic. "But I don't have a song prepared!"
  
  "Just do that one Miss Hilda taught you last week!"
  
  "Um... really?"
  
  "Either that or 'Happy Birthday.' You have such a beautiful voice, it won't matter, you're a shoo-in, baby!"
  
  I wrapped my mom's faith around myself like a straightjacket as we drove three and a half hours to a nondescript Holiday Inn in Cincinnati. I marched into the run-down ballroom with a number 239 pinned to my shirt and, when prompted, began singing Schubert's "Gretchen am Spinnrade" for the touring Disney audition committee.
  
  "Meine Ruh' ist hin
  
  Mein Herz ist schwer,
  
  Ich finde, ich finde sie nimmer..."
  
  "THANK YOU!"
  
  And that was the closest to becoming a Disney kid I ever got. Thank goodness.
  
  Several years later, we were living in San Antonio, and my mother met a man whose daughter took ballet class with me. Of course, the conversation turned to my fantastic singing voice, and it turned out that the guy knew a guy who had a brother who recorded music and made albums. In his garage. Talk about kismet!
  
  Except he didn't do pop music (or German lieder), he specialized in Tejano music. The accordion music that the Tex-Mex region adores. Objectively, it is very danceable.
  
  To most humans, I would not be the FIRST person you'd pick for stardom in this particular field. For one, I didn't speak Spanish, and two, there was that really Caucasian thing going on with my face. At this point I was a bit older, fifteen, and I strongly registered my objections, but when my mom saw an opportunity, she couldn't let it escape.
  
  "Your voice is so pretty! That girl Selena is popular, and you're just as pretty as her! You can do this!" There was no arguing. I would be her Central Texan Eliza Doolittle.
  
  My mom immediately bought language tapes to play in the car. "Mi casa, su casa..." everywhere we drove, I drilled. I started flamenco class, which had nothing to do with Tejano but was similar enough to tap dancing that I enjoyed it, and after a few weeks of intense training, we met with the recording guy to talk debut album concepts.
  
  Now, this guy should have been rightfully laughing us out of the state, but my mom is somehow able to make the most insane ideas seem plausible. At least when you're in her sphere of contact. Once she's gone, you start to catch yourself, like, Hey, now. Wait a second...
  
  We sat there in a tiny recording studio behind a nail salon, and my mom painted the headline "White Tejano Star Takes San Antonio by Storm!" with such vivid enthusiasm that the producer dude, slurping from a two-hundred-ounce sweet tea cup, was totally digging it.
  
  They brainstormed as I sat there silently, praying for an earthquake or tornado to kill us all. I kid you not: the strategy was to change my name to "Felicia Diaz." Which was pretty considerate, because I got to keep my first name, just add the accent, like "Feliz Navidad." I don't know why I was so uptight about it; the plan screamed success!
  
  The two of them came up with tons of debut song concepts, mostly with the word corazón in them (my violin playing was a HUGE asset, special skillz, y'all!), and we left planning to come back the next week to start recording.
  
  In a very sad way, fate intervened. Before we could get into breaking the lyrics down phonetically for me to learn so I could insult millions of people and their culture in MP3 format, the superstar Selena was murdered by a fan. The whole future of Tejano looked to be a bit iffy. I was able to get that violin scholarship to go to college during the confusion, and my future of becoming a superstar disappeared into the mist.
  
  Lo siento, mi amor.
  
  [ Hollywood, I'm Inside You! ]
  
  Because everyone discouraged me from getting a degree in theatre (thank you, everyone), I did the math-music thing in college, but in the back of my mind I was always going to move to Hollywood and become an actor. I could analyze my motivations until the day I die, but there just wasn't any logic to it. I never had a doubt that it was how my life was going to go, and I was going to make it happen. My mother was often impractical, but she did instill a "leap and look later" attitude that's pretty much responsible for my whole career.
  
  Days after I got my Real Degree, I moved west. I didn't go completely unprepared (I was only 95 percent stupid at the time), I had a few cards up my sleeve. I'd saved up a lot of money by living at home and playing violin professionally and having my mom drive me to college for four years, so that torture paid off in the end. I had also volunteered at tons of film festivals in Austin and made connections with "Hollywood insiders." Most of them were screenwriters, which I later found out are the most useless connections you can have (only LA valets get treated worse than LA writers), but my friends did help me figure out where to live, how not to get killed on the freeways, and what kind of acting head shots immediately went into the trash. My first photo is NOT an example of what they suggested was successful.
  
  Maybe it was my obsession with Clark Gable and Carole Lombard's relationship coming into play, but for my first LA photo shoot I decided to go for the "Look as old as you can at age twenty-one in an Ann Taylor silk blouse" strategy. Ultimately, in my mind, the pictures didn't matter. Because I was still wrapped in that blind, unerring faith: Felicia Day was one audition away from a Vanity Fair cover, no matter what.
  
  You see, I was raised on the great American girl dream. Talent and experience don't matter. If you're pretty enough, you'll be discovered while sitting at an outdoor table in Los Angeles, plucked out of obscurity and placed onto magazine covers by a producer randomly driving down Sunset Boulevard in his Land Rover who pulls over, yanks a cigar out of his mouth, and yells, "You! Get in the car! I'm making you a star!"
  
  Strangely, no matter how many cups of coffee I've ordered at outdoor cafés on Sunset Boulevard, this has never happened to me. I did, however, make one of the most inauspicious filmic debuts of any actor ever, so that's something I can brag about.
  
  There's a weekly paper called Backstage where producers post notices to find unpaid and/or nonunion actors to audition for their terrible-quality stuff. Mostly student films in black and white with no sound included. As a newbie actor, applying for these projects is the best way to get experience, because no one with any résumé credits whatsoever would stoop low enough to do the work. You send out hundreds of head shots and get maybe one audition out of the bunch. And each response makes you feel like, This is my big break! I'm on my way to a party in the Hollywood Hills, watching Johnny Depp undress to get into a hot tub. Better shave my legs!
  
  From one of my first submission batches, I got called in to audition for a movie in a building that was located on Hollywood Boulevard. After living in LA for over a decade, I now know it's the sleaziest place in town to have a meeting, but at the time I was like, Damn, girl. You made it already!
  
  The role was for an "Untitled" horror film. (Really, how hard is it to come up with a name? Just pick one and change it later, guys.) I arrived at the address to find a dozen girls sitting on the floor in the hallway waiting outside. No chairs.
  
  One after another, the actresses went into the room, read the lines, and then proceeded to SCREAM at the top of their lungs.
  
  "AAAAAAAAH!"
  
  Sometimes there was a pause, muffled discussion, then a second take.
  
  "AhhhhAHHHH AH! Ahhhhh!"
  
  The casting director, a kid who looked like he was a high school intern from Omaha, would escort the actresses in and out, shuffling through cute girls like a deck of cards. "Next!"
  
  The whole process made me nervous. I'd never screamed on cue before, so I practiced a few silent ones with my mouth closed while I waited, like a cat coughing up a hair ball.
  
  "Mmmmm! MmmMMMmm! MmmmM?"
  
  Eventually, channeling Miss Hilda's vocal training in the back of my mind, I convinced myself that I could nail this situation, no problem.
  
  When it was my turn, I got escorted inside the office and saw that it wasn't really an office at all, more of a closet. There were actual brooms hung up behind the door.
  
  The director sat in the middle of the tiny room with a tripod and camera next to him. He was wearing a dirty T-shirt and dark wraparound sunglasses. The room had no windows, so the shades thing seemed excessive, but it was Hollywood. I assumed important people looked douchey.
  
  "Okay, okay, stand there..." He had a French accent and waved me into the middle of the room. The Omaha "casting director" squeezed in to read with me. With no preamble, the director started the camera and crossed his arms.
  
  "Go." Huh? Oh, that was his version of "Action"? Right.
  
  I performed the scene.
  
  I was adequate.
  
  "Good good." A long pause. "So, what I feel strongly for this character is we will have a shower scene, yes?"
  
  I was confused. "A what?"
  
  "A scene. In shower. To show character. Are you comfortable with shower scene?"
  
  "Uh... you mean naked?"
  
  He made a minimizing gesture. "Just breasts."
  
  Okay, well, HOLD ON! I'd prepared myself for something like this before my move. I'd heard about casting couches and naked switcheroos and Hollywood tainting and corrupting innocent girls' souls, and I'd vowed to myself and my dad, "I'll make it in Hollywood, but I'll make it clean!" I would never show my breasts. Except for Scorsese, or Spielberg, or two dozen other exceptions. But no, Sir Wraparound Shades, no! You will not have my boobs.
  
  I gathered myself proudly. "No, I don't think so."
  
  "Will be beautiful, very artistic. Only to learn about character..."
  
  "No, thank you." I could tell he was less interested.
  
  "Okay, scream."
  
  I screamed. It was a good scream. A silent "thank you" to my probably-dead-by-then singing teacher Miss Hilda.
  
  "Thank you. Go."
  
  And I left, head high, knowing that I'd dodged a bullet. I would NOT be working for that exploity French guy, ever!
  
  Except I did. I was hired the next day to be the non-boob-showing friend of the lead girl in the ultimately titled Serial Killers.
  
  Of course, I took the job. But I wore very unattractive underwear to the set, just in case they were trying to trick me with infrared cameras or something.
  
  The movie was shot in houses all over Reseda, a porn suburb of LA, and I found out later that the director primarily made soft-core cinema to pay the bills, so that added up. Serial Killers was his attempt at breaking into more "artsy" content. But still with lots of titties.
  
  I worked three days on the movie, knowing the whole time that the girl I was acting opposite was eventually gonna show her boobs in a "character shower" scene, and I treated her with a touch of pity. We never talked again afterward.
  
  Despite the rough experience, I was paid $90.00 in the form of a check for five days' work, and I was thrilled. I had MADE MONEY acting just two months after moving to Los Angeles! This whole crazy leap of faith was really gonna work out for me!
  
  The day after I went to the bank, I got a call.
  
  The check had bounced.
  
  I called the film production number, but everything had shut down and disappeared, and in the end, I never got paid. Yes, the first dollar I'd ever made acting never existed.
  
  I was mildly upset, then cheered myself up by spending $150 of my paltry savings on an ornate, rococo gold frame. I hung the framed check in my office so that I could one day relay the story to James Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio. A perfect representation of my ignoble first job in Hollywood. I was sure ol' James would eat the story up.
  
  I limped from tiny project to tiny project after that, but there were no more bounced checks. (Good thing: I didn't have the framing budget.) The next few years were incredibly slow and frustrating, but I never thought about giving up on acting. Coming from the academic world, I had faith that whatever the obstacle, I could push myself further and harder than anyone else and I would eventually win.
  
  Oh, you naïve, cute child.
  
  Between the long "no jobs in sight" stretches, I concentrated on what I could control myself and attacked the task of "Let's be the best actor ever!" with as much pluck and adorable gusto as I did learning mathematical Group Theory. (Which I had completely forgotten the minute I graduated. But people were super impressed in auditions when I said, "I have a math degree," so: semi-worth it.) I took acting classes everywhere I could. The one I recall most was with a guy whose name I will change to Grant, because he was the embodiment of a human turd.
  
  Grant was about five feet tall and had a very large head, which is supposedly good for TV acting. Large heads, not shortness. I guess he pegged me as a problem when I first entered class. I was too fresh and friendly and looked like I needed to be psychologically assaulted? Something like that.
  
  Whenever I asked a question or had a comment in class, Grant would act like I was an idiot. "Of course, it's not like Pinter. Did you actually READ the plays?" If I performed a scene, he would tell me I was terrible in a pretty straightforward "Felicia, that was terrible" sort of way. I remember he once said, "You aren't good at comedy, don't even try. Concentrate on being a victim, it's a better casting for you."
  
  I couldn't understand what the problem was. I was always the teacher's pet, it was my specialty. What was WRONG with this guy? Missing an opportunity with an A+++ suck-up here, hello!
  
  I didn't realize that there are places in Hollywood that prey on impressionable young people, aiming to break them down in order to build them up again. Run away from any teacher whose biggest acting credit is "Banker" in a Lifetime movie of the week? No, I was new to town, I figured since this person had purchased advertising in the back of a trade magazine saying that they were an acting teacher, it was my problem! The fault was obviously with me and my crappy abilities.
  
  The last straw was when I performed Breakfast at Tiffany's in class. It was the scene where Audrey Hepburn goes upstairs to George Peppard's room and sings "Moon River." I thought because of my beautiful singing voice, I would finally get a compliment out of big-head Grant. But at the start of the scene, the actor playing opposite me came out from backstage, said his first line, and he was... STARK NAKED. Like, his junk was all out and dangling like a turkey head. Never rehearsed, never discussed with me. And... yeah. I was a bit thrown.
  
  "Keep in the scene, Felicia, my God, be an actor!" Grant's huge mouth flapped at me from the sidelines like Terrance and Phillip from South Park.
  
  I kept saying my lines, but it was very hard to keep the warble out of my voice with the other actor's bait and tackle hanging out. I stumbled through the scene, shrinking in anticipation of what the teacher would say to me afterwards.
  
  We sat on the stage for evaluation. Grant turned to my scene partner first. "Nick, that was fabulous, so brave. You really went there. Everyone applaud Nick." Everyone applauded. Then Grant turned to me. "Why are you here? You were given an opportunity to use Nick's gift to you and you ruined it. Audrey Hepburn would be ashamed."
  
  Well, I'm pretty sure Audrey Hepburn wouldn't want to see her scene partner's dick hanging out for no apparent reason—she was pretty classy—but I wasn't sassy enough at the time to say that, and I broke down crying.
  
  "Where was THIS in the scene? Dismissed." Annnnd class was over.
  
  I went home, my self-confidence crushed.
  
  And I kept going back for another month.
  
  Yes, I was a total idiot, but there was a weird, cultlike atmosphere in the class, and I had recently moved out of my mom's house and didn't know any better. Every day Grant's assistants told us if we quit, we'd never make it in Hollywood. They used that old cliché line AND I BOUGHT IT. Clearly, they were right; I mean, the girl who told me that had two whole lines on Will & Grace!
  
  I finally wised up after a more experienced actor told me, "You probably shouldn't be paying three hundred dollars a month to go home crying every night," and I decided Grant wasn't gonna teach me to be good by abusing me OR being nice to me. I called up to quit class.
  
  His assistant heard me out, then said, "You can't quit."
  
  "Yes, I can. I just did."
  
  "No, you have to have an exit interview; it's in the class rules. Come down and talk to Grant tonight."
  
  "Come down tonight to talk?" I was holding my then boyfriend's hand because I was so scared to confront these people and looked over. He shook his head vigorously.
  
  "No, I don't want to do that." My voice trembled. Lame.
  
  "Do you want to work in this town as an actor?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "Well you better..."
  
  STOP, FELICIA! It's a trick! RUN! "No. Wait. Good-bye!"
  
  I hung up, and they immediately called back. Again and again. All afternoon, and later that week. I didn't have to cancel my phone number because they stopped calling, eventually. But I'm not going to lie. I weighed it as an option.
  
  That wasn't the ONLY bad situation I encountered taking classes around LA, but it was definitely the worst. Anyone can put a sign up and call themselves a teacher. Hell, one time I went to an audition class INSIDE a laundromat. But after the Grant thing, I learned that the most important thing about taking classes is to find a place you look forward to going to. That way you actually get better at what you love and don't want to retire and become a barista every time you walk out the door.
  
  Also if you want to start a new profession, it's better to get some references on your instructors and not pick them out of the back of the classifieds section.
  
  [ I Need a Job, Please! ]
  
  Education mastered (slightly), I decided I needed to conquer the other side of Hollywood: the business of getting work. Specifically, I needed acting work to pay my bills. And to get acting work, you need an agent. To get an agent, you need to prove you have worked as an actor. It's like a set of Russian nesting dolls, stabbing each other from the inside with tiny needles.
  
  For a year after I moved to LA, I searched for someone to represent me. That's a great process, because it makes you want to shoot yourself. The few agencies that would meet with me gave me amazingly blunt and contradictory opinions.
  
  "Fix your teeth so you don't look like a rabbit."
  
  "Your smile is charming, your best asset!"
  
  "Lose some weight, and you could be a lead."
  
  "Gain weight; you're too bony."
  
  "The red hair isn't working, make it darker. No one likes a ginger."
  
  "Love the hair, very unique. But pad your bra. It's very flat up there."
  
  (No one contradicted that last piece of advice.)
  
  My favorite was, "You're pretty, but you could use a... *shoop*, you know?" The agent made a gesture down his nose with two of his fingers, accompanied by a slurping sound. I think he meant a nose job. I also think he was an asshole.
  
  It was hard to hear all the criticism, but I was still relatively fresh off the boat and naïvely self-confident, so I spurned it all. I knew by being myself, I had achieved some awesome things in life. Like local theatre awards and two Real Degrees. I was studying hard, I was doing all the right hard-work things, I was a unique and precious unicorn and FINE exactly the way I was!
  
  Also, I couldn't afford a nose job. I would just have to work hard to make up for the ugly face.
  
  After my five millionth interview, I got an agent who didn't want to rebuild me from scratch, and I started auditioning for television commercials, which was great, in a metaphysically soul-searing kind of way.
  
  As a commercial actor, you get sent out on appointments several times a day with no preparation. Just audition over and over for the opportunity to become a human prop. A prop in a car ordering donuts, a prop being startled by a Transformer, a prop eating limited-release KFC panini sandwiches over and over until the prop pukes... I've done it all.
  
  I have a great "love to please you!" attitude and look good in polo shirts, so over the next several years of my career, I did amazingly well in this area. If you are persistent enough, you can make a hell of a good living and work only two days a year doing television commercials. Half my nose snuck on camera for an Old Navy commercial during the 2004 Olympics, and I made more money than I'd ever made in my whole life. And the variety is fun, if you can remove yourself as an actual FEELING PERSON from the process.
  
  On different projects I got to skydive, play with parrots, and eat five bags of Cheetos in an hour (FYI, it isn't how I suspected. If you eat enough Cheetos you will NOT actually poop an extra-large Cheeto). I got hired to walk down a street thinking a whole monologue of silent thoughts about weight loss while drinking liquid yogurt. Later, they asked me to audition to be that same monologue voice in the commercial. Which I ended up LOSING OUT to someone else. Yeah, I lost a job to be my own inner voice. Strange, because I sound exactly like my own voice in my OWN HEAD when I think about liquid yogurt. But I got paid extremely well, so the empty feeling of being treated like a puppet was fine? Sort of?
  
  Actually, not.
  
  Acting in commercials was never my life goal. I wanted to be on TV or in an indie film with Parker Posey about quirky people having family issues around inheritances. Or Parkinson's. SOMETHING where I wasn't being yelled at for wrinkling my prop shirt or squeezing the prop burger too hard so the prop mustard started oozing out the back.
  
  After five years of acting and making a great living, I started to forget why I moved to LA in the first place. And so did my family back home.
  
  "We saw you on that post office ad, you're so cute, are they going to turn that into a TV show?"
  
  "That's not how that works, Mom."
  
  "Well, here's an idea. You should be on that NCIS thing with Mark Harmon. You grew up on military bases, you know that world!"
  
  "Gee, you're right! Why didn't I think of calling them before? They've probably been waiting by the phone for YEARS!" Le sigh.
  
  On a renewed quest for opportunity (i.e., last-gasp attempt to fan the dying fire of my dreams), I hustled to get hired on bigger projects. I finally accepted that my dazzling 4.0 GPA wasn't the trump card in this new world that I'd thought it would be, so I started making changes. And I did them out of desperation, which is always a first step into the mouth of existential doom.
  
  I cut off all my hair when an agent suggested it. And, for some reason, I started getting hired more. "People like you looking less like a lead character and more of a 'best friend'!" Cool! I loved listening to prettier people complain about their relationships, I could work with that!
  
  During one audition, a casting director said I looked "adorable" in a dorky rainbow scarf, so I started dressing only in bright, colorful clothes. Like a hot first-grade teacher who says, "My quilted cardigan hides sensible cotton lingerie under here. Come undress me, but first, please use a coaster for your drink."
  
  The makeover cherry topper was when I got nerdy librarian glasses. They made me look older, but in a weird, accessible way. Suddenly I could play late thirties as a twenty-seven-year-old. More work flooded in. Good change! Good Felicia! Yay?
  
  And after switching up all the superficial stuff, I was the same person underneath, but for some reason, people couldn't stop hiring me. The snowballing feedback made me abandon the whole "What does Felicia want to be?" and I started doing whatever anyone told me they wanted from me in order to succeed. Lo and behold, it WORKED!
  
  I got tons more commercials. I overcame my nuclear-meltdown nervousness in auditions to get a few jobs as recurring characters on TV shows. I didn't work every day, but for the average actor, I started to have a career I could brag about at cocktail parties. With my head-to-toe makeover, I'd found my niche: cat-owning, stalker-y secretary.
  
  And I played the same part again and again and again.
  
  Thing is, the "cat secretary" role was never the focal point of any scenes. She was a decorative character, adding a touch of flavor to offices across the TV landscape. Most of my lines were in the vein of "Mr. Garrett, your wife is on line two. Can I go home early to feed my fifteen animals, please?" Either that or I was hired to do laundry. I've washed laundry in a half dozen different TV shows. I guess I look clean? Which is kind of a compliment...
  
  But who was I to complain? Every show needed secretaries! Finally, after six years of struggling in Hollywood, I was finding bigger success. My grandma got to see me on an actual TV show and brag about it to the checkout clerk at Kmart. I had pinpointed a salable stereotype I could play for the next twenty years, living the nomadic life of audition after audition (accompanied by panic attack after panic attack), begging to answer fictional phone calls in innocuous ways for decades to come... and I hated it.
  
  The role was a shadow of the kind of characters I wanted to portray. No one had a place for my geeky, weird, homeschooled, video-game-loving inner self. They could only see me as an extremely clean but neurotic secretary. "Your nose is too weird to be the focus of the show, but you're perfect for answering the phone in the background in a quirky fashion!"
  
  I painted myself into a tiny corner, so I could be simpler and cleaner and more hirable by Hollywood. I was rewarded for it, but it made me miserable, and I didn't even realize it.
  
  When the system you want to be a part of so badly turns you into someone you're unhappy with and you lose sight of yourself, is it worth it? Er... probably not. But self-reflection wasn't my strong suit at the time. I just knew that I kept getting opportunities I couldn't turn down, that I would have killed to have in the dry years before. I never stopped to wonder, Why am I so depressed all the time after all this success?
  
  Instead of making big-girl decisions about my future, like setting goals for myself, working on other characters I could play, or hell, signing up for some good ol' therapy, I turned to another world.
  
  An online world. A game called World of Warcraft.