I now have a snazzy new website, in which this blog is now contained. If you want to hear about what I’ve been up to recently, head over to rachelgrundy.com.

Thanks!

I will still have this blog, incorporated into my site, for my continued ramblings, but I’ll have a news section, my reel (once I make it) as well as resume and photos, and all kinds of other nice things. It will look really different and I cannot wait to get it up and running!

I’ve wrapped on the three projects I blogged about a couple of weeks ago, and had such a great time on each of them. I learned a huge amount from every experience and was so lucky to get to work with really awesome casts and crews, all of whom I got on really well with (phew). I’m now back to auditioning for more stuff, with a callback in the works and some other things on the horizon, including an experimental film project I have been working on for the last month or so that will film soon. My next goal is to meet with casting directors, so I start to be a known ‘face’ and someone who is in their minds when casting Nathan Fillion’s next love interest on Castle.  A girl can dream, right?

So, goodbye to my little WordPress site, and hello sexy website! Hopefully the next time I write it shall be from the exciting world of rachelgrundy.com.

Naked Easter – A fantastic, funny, dark, painful short film written and directed by the brilliant Charles Rogers. I play the lead role of Nadine, the black sheep of a conservative family, who arrives home for Easter with the announcement that she is now a nudist- and demands to spend the holiday naked. It was a blast to shoot and I’m really excited to see how it turns out! This was one of those magical projects where everyone worked so well together that we became a little family, and I was genuinely sad to wrap filming two weeks ago.

The Haamenschmeil Substitute – I’m still filming this one, a 20-minute film written and directed by Phil Puzio. It’s a really fun romantic comedy farce about a guy who gets mistaken for a famous microbiologist and decides to play along so he can live in the doctor’s house for free. I play Louise, the doctor’s teaching assistant at the college, who smells a rat from the beginning, but ends up falling in love with him and helping him keep the charade going. We’re having loads of fun filming this!

Commons – I wrapped on this yesterday up in Albany and got stuck in a massive traffic jam on the way back in the pouring rain. However, it was definitely worth it to be a part of this quirky independent TV show, which is playing on local cable channels across NY State. Check out www.commonsontv.webs.com for more about the show!

As you can tell, I’ve been doing very little other than learning lines and dashing from shoot to shoot the last two weeks. I have seen the wrong side of 5am almost every day I have been filming and had incredibly long and tiring days for each shoot. However, it’s amazing how energized I feel, and how happy I am to be doing so much of what I love every day. Getting up for an office job was always harder than this.

Once all my projects get completed and screened, I will be updating you all with where to see them. I’m also getting my swanky new website built right now by the amazing people at Pad Creative, so you will be seeing the results of that right here, very soon!

It has been strangely freeing to go back to the unpredictable lifestyle. I had this kind of life for nearly a year when I originally moved to the States, thanks to immigration beauracracy leaving me unable to get a social security number, a bank account or a real job for about 8 months. I bopped around doing all kinds of interesting (and memorable) odd jobs to help us stay afloat during that time. Ask me after you’ve bought me a beer if you want the stories. While it was sometimes a bit financially scary, I had a lot of fun and felt like I had a lot of control over my life – when I worked, what I did, when I left. A stable paycheck is always nice, but the regularity of the 9-5 life has never been something I aspired to (probably another reason I like the itinerant lifestyle of the actor/musician). After 4 years of it, it’s been so fantastic to get back to the potentially terrifying, wonderfully liberating world of the freelancer.

We’ll see if I feel like this in 6 months.

For most of my life, I have wanted to be in films. I have a vivid memory of being about 14 and going to see ‘While You Were Sleeping’ at the local cinema in Eltham (now closed, sadly) and walking home from the cinema in a kind of filmic daze – imagining myself as Sandra Bullock in a snowy Chicago, finding love and happiness while a carefully chosen soundtrack played music in the background. Perhaps a corny movie to have this revelatory moment about, but true nonetheless. Throughout my teens, I would imagine that my life was a film, and would pick which of my current favourite  bands would work best to soundtrack the crucial ‘scenes’ that defined my life: Silverchair when I broke up with my boyfriend, Jeff Buckley blaring from my stereo when I was having an introspective (read: angsty) moment sitting on the roof of my parents house smoking a cigarette (I’m sure my parents are delighted to read that I sat on the steeply-sloped roof of our house. Sorry guys), Fatboy Slim, Oasis and Blur for happy summers drinking beer on Blackheath.

Moving to New York was all part of this film fantasy life that I had planned out for myself; my training period in indie theatre, my discovery while in a small-yet-brilliant show by a casting director, my eventual work with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright in an acclaimed cult classic. It was all so simple and plausible. And yet…reality came to bite me. I had the training ground in indie theatre – I’ve spent nearly five years working with some of the most wonderful, creative, supportive people this amazing community has, and will continue to fool them into casting me in more shows – but the chance meeting with the casting director/agent/producer never happened. Perhaps this is not so surprising to people here on Planet Earth, but the fantasist in me always held on to the feeling that it was destined to happen. So I got some other jobs to pay my way while I waited for that magical opportunity to appear.

Four years later, I slowly woke up to the fact that my life was not what I wanted. Like I said, I had/have a great life. I’ve been blessed with steady work (both in acting and in my day job), enough money to be comfortable, to buy an apartment in New York, health insurance, friends, love, etc etc. However, I saw the end of my twenties (and the decade) approach, and wondered whether this was it for me. A lot of my friends were in the same place – acting on the side, working during the day – and seemed content with that. Why wasn’t I? I thought it was the job I had – it was busy, it could be stressful, it had relocated to New Jersey so I reverse commuted every day – and I decided to find a new one. Eight months go by, and I come second place several times after interviewing for great jobs, and two consecutive jobs nearly offered me a position before deciding not to hire anyone because of the economy. Perhaps the universe was trying to tell me something. As a Buddhist, I don’t believe in chances, or ‘bad luck’, so I had to find the root cause of this job karma I was experiencing. The cause took a long time for me to figure out (which is dumb, because it was so obvious once I did). It wasn’t about my current job. I wasn’t supposed to get another day job. I wasn’t supposed to have a day job. I was supposed to be an actor, remember?

I was inspired by a couple of people over the last year to take that scary step. First was Sandra, who I blogged about in October. She quit her job to be an actor, and was succeeding before she started her journey battling cancer. After she passed away, I began to reflect a lot harder on what I was doing with my short and precious life. She made the most of hers, and I hope she lived with no regrets – could I say the same? The second was my friend Hank. He has fought harder than anyone I know to do what he loves – make music. He wanted our band to be a real band, one that got paid, and his dedication was infectious as we planned to release our album and schedule tours. His gift to me was including me on his journey and reminding me that I was a musician too. Maybe this was part of my career as well – to make use of the thousands of pounds my parents spent on music lessons and be a musician. An actor/musician. That sounded pretty awesome.

I dedicated more time to my Buddhist practice than I ever had since I joined SGI in 2006. I chanted more; I committed to spending time supporting others as a behind the scenes volunteer at our culture centre; I reconnected with the reasons I became a Nichiren Buddhist in the first place. A profound shift in my attitude about my life began to emerge, one that handed control of it back to me, and let me see the incredible opportunity I had to challenge myself. The positive causes I had made through my efforts were coming back to me as this great benefit of clarity about my situation. Chanting nam-myoho-renge-kyo is a powerful thing.

As 2009 began to wind down, I looked at the decade that was coming and realised that if I didn’t make a change now, the life I felt destined to lead would slip through my fingers. I had to stop waiting for someone else to ‘discover’ me, I was going to have to discover myself. I also needed to silence Prove To Everyone That Moving To New York Wasn’t A Mistake by getting real, paid, consistent work in film and music, and prove not to Everyone, but Myself, that I was good enough, that I could actually do it. When I finally set out my harebrained scheme to my husband, convinced he would (sensibly) try and talk me out of this path to possible financial ruin for us both, he merely said, ‘of course you have to do it. I want you to be happy.’

My decision was finally made. At the end of this month, I’m leaving my job. I’m losing my steady paycheck, my health insurance, and my financial security for the chance at stable acting work and a successful band. For someone who’s about to get very broke, I’m happier than I have been in a very long time about where I’m headed. The film of my life is getting a reboot (hopefully in an awesome, Battlestar Galactica kind of way, not an American version of Spaced way. Yes I know those are TV examples, but they were the best ones I could think of), and I think I hear a soundtrack playing in the background…

“As written, most of these reindeer are paper-thin stereotypes, and it is a tribute to the fine acting skills of Dysfunctional Theatre Company that the cast flesh them out as well as they do, adding humanity to these caricatures…”

I was dead chuffed to be singled out in the review (along with awesome fellow-actors Danaher Dempsey, Rob Brown and Peter Schuyler) for my work:

“The selling point of this play for me is Rachel Grundy as Vixen, the slutty starlet. Unabashedly sexy and strong, her story, though an old one, is one that needs to be told—don’t blame the victim. She gives it to us straight, like a real dame in an old movie, with movie star looks and style to match.”

Who said short-haired girls can’t be sexy?

Tonight and tomorrow are double show nights (8pm and 10.20pm), which will be a challenge! It’s a pretty tiring show for me, both emotionally and on my voice as I yell a fair amount and I get croaky by the end. I’m relying on hot tea to see me through the second show!

Hope you can make it out – and if you needed another reason, see this listing in the New York Times, where we get a mention for being a non-traditional (and slightly sacriligious) holiday show. The article itself is a fun read, and mentions a show that some good friends have produced called ‘A Very Sandwich Christmas’, which, knowing the fabulous people that make up Banana, Bag & Bodice, is bizarre, hilarious and brilliant. Go see that show too.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Even more reasons to come and see the show!

Opening next Wednesday, December 9th, I bring you my second incarnation in the indescribably fabulous Dysfunctional Theatre Company’s The Eight: Reindeer Monologues. Yes, that’s right, we open two days after my birthday – what better gift to give than the gift of your presence at my show? (Ok, cheap shot, but worth a try).

Back in 2007, I was the angry feminist, Blitzen, but this time, I get to give the audience some va-va-voom as Vixen! If you like taking the joy, tradition and family values of Christmas and stomping all over them with a pair of stilettos, you’ll love this show. Described as ‘sex, lies and too much eggnog’, each of Santa’s eight reindeer tell their version of what may be the biggest cover up in North Pole history. Warning: This is for adults only. Not your family holiday show.

It’s funny! It’s dirty! It’s dark! It’s brilliant! Come and see it please, for eleven shows only! And yes, that is me posing on the bar. That’s right. I’m Vixen. Don’t miss it. Check out www.horsetrade.info for tix and reservations!

At my day job, I rarely get the chance to go to our office in Florida, as I’m usually rehearsing and can’t get away from NY. However, last week my boss called me and asked if I could make it happen as I was really needed. Cue rescheduling two rehearsals, a coaching session and a shift at my Buddhist culture centre. But I made it work and now I’m sitting in a sun-filled office in beautiful Fort Lauderdale, looking at….an interstate. Yes, very glamorous and South Beach. At least the view from our apartment is awesome.

As I was on the plane (I had intended to do all this great work that I never have time for but really need to do, but instead ended up watching four episodes of Numbers. Damn you, JetBlue and your free Direct TV), I realised that I’ve been quite lucky this year and done a fair amount of jetsetting. I was in Arizona in July with Vince, learning what heat truly means, then I wangled a flight with air mile points in September to visit family & friends in London for a few days, now a week in Florida, then home again to London for two blissful weeks at Christmas (or Yule, if you’re non-Christian like me. Whatever. I like presents). I’m really hoping that 2010 will be as good as 2009 for journeys and trips – if not better! Plans are already afoot for a Coyote Love eco-tour in the Catskills region, a show I co-wrote this year has dreams of the Edinburgh Festival and Vince and I are thinking of a road trip back from Dallas after Thanksgiving, via Kentucky to visit/meet his uncle (who he hasn’t seen since he was 3 years old), and bring his mums’ amazing china that we inherited safely back to New York. All sounds good, huh? Now I just need a way to pay for it all. Donations will be accepted.