Meet Paula Rhodes

Today we’d like to introduce you to Paula Rhodes.

Paula, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Growing up mostly in Missouri, acting and filmmaking didn’t seem like the most viable of careers, but I’d always dreamed of being a storyteller. I honestly couldn’t quite picture a future where I wasn’t, so when the stars aligned and I happened to win a pageant (funny story) that lead to an internship in NYC, I jumped at the chance. I ended up interning all over that city and learned the business side of this craft first.

That gave me the confidence to really start focusing on the art. It, however, did not give me singing and dancing skills, those gods passed me by. So, when a film wanted to see me for a callback out in LA, I learned to drive again and made the move to the coast where one need not be a triple threat.

It was here that I started really working as an actor, got into VO, and lucked into producing in the indie and web space just as web series were taking their baby steps. It was also here that I met my now-husband as he was plotting my death on a horror film. Let’s pretend that’s a normal sentence.

LA has been a really wonderful home to me, literally and creatively, and now that I lured my sibling and parents here and added my sons to the mix, I can’t see anywhere else taking its place.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
This journey I’ve chosen has a hefty share of challenges (sooooo much rejection, work-life balance quests, financial juggles, vanity woes, skin-thickening feedback, general heartbreak), and there aren’t any artists I know who don’t face the lows of self-doubt on regular cycles, but ultimately, it’s still the path I choose.

Compared to all the other options and in spite of the confidence wobbles, there’s something in me that keeps sparking that flame back up to stay the course, to keep creating and lending my voice to the stories.

Paula Rhodes – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Oooof, there’s a question! I certainly need to get better at bragging, ha!

Let’s see, in the voiceover realm some may know me as Skipper and Stacie in Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse, from any of my Monster High or Ever After High characters, as Peaches Pie from Doc McStuffins, or perhaps as Eveline in Resident Evil 7. I just completed a 3 season run as Wendy Darling on the award-winning The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy (www.newpeterwendy.com).

I’m in the post for my first feature film as director/writer that we shot during my first pregnancy.

I’ve played a 1930’s Irish starlet (Amazon’s The Last Tycoon), a crazy 70 yr old author living in the woods (Disney’s Bunk’d), a horrible LA mom (Amazon’s The Kicks), Lady Door in the West Coast premiere of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, an elf in a trailer for a comic I loved growing up that Stephanie Thorpe and I produced and premiered in the first red carpet screening at the SAG building, more roles that imdb is better at keeping track of than I, and Mom to two actual tiny humans. Those I keep track of.

What do I do? Apparently, I destroy free time by filling it with comic-con-worthy adventures and people even shorter than I am.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Ahhh, there’s the trap of this profession, that imaginary need to hit a certain marker. In truth, there’s ALWAYS another ceiling above the one you just broke through and far too many glass floors to fall back through. I think if one gets into this business with a goal other than the journey they are most likely going to be disappointed.

Not that I don’t have to remind myself on the regular, but the fact that I am able to do what I love, that I have collected some of the credits and diary entries and wonderful humans in my circle that I have, AND that I somehow lucked into having an amazingly supportive family, IS my best life. Sure, I hope to snag more credits and tell more tales, but I consider myself pretty darn successful.

Now, 17 yr old me may scoff and roll her eyes at that, but she had a lot to learn (and even she is pretty impressed at some of what I’ve pulled off).

Contact Info:

• Website: http://officialpaularhodes.com/
• Instagram: @paula_rhodes
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulaRhodesFanPage/
• Twitter: @paula_rhodes

Image Credit:
Cathy Baron, Kevin Pazmino, Mark Burmeister

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