Today we’d like to introduce you to Sara Amini.
Sara, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I moved here 8 years ago on a whim. I was working full-time in Austin at a tutoring and mentoring organization for low-income neighborhoods while taking acting classes downtown at night. A local casting director introduced me to an acting coach who was auditioning five Texas students to participate in a six-week summer program in LA. My job was slow in the summers because the school was out, we were mostly doing lesson plans and prepping for the upcoming school year.
I auditioned for one of the five spots, and I got in. In retrospect, I can’t believe my job let me go to LA with the promise I’d have the job when I returned. Though a co-worker jokingly said, “Yeah, right, you’re not coming back.” I was in my first performance when I was seven, playing the role of “Head Elf” in my elementary school Christmas play. I wrote my first short story in the third grade which ended up in a city-wide writing competition in Houston. Expressing myself through writing and performing were ingrained in me at a young age.
But a combination of my immigrant parents and their strong desire for me to become an academic, with the fear I had of pursuing an arts degree that would lead me nowhere, made me chicken out in college and study Child Psychology instead. And now here I was, acting creeping back into my life. So either this LA summer trip was going to awaken my passion out of its hibernation, or it was to be the closure I needed to put acting away for good and focus on a stable, secure career.
Thankfully, it was the former. Within days I decided I was staying in LA. After two weeks, I called my job and quit over the phone. I called my best friend and asked her to move my stuff back to Houston for me. And I called my parents and told them it was now or never to try to pursue acting. To my surprise, they were incredibly supportive. They didn’t try to talk me out of it or say I was being impulsive. In a way I think they admired my boldness, the certainty I felt that THIS was what I needed to do, and THIS is where I needed to be.
A good friend of mine also got into the summer program. I rented a room with her for a year, while working multiple jobs, learning to navigate the city, and trying to understand how the business worked. At one point, I had five jobs simultaneously: babysitting in Hollywood, catering downtown, tutoring in Culver City, someone’s personal assistant in Beverly Hills, and worked the front desk at a pilates studio in Studio City. It was chaotic, stressful, and daunting. I was way in over my head that first year. I naively thought that I would arrive and LA would say, “Sara, where have you been?
We’ve been waiting for you!,” and all the jobs would be handed to me, I’d move swiftly up the ladder, and I’d have a lovely star on the Hollywood walk of fame that two competing Elmos could have a turf war over. That did not happen. In fact, I did not get an agent for three and a half years. I could not land someone to save my life. Imagine quitting your job and moving to LA on a whim, and then getting zero traction for three and a half years. I was worried I’d made the biggest mistake of my life and that I’d have to return to Texas, tail between my legs, and worst of all, disappoint my parents.
I was doing casting director workshops (RIP) at the time, and Jeff Greenberg, who casts Modern Family, gave me the opportunity to audition for the show. I did not get the job, but he remembered me and months later brought me in again for a different role. I got that one. It was my first big job, and it had taken me three years to get it. I’ll always be indebted to Jeff for giving me my first opportunity. It was the thing that finally got me going. It was only then that I was able to sign with an agent.
Then, it took another year (!) for me to book my second job. A full year! Was I a one-hit wonder? Apparently, my career was taking the scenic route. It was a long process of getting more comfortable in rooms, building relationships with people, and surrounding myself in a community that was uplifting and encouraging when things didn’t go how I’d wished they did, which happened a lot.
At the same time, I was finding the freedom and power in creating my own work. And I learned how insanely valuable that was going to be for me. “Work begets work,” has been the tried and true motto for my career. I wrote and starred in a short film to get my feet wet with writing. I wrote some sketches for shows at the Second City Hollywood and the Comedy Central stage, which led me to some great relationships with fantastic female multi-hyphenates who I deeply respect. One summer, I set up a camera in my bedroom and did impressions of the cast of Orange Is the New Black, just for fun.
I posted it on Facebook and in 72 hours the video had gone viral. It was featured on the show’s official Twitter page, written about in multiple articles, including The Huffington Post, and it racked up to almost a million views. That video I made for no money in my bedroom with terrible lighting and back when I was still wearing my Invisalign braces opened up so many doors for me it was insane. It got me a manager, got me cast in the 2016 CBS Diversity Showcase, and got me a sketch comedy pilot presentation for the CW. SNL requested a tape for me to audition.
The head of casting at Disney TV animation called me to put myself on tape for their files, later she helped me get a voiceover agent and voiceover work, something on my bucket list for years. Another casting director had seen the video and booked me as the lead of an indie film. It was a lightbulb moment for me. So much of what we do as actors wait around for our agents to call us with an audition, then wait around to hear if we got the part. 99% of the time we do not get the part. So, there’s this perpetual purgatory we just hang out in. It’s imperative for one’s sanity to keep busy, keep moving. I have so many friends who are fantastic stand-ups and improvisers who constantly have shows.
Some of my other friends fill this time with something called “hobbies.” I was never been good with hobbies. I always joke about my hobbies include acting and thinking about acting. So, for me, realizing I could make my own stuff in between gigs was monumental. I began making more impression videos. I started my memoir, something I said “I’d get around to one day” for years. And the best thing to happen to my career, I found my writing partner.
Emily, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I met Emily in an acting class and every time we’d meet up to rehearse or tape each other, we’d say, “We should try writing together.” We bonded over being first-generation daughters of immigrants and commiserated over the lack of those narratives on TV. It wasn’t until Master of None, we text each other a dozen crying emojis- it was one of those rare moments in Hollywood that we felt seen. Inspired by the show’s themes and our own experiences as women of color, we wrote and starred in a seven-episode web series called “Misery Loves Company” (YouTube, Vimeo).
It was such a passion project for us and was the first time I remember feeling in control of my career. It was empowering AF. I wasn’t worried about the 100th audition I didn’t book, I was too busy doing rewrites and conference calls with directors and location scouting with our kick-ass producer, Meghan Malloy. So many of our friends and family pitched in to help us make it by lending us their time, talent, or funding, and we wouldn’t be on the other side of that incredibly rewarding experience if it wasn’t for them.
Misery Loves Company got into the New York TV Festival (NYTVF) where Emily and I won a development deal with Topic/First Look Media to develop another show. It was a top nine finalist in the NBC Short Film Festival, and it won the best comedy at the Independent TV Fest (ITVF). It got us into rooms we never knew existed and got us clout we hadn’t had just seven months before. It’s currently in development at a studio to be made into a half-hour TV comedy. In times of doubt, I used to tell myself, “slow and steady wins the race.” That is completely the wrong mentality.
There’s no race to be “won.” Everyone’s on their own path. When we look back 50 years from now (if we haven’t perished from a nuclear war or global warming) we’ll see we each had a career trajectory that was so uniquely our own. I didn’t have much of a career until I started creating my own stuff. At first, I’d lament, “why do I have to work twice as hard for someone to notice me, why can’t I just book a show” but experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted, and my experiences in this town these past eight years have been invaluable, enriching, and ultimately, worthwhile.
Has it been a smooth road?
HA! Is it ever a smooth road? I mean I know there are those rare unicorns who get noticed at Ralph’s while picking out avocados by some guy who says, “You! Oh my God, you belong in Hollywood, I’m Johnny CAA and I’m here to help you.” But that definitely did not happen and I know this because I hung out at multiple Ralph’s just in case.
I’ve had to learn a lot of things. I’m still learning things. And there are still many, many things I struggle with. The biggest obstacle for me was to learn to be unapologetically myself. I was under the impression that because I was half-Latina and half-Middle Eastern that it would be easier for me to work because I’d get double the opportunities. I could go out for the Latin roles and the Middle-Eastern ones! But there’s something called typecasting, and I never fit the vision of what shows were looking for. I wasn’t the voluptuous bombshell Sofia Vergara, but I also wasn’t going to play a terrorist on 24.
For a long time, those were my options. I never looked the part. I was told early on by someone I respect that I should change my last name. “No one will know you’re Latina, you need to be, like, Sara Rodriguez,” I argued that my last name was Iranian, and if I changed it, then no one would know I was Persian. He just shrugged. Someone else told me that because I was half of both, it was basically like I was neither. “They just kind of cancel out.” It’s why I hate the term that has come to define me- ethnically ambiguous, specifically the ambiguous part. I don’t want to be ambiguous.
An actor can learn to do a lot of things, they can not learn to change their identity. And hiding who I was, when acting is about truthful expression and authenticity, was detrimental- not only to my career but my psyche and my well-being. It took me a long time to get over that. Chopping off my hair helped. Writing helped. Therapy helps.
And maybe it comes with age, maybe I just got tired of trying to fit into some bullshit box to appease someone else’s small-mindedness, but I no longer care. I am who I am and that is enough. But if someone wants to meet me at a Ralph’s and speed this process along, I’ll be by the avocados.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Actor & Writer story. Tell us more about the business.
Listen, I don’t have a business but Emily and I are trying to become the next Shondaland so our production company name is “The Great Changini” and we are a Latin-MidEast-Asian-American-actor-writer-producer duo who are interested in projects with diverse POV. We are also available for children’s parties.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
My hope is that we continue to make cracks in the system and that people who have felt underrepresented for years are given the platforms and the opportunities to have a seat at the table so that kids can turn on the TV or watch a movie and identify with who they see on or behind the screen. It emboldens them and encourages them to have dreams outside the limits society already puts on them for not being straight and white.
More women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community need to be at the forefront of storytelling and creative influence, and we certainly aren’t there yet, but we are taking steps in the right direction. I don’t want to call it a trend, because trends tend to be ever-shifting when the new, hot thing comes to replace it. This is not a moment it’s a movement! (Thanks Hamilton.) So, I’ll say that my hope and intent as a creative is to be a part of this movement.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.saraamini.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_saraamini/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saraaminiactor/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/saraamini_
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRhpBpxNjHla6NuT5I0mBGQ
Image Credit:
Kell Riches
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
