Today we’d like to introduce you to Caroline Bloom.
Caroline, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I’m a half American half-French actress and voice-over artist born and raised in Northampton, Massachusetts. My mother is French, and recently finished teaching French at Mt Holyoke College, and my father is American; a retired music professor at Smith College. I was raised bilingually and grew up visiting my French family regularly in Toulouse. Having dual citizenship exposed me to world travel at an early age, which has greatly informed my work as an actor and writer. I speak French, Italian, and a little Spanish.
I received a BFA in Drama from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU where I studied at the Atlantic Theater School and then Stonestreet School for Film & TV. My favorite and most important year, however, was when I spent all of junior year abroad in Florence, Italy, where I completed a double major in Italian language and culture. I was one of three students who stayed a whole year rather than a semester, and it was by far the best decision I made during 4 years of college.
After spending 7 1/2 years in New York, my now fiancé (who is also an actor) and I did the clichéd cross country road trip to Los Angeles to try our hand in film and TV. What really got my foot in the door in the world of independent film was interning and working in film festivals. I worked at the LA Film Festival (RIP!), the No Budget Film Festival (also RIP!), and the Guadalajara International Film Festival in LA. I did everything from screening short films to booking flights for incoming filmmakers to helping organize panel discussions with renowned directors, writers and actors. Some of my closest friends and collaborators have come from the connections I made at these festivals.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Definitely not! It’s been challenging, and even though the frequent lows can get pretty low, the infrequent highs of working greatly outweigh them. When you’re starting out as an actor, you can’t get into good casting rooms without an agent submitting you, but no agent really wants to take you on unless you have credits. This process is the worst part of the whole thing and there’s no universal right answer to it. It’s one of the great mysteries of life, along with the time space continuum and how can avocados be so delicious and good for you simultaneously.
A couple of years ago after feeling frustrated about it all, I wrote a short film about a pianist going through a similar personal struggle. It’s called DA CAPO, and it was the most fulfilling thing I’ve done to date because it finally allowed me to take control of my career and write myself a role.
All this leads me to share two pieces of advice:
To all graduating high school seniors who want to act, consider moving directly to NY or LA (or smaller markets like Chicago or Atlanta). You don’t need a degree from a 4 year college or university. Instead take acting classes once or twice a week and start auditioning immediately. The younger you are when you start, the sooner you’ll start a professional career. A liberal arts education is obviously invaluable, but not if you want to be a professional actor. No acting school can guarantee you the actual things you need to start: Representation and audition experience.
My other advice is to learn how to write. Other than the vicious agent cycle I stated earlier, another way in is to be discovered as emerging writing talent. Look at Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson, Ramy Youssef, Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The list goes on of actors who wrote themselves a career.
Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
I work a lot in voiceover, having done a bunch of radio and TV commercials, as well as video games, where now I’m branching out into performance capture. Right now I’m working on P-CAP for a pretty big VR project that’ll announce soon, and this fall a game for which I voiced a lead character will release from Sony Pictures VR. You can also hear me as “Veronica” in the DLC for Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.
Writing and acting in the short film DA CAPO which I described earlier was a labor of love. I had a stellar producer, Madeleine Mindling, who encouraged me to write it from the time we both interned at LA Film Festival in 2013. Barbara Stepansky, an amazing writer/director, directed and edited it, and we cast Moe Irvin to be my costar. It was awesome. We shot it in 2 days in 2016, and I’m proud that most of the crew was female. We screened at 11 film festivals nationwide, premiering at the Newport Beach Film Festival and playing at Cleveland International Film Festival, Sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham, AL, Napa Valley Film Festival, LA Shorts, Pittsburgh Shorts, among other great festivals. We also recently secured distribution through Gravitas Ventures, so tell your aunts and uncles that they can stream it via their Comcast subscriptions.
What drives me most is telling stories about travelers. People who have a hunger or curiosity for life. I think a large part of that comes from my international upbringing. It’d be a dream to work in different places around the world, and being multi-lingual is a special skill of mine which I intend on using throughout my career.
Currently I’m working on a few different writing projects, including a dramedy pilot and psychological thriller.
For good reason, society often focuses more on the problems rather than the opportunities that exist, because the problems need to be solved. However, we’d probably also benefit from looking for and recognizing the opportunities that women are better positioned to capitalize on. Have you discovered such opportunities?
Yes. My part-time job is assisting the founder of the Alliance of Women Directors. Check them out at the www.allianceofwomendirectors.org. They’re doing amazing work for emerging and mid-career women directors. It’s a growing organization, and this year hired its first Executive Director.
As far as opportunities are concerned, there are many screenwriting labs and contests women and POC can apply to, but the competition is just a fierce and politics are still always involved (who you know, etc). I wish I could say “there’s never been a better time for us,” but the truth is the statistics disprove that. Fortunately, a lot of film festivals are making a more conscious effort to screen a more equitable number of female-directed films, and producers like Reese Witherspoon, Viola Davis, Elizabeth Banks, etc have production companies committed to telling diverse female stories. Recent initiatives like the 4% Challenge, Paul Feig’s incubator program, Meryl Streeps’ Writer’s Lab, and actor/writer diversity showcases put on by ABC, NBC, and CBS are other industry attempts to address the issue around underrepresented voices in entertainment.
Supporting our women, WOC, and LGBTQ networks in a real way is key in moving the needle forward. Look for and post film production jobs on Jen McGowan’s site Glass Elevator at www.glasselevate.com, and check out Cheryl Bedford’s The JTC list for women of color in the film industry. Contribute to female-created film crowdfunding campaigns on Seed & Spark. See movies by women on opening weekend. Actually championing the projects of diverse women with dollars and paid jobs is how we’ll go from talking the talk to walking the walk.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.carolinebloom.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @carolinebloom
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=820710
- Twitter: @Caroline_Bloom
- Other: www.dacaposhortfilm.com
Image Credit:
Main shot of me in black: BN Photography (Bettina Neumann Photography), Colorful one of me laughing: Jess Nurse Photography, Da Capo film poster: Poster created by Garrett Ross, Da Capo film still (me + actor Moe Irvin): Cinematographer was Aymae Sulick
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