Today we’d like to introduce you to Kelly Rook Daly.
So, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Acting has been my dream for as long as I can remember. I have diary entries from elementary school saying, “one day, I’m going to move to Los Angeles and be an actor.” The obsession began when I first enrolled in dance when I was six years old. I’ll never forget the feeling of getting ready for a recital and feeling so nervous, then going on stage and completely losing myself in the performance. It felt magical; as if I had unlocked some sort of secret that other people didn’t know existed.
I grew up in a tiny town in Wisconsin where there was very little emphasis on the arts. However, I was lucky that the neighboring town had a community theater program, and I found myself auditioning for their plays as often as possible. There wasn’t exactly a huge pool of talent to choose from, so I always got cast in some role or another!
That being said, I think the most formative part of my childhood was the influence that my dad had on my career endeavors. He was charismatic, eccentric and made a living as a psychiatrist by day but a playwright by night. Throughout my childhood, he traveled to Germany, Los Angeles and back and forth to Chicago to have various plays produced. I remember him telling me countless times that “life is meant to be lived”, and “no dream is too unrealistic to pursue.”
Then, high school came along and it was a very tumultuous time. I quit doing dance and theater and started playing sports–admittedly to “fit in.” My dad became an alcoholic and a series of events led to him to develop dementia and become debilitated. My dream of being an actress was still at my core, but it started to seem more and more impractical.
I graduated from high school and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study journalism. I had taken after my dad and developed a passion for writing, plus it seemed “safe” to get a degree in something unrelated to acting. However, I started to notice that the majority of people around me viewed college as their gateway into adulthood, which seemed to be defined by a “stable” 9-5 job. The thought terrified me.
When I graduated from college, I didn’t have a job lined up. I traveled abroad for a summer and then came back to Wisconsin, where the desire to move to LA was stronger than ever before. I lived at home and worked at a restaurant to save money, with the intention of moving once I saved $5,000.
Then, one day my uncle (who was also my dad’s best friend, and a huge supporter of my acting ambitions) called me and said he had won a radio contest in which the prize was 10 weeks of free classes at The Actors Studio in Chicago. He said he could pass the certificate along and that he wanted to give it to me. Ten weeks of free acting classes seemed like enough of an excuse to move to a city, so I decided to get my feet wet in Chicago before I hit the ground running in LA.
I ended up working as a freelance reporter for “Splash Magazine”, a subset of the Chicago Sun-Times. I also landed a job as an assistant to a celebrity hairstylist. I traveled the world with her and found myself rubbing shoulders with actors I had admired my entire life. As glamorous as the job appeared to be on the outside, I had never felt less like myself on the inside. I was working insane hours–some days I would fly round trip from Chicago to New York for work and then turn around and be back at the office the next morning. I commuted 1.5 hours one-way to get to the office, which was deep in the suburbs.
I was auditioning in whatever spare time I could find (thank goodness for self-tapes!) and ended up booking a role in a feature film that conveniently only shot on the weekends. I would study my lines religiously on the train ride to work in the morning, and the train conductor (whose name was Jim) began to take notice. He asked me questions about the project and my career endeavors. He would read lines with me and act out whatever other characters were in the scene. I started to express how unhappy I was in my job and the burning desire to move to LA. He told me about dreams he had given up on throughout his life and how much he regretted it. He said I had to quit my job and go after it once and for all. After one year, I reached my breaking point and now, here I am. It’s crazy the impact a stranger can have on your life–I’m actually writing a screenplay about that year on the train and the many things I learned from Jim!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has been a road full of highs and lows. When I first moved to LA, it felt like every possible scenario of “what could go wrong” did. The naïve Midwestern part of me thought the city would welcome me with open arms. What a joke! To sum it up, I got Craigslist scammed on my first apartment and lost almost all of the savings I moved here with. Then, when I eventually found an apartment and a roommate, she turned out to be crazy: I kid you not, she threatened to “put a curse on me” when I said I was moving out (she fully believed she was a witch). I was commuting over an hour one way for a serving job where I’d be happy if I made $50. It felt like the city was shutting me out and all I could do was push through it and try to assert myself and find my place.
It’s crazy how much things can change in a short time. Now, I live with my badass friend from Chicago, who is also my writing partner. I have a job that is ten minutes from home and allows me to balance work and acting ambitions without any conflicts. I’m slowly forming a team of people, friends and agents alike, who believe in me (although finding representation is a whole other story).
My biggest piece of advice in terms of moving to LA is to give it a year to find your footing. Countless people told me that after my first year here, things would start to fall into place and sure enough, at just about the one year mark is when I started to feel a sense of stability.
I also think it’s important to move here without a timeline. Of course, you have to be realistic, but I don’t think it’s healthy to put the pressure on yourself to have achieved a certain amount of success in x amount of years. Know that your journey will be different from everyone else’s. It could take one year or ten years, but the most important thing is to work hard, love what you do and know that success will come.
Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
There are so many elements of the creative process that I love and I want to be involved in all different facets of the entertainment industry. First and foremost, I am an actor and writer. My roommate and I are currently writing, directing and acting in on our own web series called LAughable. It’s a comedy about what it’s like to be Midwestern transplants navigating creative endeavors in LA. I also started a production company called “Friends with Benefits” (@fwbproductions) with two of my best friends. Right now, we are focusing on creating our own short-form content, but in the future, we plan to help bring other people’s creative projects to fruition as well.
In terms of acting, I am delving back into the theater this summer! I am in a play called “Yes. No. Maybe”, debuting at the Hollywood Fringe Festival this June. I’ll be in the second season of “Invoke”, an immersive horror theater show which starts in September. It’s an all-female cast led by the incredible director Bianca Crespo, and I can’t wait to be a part of it. Then I head to Philadelphia in late fall to shoot a feature film called “The Matriarch.”
I’m proud to have an array of projects lined up because they are a result of a strong work ethic and consistently putting myself out there. When I moved to LA, I promised myself that I would try to do one thing every day to fuel my acting career, and I have stuck to that. Even if it’s just submitting to one audition or writing one scene, I make a point to do something that makes me feel like I’m furthering myself and my dreams. Actors tend to spend so much time waiting around for an opportunity to present itself and I am done waiting. I truly believe if you are constantly working on your craft and fueling your creativity on your own, then the opportunities will come.
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?
I think there is an increasing number of opportunities for women in the entertainment industry. The past few years really shed light on the gender inequality that exists in the industry. With that exposure came a window of opportunity for women to have their voices heard more than ever before. I’ve noticed more diverse and less stereotypical roles for women in film and television. There is also a new wave of female directors, writers, and showrunners who are redefining art and proving there should be no boundaries to the stories women can tell.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellyrookdaly/
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