Life & Work with Michaela Miller of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michaela Miller.

Hi Michaela, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Since I was born I’ve always had a gut instinct to perform. Whether I was 3 and fake crying for my mom’s attention, karaoke-ing in the kitchen while mom was at Costco, or forcing someone to keep the video camera on me. Every family gathering was used as a performance, every opportunity to sing the states song to my aunties and uncles was taken. Then, in Kindergarten, I went to a summer school drama class and that set off my acting bug. From then it was inevitable to me that I was gonna be a performer of sorts. I went back and forth between singing and acting until I was a preteen. I started writing music just for myself at 12 and that became my private artistic outlet, and acting became my public artistic outlet, still both to this day. I expanded to musical theatre and dancing in middle school, and then just became a vessel of any kind of artistic performance. At 12 I also was in my first film and fell in love with that medium, and did a few more gigs in film/tv before getting to college. Contrary to extended family pushback, choosing to go to an acting school never felt like a crazy choice to me, it felt like , well duh what else would I do? I was deciding between 2 schools by February/March of 2020, and then everything stopped in the world. The industry I had signed up for at 12 was now incredibly different by the time I was running into it at 18. My school start was delayed til october, and it was now online. It was a year of scene work and combat fighting with my lamp, instead of another human, over zoom. Once we got in person, everything (understandably) was different. Learning to navigate a new normal and a new industry as a baby adult gave me the resources I have now to flow and let the attachment to the outcomes in your head just flow. I soaked up everything I could out of that whole experience, and graduated in early 2024. Since then I’ve been creating my own work, and trying to pave a path for myself, like most of us are.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I wonder if it’s ever a smooth road for anyone, honestly. In any shape or form, life happens. I’ve hit roadblocks physically and mentally that feel like mountains I will never get over. Especially in making your own stuff, everything is uncharted territory , so you’re blindly walking through these woods with no map, with your hands out, while someone yells at you that you’ll never make it, hoping you’ll eventually push through or hoping someone yanks you through. When a project hits a block or dead end and you’ve never been in that territory before, it can make or break your mind and the project. I’ve had to force myself through resistance I thought I’d never get out of, because my brain did not want to go through those road blocks just to find more. There’s a huge battle of the own mind, and trying to navigate around the resistance from others and your subconscious. I mean, some relatives planted in my head from the start that a life cannot be supported with just art, and that it would be silly to do that over a stable job, like a lot of families say. I was lucky enough to be so defiant and resistant to THEIR resistance, because I somehow knew in my bones I was supposed to do this. Other than others words, there’s the struggles of finances for a lot us, you have to spend money to make money but you have to have money to spend it. I need groceries but I also need to pay for my acting class. I wish we didn’t have to pick one or the other most weeks. So I’ve learned to 1) get creative with my hobbies and skills-how can i monetize those? and what can I learn and use? 2) detach from the significance of money and realize its just an exchange of energy and when you don’t hold on so mentally tight to it, it can flow easier (and it takes away its power over you) and 3) how to be smart with where money goes- which is always a learning curve. As artists we’re so emotionally tuned in, it’s easy to let the gargoyles get to you and shut you down, so learning how to make that mental sanity stronger is a journey capital J. I’ve worked a lot of my 20’s to dismantle thoughts that were instilled in my brain before I even knew it. Being an artist comes with its built in struggles – finances, confidence, beauty standards, social media, the subjectiveness of art, vulnerability, etc. Not to mention all of the struggles of just being a person, specifically for me, a young woman navigating the 20’s. Finding friends/a supportive community in and out of the industry has been the biggest saving grace- they can’t always fix your problems, but the support gives you the boost to figure it out.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a filmmaker. Actor-director-writer-producer, and anything else I need to be to get it done and keep my artistic fascia moving. Acting is my heart calling, but I love to direct/write and build a whole story start to finish. Cinematography has always been so fun to me, setting up a visual shot very intentionally and creatively. There’s so many aspects of a film that make the story what it is, and it’s all so exciting to me. I have a production company FrogCake Productions that I started with my friend, Sofia, and we are always working on something. I create my own shorts throughout the year. I just finished producing-directing-acting in EarlyDay for the Hollywood Fringe Festival, which is available to watch on FrogCake Productions youtube! Theatre is something I have always loved, and getting to come back to that this past summer was so rewarding. The most work and the most reward. I’m also writing a feature at the moment. My most recent stage combat short, À Bientôt, is currently in the festival circuit, and an official selection of the IndieX Film Fest. Stage combat/ fighting is my favorite thing to play with when I make projects. I’ve been doing stage combat for 6 years , and have 3 weapon certifications, and continuing!
I am so extremely proud of that project, because it started as a silly little idea just for my friend and I to make a fight scene. Our mentors gave us the idea to set it in a Lagree Fitness studio, which is where my “day job” is, and to submit it to festivals, and getting our first official selection on a 4 hour drive back from Vegas was quite an unexplainable feeling. I am also so proud of the Fringe play we did, because it felt so incredibly far away and unattainable when I had the idea. I had zero idea of where to start and what to do as we went on, so figuring that all out with Sofia and creating what we did was such a wild experience, I was so proud of that. It was also my first big move as a producer, and I really enjoyed it. More to come…

Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
Where to find me! :

Watch Early Day at the FrogCake Productions Youtube link!

Book a Lagree class with me at Forme Lagree! classpass + our instagram

Follow me on instagram!

Send me an email:)

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mmichaelamiller/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mmichaelamiller13
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/@FrogCakeProductions

Image Credits
Headshots- Tandem Photo

Photoshoot editorials- Riley Ashton Photography