Today we’d like to introduce you to Alice Hellewell.
Hi Alice , so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My career started when I was very young. I’m a small town girl from Blackpool England and spent my life at a school by the seaside. I always wanted to pursue extracurricular activities but found myself jumping from place to place until I begun taking Acting and singing lessons, at age 9 I was very shy and hated to be on stage. We had auditions for ‘Annie’ the musical and I remember the musical team asking me who I wanted to play, I replied with something along the lines of ‘one of the orphans.’ The cast list came out and there my name was. Annie, I got cast as Annie. It was terrifying but from that moment I knew the performing arts was my calling. Theatre soon became my life and I relocated to a different school with a better theatre programme. At this time I was living at a boarding school in North Yorkshire and made my way up the school becoming the head of performing arts. Drama school was my dream and come junior year I started planning my auditions. Within this time I had actually managed to get a callback to play Sophie in mama Mia on the west end, the audition process was amazing and at that moment I knew my dream of becoming a performer could become a reality. I came to the US on a vacation and an advertisement for The AMDA College of The Performing Arts came up on my social media, I decided to take the leap and audition just for fun. I auditioned on my last week of vacation and flew back to England to complete my A-levels. One day I got the call, I got accepted into AMDA and the Hollywood fantasy became my reality. I’m currently over halfway through my BFA in Musical Theatre and I couldn’t be more grateful for the life I live now.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Performing arts is never a smooth journey, battling with anxiety and self doubt always comes along the way. The constant questions of “am I good enough?” The comparing yourself to others constantly tares you down. But if I could send this message out to the world, you are good enough, you are enough, and you can do anything. Of course you have days where you feel you’re making no progress, but in the bigger picture every moment is a lesson and every lesson is a step along the road. I think my biggest challenge was my high school theatre director putting it into my head that my audition pieces weren’t good enough, I didn’t work hard enough, tearing me down constantly. Even on my A-level results day he told my peers he was suprise I passed the exam. Considering I worked incredibly hard towards it spending hours studying, it broke my heart. But hey, look where I am now and clearly my hard work was 1000% worth it. My audition pieces were amazing and every day I am working towards my dream of becoming a musical theatre performer.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a musical theatre performer and I pride myself in the ability to be versatile, whether I’m working on stage, screen or on a cruise ship, in a jazz bar the world is literally my oyster. My abilities are limitless and I am always up for a challenge. I definitely specialise in Acting and love creating new characters and giving existing characters my own twist. I do absolutely love singing and dancing a long side this of course. To put it plainly I am a story teller and always do my utmost to honour the work and the writing I perform.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I absolutely love the diversity this city brings into my life, everywhere you go there is a different glimpse into many different cultures, nothing is ever the same and it feels like I’m constantly walking through a story book. If I were to give an example of something I dislike, I dislike the fact to gain a good opportunity you have to be well known. In this lifetime there are so many incredible small working artists who deserve their time to shine, they deserve their chance to perform in the Pantages, they deserve to be recognised because of their incredible talent not just their name. Openness to casting small artists will eventually create big artists compared casting the same people just because of their name.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Alice.Hellewell
- Facebook: Alice Hellewell
Image Credits
Head shots – Marc Cartwright
Makeup – Jamie Fisher
