Meet Jules Bruff

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jules Bruff.

Jules, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I am an actor + filmmaker. I was born on Warren Airforce Base in Cheyenne, WY, and grew up in Oakland, CA. I started acting at age seven. An ad in the Sunday paper for San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre spoke to me! A.C.T. was holding youth summer classes, so I showed my mom the ad and told her I’d like to study acting.

That’s how it started! I always felt like I was more connected to humanity when I watched a play, movie, or TV show. From a young age I wanted to use acting to remind my fellow humans that we are all in this together.

I acted in local productions growing up. I received a BFA in acting at the University of Colorado at Boulder, starred in my first indie feature ‘Virginia’, shot in Denver, written and directed by Steven Luff, right out of college, moved to New York, and finally put roots down in LA.

My career in LA started off with a bang…I landed an excellent commercial agent, Emily Hope Webster, at the now-defunct ACME Talent and Literary. Emily was one of the best, if not the best commercial agent, in LA at the time. My friend Michelle Silver got me an audition with her. It was lucky!! I started booking commercials like crazy.

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?
After some years of having fun doing commercials- it dawned on me that my Film/TV game wasn’t nearly as strong as my commercial game. I got back in class and decided to strategize on how to book more Film/TV. I saw a CD who used to cast commercials, Laray Mayfield, was casting for David Fincher. I asked my manager at the time to pitch me to Laray if there was anything she was casting for Mr. Fincher that I was right for. Not too long after that, I got an audition for Zodiac and I booked it! It was a wonderful job and great entree into the professional film/TV world.

Simultaneously, I was quietly fighting depression. I was diagnosed with mild dysthymia and anxiety disorder in college. Over time I experienced a lot of trial and error with medication and therapy. I kept my mental health challenges close to the vest. But that all changed one summer afternoon in 2009.

I was having an argument with my then-boyfriend and he said, “You’re part-time fabulous!” The world slowed down, my acquaintance Alethea Root and her husband Shawn Dufraine, popped into my head. I said to the boyfriend, “That’s the name of a movie, can I use it?” He said yes and the rest is history.

I asked Alethea and her cinematographer husband Shawn Dufraine to direct and DP the movie, respectively. Alethea agreed, Shawn agreed to shoot part of it. I wanted to make a movie about how all couples are “part-time fabulous”. Alethea asked me what I meant, I was like, “You know, there’s a public persona and a private persona… we show the world one thing and sometimes other things are going on at home.” She was like, “I don’t understand that concept… my marriage is solid.” I was like, dang girl, good for you! She then asked me how I saw myself as part-time fabulous in relationships. I shared with her that I had been dealing with depression since college. She was like, “OH! Let’s make that movie.” I said, “No way! That’s personal + private. People don’t need or want to know my business.”

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
Cut to a year and a half later when we had a feature film, loosely inspired by my experience of living with depression, that we were submitting to film festivals. Alethea Root is very persuasive! The biggest personal gift I received from shining light on my own experiences living with the darkness of depression was that I decided to walk the walk that the character I play in the movie walks. I began to exercise regularly and eat healthier. I surrounded myself with positive people, found a good therapist, and proper medication.

Our film Part Time Fabulous is streaming on Amazon. We are super proud of it. We won 8 festival awards total, several audience choice awards, and I won two best actress awards! That was such an honor, one from the Monaco Film Festival and the other from the Los Angeles Feel Good Film Festival. My folks, Anne and Clyde Bruff came to the Feel Good Film Festival screening at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood and they got to see me win the best actress award. It was pretty cool to have them witness me being honored after taking me to my early acting classes across the bay in San Francisco all those years ago.

Time continued to pass and I was writing my next project, not in the mental health genre. As luck, timing, or whatever you want to call it would have it, I was reading a book called The Good Side of Bad by a friend of mine, Beverly Olevin, when inspiration hit again. The novel is about a family dealing with their youngest sibling being diagnosed with and learning to manage schizophrenia. I fell in love with the story and thought, “Here we go again, hello mental health genre, nice to see you again!” I optioned the book, gave Alethea a call, and low and behold… we made our second micro-budget mental health-themed indie feature during the Pandemic of 2020. We adhered to SAG-AFTRA’S COVID-19 safety regulations in Spokane, WA, Coeur d’Alene, ID, and Van Nuys, CA August 2020.

Besides making movies to raise awareness about mental health, I love being an actor, storyteller, producer, and writer. The pandemic has opened my creative world up. Since March 2020, I have worked on several audiobooks, produced and acted in an online Zoom play with Midred M. Langford, “The Luck of The Irish”, by Kristen Greenridge. I’ve also done a live Zoom reading of new work, “Shakespeare’s Secrets,” by author Bonnie Hoover Braendlin. I did my first stand-up comedy show with Lesley Wolff’s Fresh Faces All-Star Spectacular. Keep going! That’s what I always say and do. My friends and family remind me to rest, too. BALANCE! 🙂

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
I feel like patience, perseverance, action, and self-care are the most important characteristics of my success.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.imdb.com/julesbruff; www.julesbruff.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julesbruff/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/julesbruff
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/julesbruff

Image Credit:
Gabriela Oltean