We were lucky to catch up with Cia Jaye recently and have shared our conversation below.

Cia , appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

The one thing I love about acting is that I’m constantly learning things that naturally advances my skills. I’m a visual learner, so when I’m portraying a character that’s difficult to understand, I’ll research other characters in films that are similar and visually study them to help bring my character alive. I also catch my myself intaking every bit of information from different sets by watching other actors perform their scenes, especially when improv is involved. Improv classes helped me feel more relaxed within a character and helped my gestures and lines feel more natural. Although, something I wish I would’ve learned earlier in my journey is realizing how important classes are. If I would have taken acting classes in the beginning of my journey, then I probably wouldn’t have missed some opportunities. I believe many actors in the beginning of their journey think acting classes aren’t important, and I was one of them which is an obstacle I had to go through. I didn’t realize at the time my denial of going to acting classes was holding me back on many opportunities to sharpen my skills. I lived and I learned to accept to not be afraid of learning new things.

Cia , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

The performance/creative arts industry has always been something I was involved in growing up. Rather if it was modeling, fashion design, photography or theater; I always enjoyed sharing art. I believe having these hobbies within me made it easier for me to adapt being an actress. I’m grateful that I had the chance to experience variety of the arts before jumping into this industry. I’m also proud that I didn’t stick with one thing, and wasn’t afraid to experience other things before deciding being an actress was something I wanted to do. I believe having all of this up my sleeve made me become a better actress, and I want it to be known that I’m thankful to everyone and everything that helped me get to where I am now.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Visually seeing how far I came in my journey is enough of a reward. I use to think booking roles was the only reward, but looking back I realize experiencing each steps is the reward. I learned to love the whole process of auditioning and grateful that I have opportunities to put myself out there and audition.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I always thought booking a role determined if I was a good actress or not, but that’s simply not true. I had to unlearn that the amount of roles I book doesn’t determine how much I’m worth in this industry. I learned over the years that sometimes not getting a role has nothing to do with my acting skills but sometimes it’s the simple fact of what the film is looking for at the moment. what the director is looking for at the moment.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @ciajaye