We were lucky to catch up with Roxanne Van Der Westhuizen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Roxanne, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Learning the craft
When i decided to chase my acting dream, i knew nothing about the industry, theater history, all the different acting techniques, or old movies that movie nerds swear is a must for any cynophile. I only knew i loved story telling and acting. So, I went on Facebook and combed through every acting page in North Carolina (and the surrounding areas) and auditioned to every project i could. I spend hours going through the lines, begging people to read for me, and self taping. This one time in particular, we were away on holiday. It was my family and i, and my sister and daughter wanted to go to the pool with me. So i bartered that if they help me with my self tape, reading lines for me for an hour, i would spend the rest of the day at the pool with them. They agreed and i used every bit of the hour. It was like rapid fire auditioning, like speed dating auditioning. I would make a choice, tape it, see how i felt, see how i could improve and did it again. I must have been able to do 20+ videos in that time, which is unheard on. I normally had a very considered approach to every decision in my audition tapes. But this rapid fire approach gave me so much permission to focus on doing, instead of thinking about what i looked like, what i was doing, if i was doing too much, if i looked stupid. I gave myself full permission to fail many times and so i gave myself full permission to be. I was very proud of the auditions i sent in. And although i never got the role, i stand by my auditions and what that time taught me. I did end up getting roles in a few short films and 2 feature length films. Not To Be Played With, and Emancipation of the Past. After doing those roles, i realized that i couldn’t really tell why i liked or didn’t like some of my work. I realized that i needed to really study this craft to become better and hone my craft, to produce repeatable work at an excellent level. I started at Terry Knickerbocker Studio in New York and i began to learn the craft behind acting, to create real people from the page. To really understand why someone would have the need to do or say something. To have the bravery to be completely vulnerable in moments where in real life, i may want to run away. These characters often do some really brave things, they say the thing we wish we said, they do the thing we wish we had the gumption to do, they feel the things we stuff down. At least that was true for my experience. Those two years taught me about myself and other people in a bran new way. I taught me my habits and my socialisms. Specifically how i make myself small, and diminish my needs and whole being. Coming up against that wall has been extremely frustrating and tiring and scary, but it has also been so rewarding and inspiring.

This whole experience gifted me a belief in myself. I finally gained the permission i had never allowed myself before: to call myself an artist. This self identification was important to my craft, but also to myself. Giving myself permission to identify as an artist sparked me in so many ways. I started writing again (a love that had long since passed), and this time i wrote a series. A full series that explores some of my experiences as an immigrant and the US immigration system, and other ideas around identity and doing for yourself what society may not accept. No sooner than i finished writing this, than i cast it and began filming it. I had never filmed a project like this. So i watched a lot of YouTube videos on how to film cinematically with an iPhone. I googled sound and lighting techniques. I googled how to create good quality video with less expensive or no gear. It has all been a massive learning curve. A lot of the learning has been through trial and error though. There was one scene we shot at my friends house. We were running the sound on a device we had borrowed from a friend, while the video was coming through the iPhone. We shot the whole thing not realizing that the iPhone was picking up next to no sound. The sound is important just to make sure that we can match the sound on the recording device to the picture, otherwise it looks off. That’s why you normally have a clapper, to then marry sound and video properly. We didn’t have a clapper that day so i was doing an audio slate the whole day. Normally it wouldn’t be an issue, but the video didn’t pick it up and we had no visual cues so there was a lot of work done to reconcile those takes. But that experience showed me the importance of testing before you do anything, and to double check for all your equipment against a list.

I have learnt so much and continue to learn everyday. I have been so blessed that i have had my girlfriend around to help me with filming and sound and lighting and whatever else we realize we need (normally as we need it). I have also been so blessed to have extremely talented friends to help me act in this piece. All of which are spirited and bring their expertise to each character they play.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am from South Africa. After school I went to the very reputable University of Cape Town, but when a family emergency brought me home before the first year completed, I began working. That path led me to work for years before studying closer to home, in Johannesburg where i had birthed my beautiful baby girl. As much as i loved UCT i wanted my daughter to have a support structure around her, so i worked and studied until i finally graduated. I then moved into banking. I worked for a prestigious private bank, and man i loved my time there. It was fun and challenging and the people were some of the best i had ever met. During my time at the bank i moved from the role of Banker to Data Analyst. The long days and nights there never seemed too long. They were engaging, it helped that my team was made up of phenoms, brilliant brilliant phenoms. During that time, i was held up at gun point on the streets of Johannesburg twice, once at night and once in broad day light. It was around this time that my friends told me about their experiences being held up at gun point. One friend shared that he was held up while going on a run in his (very safely regarded) neighborhood. One at his own home by people who had broken in. This shook me. It made me confront the idea that this place doesn’t hold my daughters future. I made the leap, i left everything behind to come to America. After some years here, I finally decided to be courageous and to follow my passion in acting. I auditioned for many roles through Facebook. I found a place that i thought was an agency that could help me move forward in my career. They were not who i thought they were. However, through them i learned of a modeling and acting competition in New York. So i packed my bags, got my savings out, and went to the competition. It was at that competition that i met someone from the Terry Knickerbocker studio. We talked a lot, i then spoke to Terry. I decided that it was now or never. So again, i made the leap. I packed my stuff and my daughter and I moved to New York where i could study acting.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I think my current situation actually speaks to this. I am currently on an M1 visa. I have been in the United States since November 2019. And since that time, i have held F1 after F1, with an OPT in the middle, topped off my another student visa, this time an M1. What all of that really means is that i have had limited availability to work and earn money. So the money needed to live and study has been spent from my life savings and by the grace of my mother and step dad. Which is what brings me to now. I have no more savings to study anymore to stay in the country. i need to find work or another way to obtain a visa. For the last year i have been applying for work, job after job after job. I have applied for no less than 1000 jobs. I wish this is an exaggeration, but alas, it is not. I have spent hours combing through company sites and job posting boards to find jobs that explicitly state their openness to sponsoring visas. Most of the responses have been “Thanks for applying but we have decided to go in another direction”. But the rare few that do set up interviews with me, have all ended up offering me the roles, only to recant when they speak to their HR team who confirms that they don’t sponsor work visas.

I cannot express how disappointing those days were. Felling the high of “I did it!” “I can work” “it’s all going to work out” to the crushing low that the journey is long but over. The feeling of optimism had become something quite dangerous for me. It made the lows extremely low. My new phrase was cautiously optimistic, quietly following every lead with the tenacity of an optimist but the demeanor of a realist.

Currently i am awaiting decision on an OPT that will allow me to work for 2 months. In the mean time, i am applying for any job i could add value to. I am perusing an O1 visa, which has it’s own challenges within it. And working on my projects that i hope will do enough to help me in my O1 pursuit. Every day i drop my daughter off at school, and spend my whole day in front of my laptop applying for jobs, speaking to lawyers, filming my series, and doing what i can to make my case to the USCIS a compelling one. My resilience comes from the nature to see 10 rejection emails, and apply for another job or write another cover letter, or speak to another agent. It is my drive to keep moving forward. To keep planting seeds in the hopes that one seed, will sprout a life in the USA for my daughter and me.

My mom works incredibly hard, raising my sister, caring for my brother and working a full time job. My sister is a teenage now and so you can imagine what all that entails. My brother is 28 and has special needs. He is low functioning, which means that my mom feeds him, brushes his teeth, bathes him, even helps him in his ablutions. She does all this with a smile and good humor. She does all this caring for all her children. She does all this caring for her husband. She does all this crying for me as she worries about my visa fate. She is a powerhouse. My life may have given me resilience but nothing could compare to what i have learnt, having a mother like her.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding part of being an artist is two fold actually.

First, the act of acting. The act of being in someone else’s circumstances, and to understand and really validate their behavior in that moment. Even if it’s something that i take issue with. Its about shedding judgement and being fully empathetic to the life that someone is trying to share with the world. Its about the permission to feel and be who you are, with people watching you, in your most ‘private moments’. I have had actual break downs where i thought i would never stop feeling that way, and i had a class full of people watching me feel that. That was an incredibly defining moment for me. It showed me that the world will not turn its back on me if i break apart. That even through the worst feeling, i will move through and people around me will stand by me.

The second is related but slightly different. It is about touching people through my work. During the moments where i have been my most grounded and vulnerable, i have had people come to me to tell me how they have been deeply moved by my work. How my work made them feel things. How they felt brave to attempt things, having seen me attempt them. And while being able to do the job with excellence is the goal, even me attempting something difficult, gave others the feeling that they could do it to. And that’s exactly how i felt when i saw one of my classmates do something spectacular. I became courageous through watching their courage. This is true for some one my favorite movies. This sounds dramatic but bare with me. I have had my life changed through experiencing something through movies or series. I remember the feeling of being physically ill any time i would walk out of a movie because i knew that i would not be able to act in it. It made my ill to know that that script has already been lived out and i wouldn’t get to do it.

I hope that my work has that impact on someone. Not the nauseating feeling, but the feeling of not being alone, of being seen and understood.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roxytome/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roxanne-van-der-westhuizen-9ab03753/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Roxy_Tome

Image Credits

Christopher Cavalier