While traveling to India many times it was hard not to become aware of the tragic child bride issue and the child ‘brothels’ in India where children as young as 5-6 years old are sold for sex. Around 2015 I became aware of a group here in the US that was helping these children recover by taking them out of these unbearable circumstances, by building orphanages, and assisting in their healing and recovery from the trauma. In finding this group, Shared Hope International https://sharedhope.org/ I was shocked to learn that the sex trafficking of minors was alive and thriving right here in our own backyard and the number of victims has exponentially increased with the internet and the age of victims is getting lower and lower.

I have been an Ambassador of Hope with SHI for several years now helping to bring awareness to the public of this horrific reality we live with. Shared Hope offers tools to parents, teachers, first responders, etc. to help identify signs of trafficking to help combat the sexual exploitation of minors. They also lobby state and federal governments to strengthen and change laws to protect the victims and bring accountability to the abusers, Johns, and pimps.

So, it was no surprise to me when I recently booked a role in a film called Under the Surface – a true story about a young girl from a normal middle-class family who is taken into ‘the life’ and how she found her way out with the help of a good Samaritan. In fact, I have just returned from filming in Missouri. I play the grandmother of the young girl who is taken. While visiting me, she sneaks out to meet a friend she has met on social media. That ‘friend’ turns out to be a ‘groomer’ who takes my granddaughter to her pimp. I, consequently, carry the guilt and shame of allowing it to happen on my watch. The film has a sole investor, Brent McMinn whose story in itself is a miracle and who was very clearly guided to get this story out to the world along with the producer-director team of Bethany and Richie Johns. As Brent said when I spoke to him, “If it stops 1 child from being sex trafficked it will be worth it”.

I believe this very serious issue is one of the most important matters we should be addressing right now. Children are our future and the trauma of sexual abuse is carried not only through their lives but passed down through generations. It’s an unpopular issue to talk about and promote as most people don’t want to know about it, and don’t want to believe it could be happening right here in this country but I am glad to see in the last few years it is finally getting the airing it needs to raise awareness, change laws and attitudes around the victims and to help these children recover and thrive.

One of the most notorious ways now that kids are ‘groomed’ of course is the internet. Here is an 8-minute video from Shared Hope with some tips on how to help guide your children on social media use. https://sharedhope.org/what-we-do/prevent/awareness/internetsafety/. You can become an Ambassador of Hope and help in any way you can.

Sure, I was born in a little country town called Gulgong in NSW, Australia. My parents owned a grocery store and mom was also a jazz pianist. At 5 years old the family moved to Sydney. My mom was pregnant with her 3rd child. Shortly after my second sister was born mom died of a rare form of cancer. My father and grandfather (whose wife had died the same year) opened a bed and breakfast in Bondi Beach and I was sent off to boarding school with my big sister. My father remarried and I had 7 more siblings! I loved creating plays and performing at school but as I grew older I thought acting was just something you did if you couldn’t do anything else (sad to remember how I felt about actors then) so I became a teacher. In high school I started singing in an all-girl trio performing at weddings, folk clubs, pubs and wine bars etc.

At around 26 I left full-time teaching and took some acting lessons to help with the singing. My first acting class was a revelation. I had always been fascinated with human consciousness and why people did what they did and why some people reacted a certain way and others another way etc. and in that first lesson my teacher grilled me as to the whys and hows of human behavior in such a way that I fell in love with the psychology behind acting and took a couple of years of  night classes. Then I decided to take it seriously and went back to three years full-time study at the National Institute of Dramatic Art or NIDA https://www.nida.edu.au/.
After graduating I went straight into a recurring role in a soap cult drama, Prisoner (Prisoner Cell Block H in the US) set in a women’s prison. Several recurring roles followed in shows like Neighbours, A Country Practice, and Home and Away.

I had also at this point started studying consciousness/psychology in a serious way outside of acting along with a strong spiritual practice. Now driven with the purpose of inspiring artists to use their art and their star power to help create a better world I began teaching acting as I continued performing.

I came to the US in 1995 not to act initially but to run leadership seminars and workshops in the creative community but a couple of years later I returned to Australia for an acting gig. It reminded me that that is what I love to do and what I do best. So when I returned to America I went on a search for an agent. Starting all over at 45 in Hollywood was not easy – more on that in the next question . I had to do extra work to get my SAG card and I literally started from the bottom. My body of work from Australia meant nothing at that time and I felt very insecure about my American accent. It took about 10 years to get anywhere near the work I was getting in Australia. But when I finally met my current manager, Chris Roe, in 2009 everything turned around.

I also introduced a new course to the New York Film Academy, NYFA https://www.nyfa.edu/ in Los Angeles where I have been teaching the Psychology of Performance for the last 12 years along with appearing in several TV shows and films. You can find them all here http://www.imdb.me/rosgentle. I am proud of the fact that I stuck it out and now in my 70’s am still a working actress. In fact, I had to stop teaching last year as the auditions and work were keeping me too busy. I am hopefully returning to a recurring role on the new Shondaland/Netflix series, The Residence, after the strike. It’s a mystery/comedy set in the White House and I play a media mogul, a female Rupert Murdoch if you will. Next year, I have three films coming out: Nightbitch with Amy Adams for which I had to learn Pennsylvanian Dutch, Unsung Hero, the true story of an Australian family that relocates to the US and whose children are now some of America’s top Christian music stars, Rebecca St. James and For King and Country along with the film mentioned earlier Under the Surface. Embracing my age, I play the grandmother in all three films. 

What sets me apart from others?…mmm… good question. I’d like to think it’s my authenticity which I think possibly comes from a few places: My origins in the commercial world (in the early days it was all about sales and how sincere and authentic you could be in order to be trusted by the audience) my 30 years of spiritual/introspective work or perhaps it’s just a natural inclination/quality I’ve had since childhood. The other thing that has helped along the way is my ability to work in different accents and dialects for both theatrical (film and television) and voice-over. Then again I do believe we set our life’s intention/journey before we come into this world so maybe I just decided to be a damn good actress and educator and I’m simply following through on that promise I made to myself! lol!

When I first arrived in the US I tried to find an agent and could not get my foot in the door. I decided to just stick with running seminars and workshops for a while. Little did I know that that would be just as hard if not harder to do. I had all the connections in Australia but none here. As finances diminished I started looking for other work. I became a receptionist for an accounting firm and later a law firm. Both only lasted 6-8 months. I found 9-5 soul-destroying as my whole life for the previous 20 years had been creative and nonconforming. I tried odd jobs like cleaning, house sitting, and animal sitting. Wrote for an online Hollywood magazine. I ran acting classes out of my home and tried several failed MLM things. I even sold ads for Chinese television for a while! Property managing for ten years helped me survive those years while I physically went through many challenges including two broken feet (not at the same time!) and a broken wrist from a car accident.

What I find most rewarding is having the chance to express things I would never have the opportunity to express outside of acting. In life, we develop habits from the self-created myths we hold onto and live by. As an actor, I get to explore all kinds of myths and walk a mile in someone else’s shoes on a daily basis. It’s self-exploration at its best and something I think we all need to be able to do in order to resolve the issues plaguing us today personally, societally and politically.

It’s also great fun! For me, play is a vital ingredient in learning, growing, and staying young…indeed in staying alive. It also allows me to meet new people and enjoy a change of scenery constantly. It also gives me a voice, like I’ve used in the first question here, to help raise awareness of particular issues that I believe are worthy of support.

But ultimately, I believe creativity is in my very DNA. I feel alive when I’m creating. It’s giving birth and nurturing something and watching it grow and blossom whether it’s a new garden at home or my latest film project. We are all creators… I just get to do a lot more than most and that was a choice I made long ago and am so very grateful I did. I knew it came with huge risks, but I was up for the challenge to both create a wonderful life and a career I love. American psychologist, Jerome Bruner once said, “A life is a work of art, probably the greatest one we can produce”.  And for me that life now is focused on creating a better world for future generations.