We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Betty Schram a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Betty thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I don’t know if I could truly choose a most meaningful from among them all, but a couple that came to mind had a similar vein of context: growth & collaboration.

Once, I had the opportunity to be a guest model for a kids’ creative mentoring group. They were assigned an era, chose their model, styled my look from hair and makeup down to wardrobe, and then shot according to their mood board and coaching of their host photographers. I loved getting to help them create their vision, and see them light up when they realized they had what it took to see a project through from thought to screen.

Another time, I had been cast for a emerging designer’s photoshoot for the premiere of her designs. We were in a semi-rugged location and worked from the trunks of our cars. The looks were captured beautifully. Today, the designer is a celebrated creative being commissioned for musicians and international projects. Everyone on that project had the opportunity to launch from a simple compilation of creatives creating.

I recently joined a group of my friends who all happen to be masters of their respective crafts on a multi-day shoot in the Anza Borrego Desert. During daylight, we traveled to incredible locations, scaled formations, and shot work we were incredibly proud of. At night we swapped ghost stories, shared wine and and theories on alien life, and genuinely valued our time coming together to create a once-in-a-lifetime experience documented with ridiculous bts and end products that moved us deeply. As we marched from one location to the next, I whispered to myself, “Remember this, remember this. Don’t ever forget these moments with your friends,” as I watched my combat boots carefully dodge prickly growth and tried not to snag the jeans my photographer loaned me.

I am so privileged to be a player in the origin stories for so many incredible people, and am overwhelmingly grateful for each of those who are in my own as well.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m honored to exist in many communities; I’ve found life is enriched with a measure of both the arts and sciences, and for myself that would be in the forms of acting, modeling, as well as working as an allied health professional. For this interview, I’m leaning into the arts, and that began in my childhood. I loved acting in school plays and learning the basics of theater. I had the opportunity to grow into directing theater, writing full length plays, and seeing them into publication and distribution to other theater programs- it was a “full circle” moment for a theater kid to sign my first playwright contract. The love of bringing life to a character branched into community theater, and translated well into creating a dynamic presence or mood in the context of modeling and acting in film.
I’m eager to continue to interface with other creatives in both realms of acting and modeling.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I absolutely love the energy of joining with others on a joint mission to create something inspiring, engaging, thought provoking, and meaningful. Each project is an opportunity- opportunity to grow in your own craft, to learn from others, and to help them along their way as well. The act of creating is art itself, and having an end product to capstone it all is thoroughly enriching.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Growing up, I learned a rabid work ethic from my self-employed father. You had to hustle with all your blood, sweat, and heart to accomplish your goals, and you could rest knowing your efforts were for a purpose, on purpose. While I haven’t relinquished that ethic, I’ve learned the not-so-subtle art of “release” in the aspect of the creative cycle. You can give an audition you’re deeply proud to submit, and you can write a play that spoke right into the hearts of your cast, but you can only see that contribution as far as your own sphere of influence. There will be times you aren’t cast for a role and there will be rejection letters from publishers, etc. Learning the extent of one’s sphere of influence can be either freeing or inhibiting. It’s truly down to perspective at that level. Realizing you cannot influence the final outcome isn’t inhibiting when you can learn to release it as, “I’ve done my very best, I’ve given what I have to contribute. It will go as far as it’s intended to go, and I’ll keep moving. Life is motion,” and that is freedom.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @bettyschramofficial
• Other: https://www.imdb.me/bettyschram

Image Credits

Julia Kuzmenko
Christopher Tierney
John Malvaez
Justin Novak
Veronica Moreno
Dice Moreno
Jessica DeTrana
Michelle Hebert
Jonathan Medel
Stacey Moua
KEEL Magazine