We recently connected with Ginger Britt Daniels and have shared our conversation below.
Ginger Britt , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
The most meaningful project I’ve worked on recently has been my short film, Not Like The Other Girls, shot in 2021. It was my first foray into screenwriting, it was filmed in New York where I first began my career as an actress nearly 30 years ago, and deals with the subject of childhood sexual abuse and the trauma and aftermath surrounding that. I am a survivor, and I wanted to tell a story through a crime/mystery drama and the affects of such abuse on an adult woman who never came to terms with her past. It was an incredible undertaking to write the story, produce the short, and play the lead character in such a piece, but I feel so proud of the work I created with a truly wonderful cast and crew that I had the fortune of choosing myself. The project helped me to grow as an artist and a storyteller of which I am very grateful. The film was selected for several film festivals in LA and New York City, and garnered me a best actress award from Women’s International Film Festival. Not Like The Other Girls will be available on Amazon Prime in both the US and the UK next month.
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?
Acting, singing, dancing, and music has always been a part of my identity since I was a young woman. I worked for a long time before I needed to pause for awhile to deal with some personal issues. I re-entered the entertainment industry in 2019 after this long break. Since that time I have been working hard to “get back where I belong,” so to speak. The timing has been challenging with a pandemic and strikes, but I have forged ahead with resilience and courage, learning to practice as much patience as possible along the way. I really believe that if you truly believe in yourself and take care of yourself, you can accomplish anything you manifest. I also know now that my life experiences both then and now have enriched me as a performer and a human being. I have my hand in a lot of creative pots now, and I love being multifaceted as an artist.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding aspect of being a creative professional is having the opportunity to play characters that are sometimes at first seemingly different from myself, and then finding the parts of me within those characters that are actually similar to myself, and THEN touching the life of a person you don’t even know because they saw the authenticity of that character within you in your performance and they could relate to it on a profound level. When I made my short film I was discussing earlier, several people, mostly women approached me after different screenings of the film to tell me how they too were abuse survivors and they were so moved by the film because it struck a very personal chord within them. I cannot express what that meant to me to be able to reach people through my art. It is incredibly humbling and rewarding. These past couple of years and really months have been challenging a bit more than usual, but I am happy to say that I took the down time and tried to grow as much as I could particularly as an actress, writer, singer, and songwriter. Amongst several scripts I’ve been writing, I’ve just created a limited television series drama/musical pilot about women that I am very excited about. Part of this creation took me to several parts of England for exploration and research on this project. My travels were so inspired because I was open to meeting new people and experiencing the culture, food, etc. I’ve been writing the music as well, which has been hugely rewarding. I will also have the opportunity to act in a film again shortly, as I was hired to play a supporting role in the dark comedy, Good Boy shooting in January. Finally, I was just accepted and given a grant to a prestigious artist in residence program, Chateau d’Orquevaux in Champagne-Ardenne France as a writer in December of 2024 for two weeks.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
I am a huge believer in meditation. Whatever that means to you. It can be through movement, stillness, sound, whatever gets you to a place of grounding and breathing. For me it’s through chanting Nichiren Daishonin’s nam-my-ho-renge-kyo, but I also listen to an app called Aura that has short or long guided meditations from various practitioners that helps me to focus, ground, and continue to manifest good things and people into my life. When you slow down and breathe, you can begin to appreciate all of the goodness in your life, focusing on the positive. Artists need this grounding and reminding of love of self so much because our lives are largely about working really hard and getting rejected. I have learned that the more I sit with myself, am kind and patient with myself, the more I appreciate all the beauty around me, AND the more I attract lovely people into my life. My travels recently to Europe were more fulfilling because of my practice of openness and trying to be present in any situation. If you don’t slow down and open your eyes, ears, and your heart, you could miss an awful lot.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee.com/gingerbrittdaniels
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/Gingerbrittdaniels
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/Gingerbrittdaniels
- Youtube: @GingerPantsProductions
Image Credits
Jesse Ashton Jim Brock