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

Hally, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

When I was in school for acting, I was told many times that beggars can’t be choosers. That when you’re first starting out, you’ll have to take projects that aren’t well-written, work with directors who don’t know what they’re doing yet, and overall have some sub-par experiences on set. This means towards the beginning of an acting career, you don’t always get the chance to work on projects you connect with. It might not come as a shock then, that despite getting to work on some awesome projects, the experience I’ve found most meaningful is still the first film I made myself.

Three months after I graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, the world shut down amidst the covid pandemic, and theatre and film shut down along with it. It felt like the world was ending, and I didn’t know when I would get the chance to perform again.

Luckily, my film acting studio had impressed upon me the importance of creating your own work. After collaborating with my good friend Lizzie Sherman in school, we had started cooking up a short film idea. Fior di Fossa: an Italian renaissance period piece that centered two women at odds, both dragging the other down in an attempt to matter in a world that was stifling them.

We enlisted the help of our former professor Brian Baer, who not only encouraged us to keep going but also gave us a deadline that motivated us to finally sit down and write the thing. Lizzie and I finished writing our first rough draft, and NYC shut down one week later.

Working on this film became our solace in an uncertain world. We would meet semi-weekly for writing sessions, production meetings, creative discussions, you name it. The story kept deepening as we edited the script, and we landed on something both dark and dreamy, both romantic and bleak. It became an all-encompassing thing, and I loved it.

In addition to writer, producer, actor, and director, I was also the costume designer, so when we weren’t meeting, I was working on the costumes. I designed all of them, and personally constructed a total of four gowns, two underskirts, and two surcotes (sleeveless over dresses). I was lucky enough to have my Nana, who taught me how to sew, help me with the shirts Anthony wears.

The thing I was most excited about was acting the role. After years of playing the Disney-esque ingenue in musical theatre, I was finally getting to work on something dark and juicy. My character, Katherine, struggles in the wake of loss, and her coping mechanisms, though they may be helpful to her, often prove hurtful to others. She’s definitely in a dark mental space, and it was both challenging and rewarding to access that.

You know how women often forget the pain of childbirth? I feel like shooting this movie was like giving birth. I know that it was stressful, that it was painful, that Lizzie and I were both doing way too much on way too little sleep, but my memory of the experience is still overwhelmingly positive. I mean, I was dressed in gowns, getting to act in beautiful locations, and surrounded by good friends who were cheering me on.

We managed to fill our small set with people who made working with dark material feel like such a delight. Because we shot during the pandemic, we were dedicated to keeping each other safe, and most of us ended up staying at the same house during the shoot. Being around people the whole day on set, and then decompressing together afterwards bonded us in the way summer camp usually does. I also think the fact that we were getting to come together and create something in a time when the industry stood still was not lost on us. Everyone was focused and dedicated, and that made the collaborations on set all the more rewarding. Our DP Mariano Flores, was especially amazing to work with. The best moments were when Lizzie and I were in our places, and Mariano got the shot set up just right. From the look of pure excitement on his face, we knew we just might end up making something good.

Of course the experience wasn’t without its challenges. One of our crew members came down with covid. I was often sewing until 3am before a shoot day, waking up at 7am, and continuing to sew until the last second. So much of it was a mad dash to the finish and a real test of our nerves. The most difficult setback, however, was when I lost a family member. It was just before we were originally slated to film, and we had to push production back by a month. I had never experienced a traumatic loss like that, and suddenly I felt connected to the story on a level I didn’t know was possible. Lizzie, Brian, and the rest of the crew were extremely supportive. When it finally came time to film, it felt like there was an unspoken understanding on set that we were going to do this story justice, and that through it, we would honor this lost loved one as much as possible.

We carried this goal with us throughout post production. And with many of us spread to the winds, it truly became a labor of love. Lizzie’s dad, Garry Sherman (a frequent collaborator of Van Morrison’s), was able to compose some original pieces for the score of the movie, and after coloring, arrangement, and a final sound mix, three years of work culminated in a 24-minute film. Our dream made reality.

So much real love, blood, sweat, and tears went into making this film. Multiple generations of both of our families lended their time, support, and hands to breathe this story into being. I learned invaluable lessons about creative problem solving, effective story telling, and the importance of collaboration. I developed an acting process and learned to access a wide emotional range. I also learned so much about my own inner strength and resilience. I learned that I can do hard things. I learned that I am able to create in the face of extreme adversity; that even in the darkest moments of my own life, I am able to keep hope and make art. Even if this short film never wins an award, even if it is never seen by a wide audience, it will forever be the experience that made me the person and the artist that I am.

Fior di Fossa has since won Best Sound in a Short Film at the 2023 Culver City Film Festival.

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?

Hey! I’m Hally Smith, and I’m an actress, singer, and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Originally an east-coaster, I grew up in Roxbury, New Jersey surrounded by music and theatre. My dad was a professional Irish tenor, and my whole family grew up knowing all the traditional folk songs. To this day, if you start singing at a gathering on either side of my family, odds are someone will start singing with you, even if it’s not St. Patrick’s Day. My hometown is also about an hour straight west of NYC, and the other main source of music in my childhood was Broadway. My parents would take me and my siblings every so often to see a show, and it always felt like magic. I was entranced by theatre’s ability to affect me, even at a young age.

I started taking voice lessons at the age of thirteen, and gradually became very involved with the choral and drama programs at my school. By the time I finished high school, I had sung in seven different choirs, served as a soprano section leader, worked as a choir intern, performed in the Papermill Playhouse Show Choir, performed twice with the New Jersey All-State Choir, performed twice in collegiate level choral conferences, acted in one play and four musicals, won awards in dramatic and choral excellence, and to top it all off, won a senior superlative (most likely to be on Broadway). You could definitely say that I was starting to think I was good at connecting with people through performance, and that making magic on stage was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I went on to study musical theatre and film acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where my focus turned from singing to acting. Between the New Studio on Broadway and Stonestreet Studios, I learned many different acting techniques, and started to really find myself and my skills in film acting. I then unfortunately graduated into a world shut down by the Covid-19 pandemic. I’m a generally antsy person, and had always loved writing, so during lockdown, I made my first short film (Fior di Fossa). That’s when I fell in love with filmmaking as well.

Since then, I’ve moved across the country, joined an acting class in LA, written new scripts, acted in short and feature-length independent film projects in LA and Miami, started working as a voice actor, and have even performed as a professional singer here and there. The more I’ve worked, the more I’ve discovered the types of roles I gravitate towards and excel at. The wide-eyed ingenue, the tragic heroine, the snarky troubled teen, the vapid mean girl, the quirky girl who’s a little lost. I’ve had so much fun finding my way through these different roles that still feel very true to me.

I think what sets me apart as a performer is my empathy. I’ve always been highly sensitive and aware of people’s moods and feelings. Things tend to affect me in a deeper way than they might affect someone else. As an actor, I focus my efforts on empathizing with the life circumstances of the characters I play. I make their problems matter to me. Then, when I’m performing, I’m just being honest. It gives my work a level of depth and authenticity that I don’t think is always common among performers.

What I take pride in most, is my creative work ethic. I’ve made it a point as I pursue acting roles to continue to create my own opportunities along the way, and this has not only kept me connected to my art in times of drought, like the recent strikes, but also given me the opportunity to curate some of my experiences based on roles I want to play. In truth, I think there are more ideas and characters that excite me than I have the time to write or play, and my work ethic is simply the product of trying to do as much as I can to not let the things and ideas that inspire me pass me by.

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

When I was first starting to act in middle school and high school productions, I was taught that acting was pretending. I got very good at knowing how a person ‘should’ feel in different situations, and would project that emotion; making my voice sound angry, making my face look sad, etc. I thought each scene had a right way to be played, and each line had a right way to be delivered.

This got solidified for me in college, when I learned actions, objectives, and beats. I was taught to decide how to say each line, to choose a goal for each line, to plan each moment, to be aware of the character’s objective with every word I said. The more I leaned into this philosophy, the further I got from having any real connection to the character, from having any real feelings while acting, and as a result, from giving any truly believable performances; I was completely in my head.

We as people don’t act like this. We’re messy, we have mixes of many emotions at once, and sometimes what we actually feel might be completely inappropriate for the situation. We don’t choose how to feel, and we can’t plan everything we say in advance. As a perfectionist, unlearning this has been tricky, and even now, I find myself slipping up and wanting to ‘do it right’ if the stakes feel high.

But I’ve learned that it’s not enough to be aware of the circumstances of a character’s life. Immersing myself in those circumstances is the key to connecting to the story and every word I say in it. Things have to truly matter to me to create an emotional effect in me. The words are the same. Once those circumstances are alive in me, I can sit down with the words and let them affect me, instead of putting an inflection on them. Some of these ideas were intuitive to me, learned while working on stage productions at school or while acting in a short film I wrote and had a deep connection to already. However, the lion-share of progress in unlearning old habits and building my current skills is due in large part to finding a teacher with a method that works for me. If what I’m saying resonates with you, check out Stuart Rogers’ Studios – he’s awesome.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I think everything I do creatively is tied to a massive desire to connect with and effect change on people. I crave being a part of stories that will make people feel seen, make people think, make them laugh, and help them heal. I think this is why in both acting and writing I gravitate towards stories of horror and loss.

We all carry pain and fear around with us constantly, and I think we’re both tormented and fascinated by stories that reflect these things back at us. We resonate with them deeply, we see ourselves in these stories, we finish the movie and keep thinking about it for days. We are reminded of our humanity.

I’ve always been a highly sensitive and empathetic person, and it’s easy for me to connect to characters in difficult and tragic situations. I feel a sense of purpose and fulfillment in giving life to their suffering and honoring their humanity; to making anyone who has experienced something similar feel less alone.

It’s interesting though – I’ve often heard horror and comedy go hand in hand, and I do feel like comedic stories are the other side of the equation for me. It’s a well known idea that to make an audience cry, you have to make them laugh first, but I also think it’s okay just to make them laugh. I grew up in an Irish-American family with a Poppop who has over 90 original jokes in his arsenal, and I think humor is the best survival skill I’ve ever learned. I love laughing, and I love making other people laugh. Like I said, it’s all about human connection for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hallysmith.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hallyrosesmith/?hl=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKT6gzwPTntfne-KQKUykTg
• Other: IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm11757721/