We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Hristiana Soula . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Hristiana below.

Alright, Hristiana thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Acting starts off as being instinctual, then it is refined with time. I would definitely say that it took a while to really get out of my head and start honing in on how to be the best actress I could be at any given moment. Worrying about the technical stuff like which angle the camera is pointing towards me or how my hair looked shouldn’t have been taking up too much space in my head, but the over-analyzation took up plenty of my time before I even started to click ‘record’ on my auditions. Taking acting classes at the beginning is essential when you have no experience with film because having a lens pointed at you is different from projecting to a live theater audience. On camera, every subtle micro-expression is picked up, so you really have to be concious of easing into the character and being connected with your scene partner if you have one. After all, acting is reacting to the person across from you, just as it is during a one-on-one interaction in real life. Can you really pre-plan all of your emotional moves in any given take? It’s important to be fluid enough for changes to occur, while at the same time inhabiting the character’s inner world as deeply as possible. A big obstacle that can come in the way of learning is 1. a lack of finances to invest in said classes, or 2. a lack of time due to making money at a regular job. I’ve been there. I wished I had known the who’s who in the acting world, so that I could have started earlier and with good teachers, but I had no idea about how the business worked. Also, a thing that can make all the difference in your auditions is actually having a scene partner to react to. I can’t count how many auditions I did at the beginning where I didn’t actually have someone to react off of, and the feeling was just not the same, because I didn’t realize that the exchanging of energy was very much a thing that could be sensed on camera.
It is important for all of us creatives to manage our time, and to fight for it as much as we can, even if we see a little progress being made month-to-month. Sometimes, though, progress isn’t a linear thing, and it certainly hasn’t been in my acting journey. There have been many peaks and valleys. Investing in training will yield returns, even if you have to take some aspect of each class with you and combine those to form the method that works best for you.

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 am a Greek-American film and commercial actress who has gotten her first foray into the professional acting world within the Texas film industry. I have worked with well-known brands such as State Farm, O’Reilly, and Keller Williams. I am also promoting indie feature based on Peter Pan, ‘When Wendy Grew Up’. Although I started my journey here, I am no stranger to traveling as I was born on the Italian island of Sardinia and moved around Europe most of my life. Suffice it say, my multicultural and polylingual upbringing has given me an adventurous spirit, coupled with the fact that my imagination has always been very active! This love of storytelling from movies, anime, and videogames would evolve into the pursuit of an acting career… which lead me to where I am now in this 3-Dimensional world!

This grand pursuit has always felt natural to me and I am most proud of myself for listening to my inner voice and never giving up on that. I want everyone that works with me on a film set, client or otherwise, to come out of the experience knowing that it was a professional one, and that I was a positive person to work with, because positivity is contagious. I will either make you laugh, cry, or even shock you with my work, but the important thing is that I left an impression that will be remembered. I love to represent strong characters, some of them morally ambigous, as it’s fun to explore that grey area and really be someone far removed from my everyday life. Most of all, if I can inspire anyone else to go after their dreams too, then that’s considered a win in my book.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

More funding for the arts is key. Texas just passed the greenlight on a new incentives package for $200 million so that the state can be a filming location more on par with that of Atlanta, LA, and New York. The money is there to be used to pay people in the Motion Picture Industry, so it’s looking like a positive thing. There are many talented artists here looking for the chance to flex their creativity and grow, if given the proper chance. Can’t stop won’t stop. On a societal note, people need to be more open-minded towards the arts in general, especially since escapism is popular and people ironically love to consume content. In today’s world crazy world of constant stressors and uncertainties, art is always something the human spirit can turn to no matter what is going on around us. Let’s encourage those who want to be artists and not put them down by telling them they need to take on another career path.

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

There’s never a dull moment. I can be on set one day hopping around in a bunny suit, and before you know it the next I’m being splashed with water balloons. There’s truly no shortage of surprises. You can plan for the day ahead of time, but one key aspect of it is flow and you’ll be surprised what magic you can create when you open yourself up to your intuition and don’t second-guess yourself; there’s always someone that can relate to your story. Of course, the fact that you can take your vision and see it come to fruition by entertaining many people is magical in and of itself. You want to be an action hero? No problem, just learn stunts. Wanna be stuck on an alien planet? Just incorporate some 3-D animation with a green screen and you’ll be there!    

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hristianasoula.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kira_mou/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hristianasoula
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/HristianaSoula
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@hristianasoula6298
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/@tanagreeknose7376

Image Credits
ABM Photography, Maurizio Rex Maya, Robert Cantu, Andrew Hayek, David Blue Garcia, Candice Ghai