We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Leela Owen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Leela, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
I think with acting, the number one best way to learn is to be on set and observe actors who have been at it longer then you. Classes are great, but watching people who have already booked the project and are there in front of the camera is even better. If I’d start at the beginning, I’d focus more on that rather then the “educational” side. A skill I have now developed that is in my opinion essential, is being an observer of people’s action in every day life. Every person you meet is a chance to unlock a new character to build knowledge on, in case you audition for a character like that one day. Say you meet a random women at the library and she helps you find a book. It may seem like a small interaction, but say a couple months later you get an audition for a girl in a library who helps a person find a book. You now have a perfect example of how a REAL person in that situation would act and you can make the scene feel extremely natural because of that. You can do this in everyday life by just being observant of people and their natural mannerisms/behaviors. I think the main obstacle for me was just experience and time. You get better every year!
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?
My name is Leela Owen. I am an actress signed in Atlanta (where I live) and LA. I got into acting when I was 15 years old after doing background work on Spider-man Homecoming. Being on set gave me a new sense of purpose I had never felt. Especially watching the actors and just knowing right then and there that was what I wanted to do. I have always been an entertainer in a way. I always liked to perform. From having a million different voices and characters when my sister and I would play dolls, to performing at piano recitals in front of large groups, I always liked to be doing something “out there” if it brought emotions out of the people watching. I think the main thing that sets me apart is how diverse of roles I can do. If they want me to look 25 I can do it but if they want me to look 15 I can do that too. It all depends on my styling. I also am in a category in my agency which they call “Ethically Ambiguous” which basically mean people would look at me and not know my ethnicity which obviously gives me many more roles to audition for. Some of the projects I’m most proud of include Just Beyond on Disney + where I play Harper in episode 5, Back In Action on Netflix (coming out 2024) where I play Annalise, Doom Patrol on HBO Max where I play young Miranda/Kay Challis, and It’s Christmas Again on Amazon, Pureflix and Tubi where I play the lead Abby.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I think the most rewarding aspect of being an actress for me has been how empathetic it has made me. When you act, you are removing your mind from your body and putting in the mind of someone totally new (whoever you’re playing). I make myself get in the head and feeling of whoever I am playing and because this is my job I do it a lot. Over the years it has made me so much more aware of how people perceive every situation different and have different thoughts about everything even if the same exact thing is happening to two different people. It has changed the whole way I look at life and at people in a way that I wish everyone could experience. It has made me far less likely to judge and much more loving of everyone and all their differences and quirks. We are all just little kids grown up and trying to figure it out. This new perspective has been extremely rewarding and refreshing.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
A lesson I had to learn in my craft that was surprisingly hard for me, is that you don’t have to be perfect. I am an extreme perfectionist. I used to spend hours on a single audition tape until I realized on set that some of the best actors I had observed were actually the opposite. What I mean by that is in their sentences they would sometimes say “um…” or they would have pauses or they would slightly change the line. This all used to seem illegal to me. They made me realize that those imperfections is actually what makes it perfect. It makes it perfect because it makes it REAL. It feels like you’re watching a real person on screen and it makes you feel like you can relate to them. No one wants to watch a person so perfect on screen that it almost feels AI. People like those moments that make the scene and the people they are watching seem just like them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://m.imdb.com/name/nm10235676/bio/#
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leelaowen/?hl=en
- Other: www.tiktok.com/@leelaowenn