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

Lola, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

There will always be a part of me that wished I had started sooner however, when I catch myself thinking that, I always remind myself that I would not experience the true happiness that my career brings me now without my background. I went to business school after high school and dropped a lot of my creative interests. I always say that I learned the hardships of the business so I could enjoy the glitter of the show. It gave me a different approach as in, I am more mature and I understand the privilege and subtext that comes with being an entertainer. I will never be a child star but I am definitely a grown adult, conscious of what is happening in the industry and how I am evolving through it. I would not change a thing.

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 French actress, writer and director. I have always wanted to be an actress but I believed a dream could only be that : a figment of my ambiious imagination, so i wenta more traditional route, to business school. However, due to schedule and workload, I had to drop a lot of my artistic endeavor. I didn’t realize it yet but this would have a profound impact on my mental health. 5 years later, I decided that after my Masters degree, I would pursue my childhood dream and become an actress. With the support from my incredible family and friends, my degree in hand, I packed my bags on my way to Hollywood. I discovered acting as a job and not only a passion, I rediscovered writing that I only knew as me writing stories that I never thought would ever see the light of day and I discovered the self-confidence that directing demanded. I had never felt so fulfilled. Learning about all the different ways to tell a story, how to create it, how to embody it, how to promote it and how to do it all myself, was really eye-opening. I have grown more in the years of my life dominated by creativity and art than any other time and I am so grateful for this opportunity. I have told stories about confidence, about writers, I have been in Shakespeare plays, in a musical and I finally feel like I know where I belong. When someone asks me if I would change anything in my life, I answer : “No, because I needed everything in my life to get to where I am now. And I do not want to be anywhere else.”

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is to not limit myself, as cheesy as that may sound. I have many ideas frolicking in my brain and I go from wanting to write a fantasy feature with dragons, to directing a horror short, to writing an absurd play. I have spent so long thinking that there could only be one path that was made for me and I refuse to believe it any longer. I will create my own train tracks and I will stop at every station no matter the medium, no matter the genre. There is never a time I feel happier than when I am creating, when I’m writing a story and my brain goes way faster than my typing could ever follow. And by diversifying the stories I tell, I also broaden my view of the world and of the people around me, it allows me to see this environment I’m growing in as an endless well of creation.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I wholeheartedly believe that being a storyteller is one of the mos tbeautiful jobs in the world. The most rewarding thing is seeing how your art impacts the audience. An audience laughter, a sob, or someone coming to you at the end of a show, or a showing, or someone who read your work is the best present someone could give me. When someone asks me why I wanted to be an actress, I say that I’ve always wanted to be a storyteller because I can take people away from their problems and from the world for an instant. I get to guide them through a world I’m depicting, a world in which their troubles fade, a world in which they can let go and be almost like a newborn, discovering, searching, experiencing. And if that experience was fulfilling enough that an audience member, a spectator or a reader comes to me and tells me about it, that truly will make my day, my week, my month, my year. I did it, I did my job.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loladarzens/
• Youtube: https://studio.youtube.com/video/Qu7mcwQAO5k/edit