We recently connected with Madison Santos and have shared our conversation below.

Madison, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

The biggest risk I’ve ever taken in my career was leaving it all behind this year (2023) and deciding to pursue my own passion project and create my own production company. At the end of 2022 I traveled to Medellín, Colombia right after filming my Amazon Prime movie ‘Felines’ and I knew I was ready to start working on my own feature films, but I didn’t know where to start. While in Colombia I had a crazy vision of this movie and it sparked something inside of me. It’s a hard feeling to fully articulate, but I just knew deep down that this is what I’m supposed to do. I got back to LA and had a very hard decision to make, do I stay in Los Angeles and continue doing what I’ve been doing, or do I take a huge leap of faith in myself and do something completely different. With no money and a big amount of debt accruing I knew it would be the more sensible decision to just stay and work, but something told me that if I truly believe in myself and this movie, that I can’t worry about the money right now and that it’s time to get out of LA for a while. So I packed my bags and moved in with my extended family in the Philippines. I started modeling in Manila to make extra money (I just finished a huge campaign with NikeXfootlockerXFIBA and worked on many other amazing projects with amazing brands in the Philippines) while I worked on my script. But this trip became so much more than just my movie; I found myself, I finally worked on my inner demons and healed my childhood traumas, I fell in love with myself and life again, I reconnected with my family that I hadn’t seen in almost 2 decades and made life changing memories traveling all over Southeast Asia. After almost a year of traveling and living abroad, I’m back in Los Angeles with all the beautiful lessons I have learned in order to make this movie a reality and finally set up a production company that creates stories that inspire and highlight different perspectives/lifestyles that we haven’t been able to see in main stream media.

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?

Born in Los Angeles, CA, I went to college at SDSU for Sociology. I spent the next 5 years out of college in social media marketing, advertising, and business management/accounting in the entertainment industry. I had always wanted to be an artist but was always too scared to actually pursue it, until I lost everything during the pandemic in 2020 and decided now was the time to finally pursue my dreams full time and see where it could take me. At first I just started with modeling and through that found a love for acting. Within the first 6 months of 2021 I started booking modeling and acting gigs full time. While on set I was so hungry to learn and grow, I started helping out on the back end also and found my passion for producing as well. By 2022 I was producing music videos, short films, and feature films and acted in 3 feature films myself. Besides being a professional actor and international model, I provide anything from casting, location scouting, set design/set dressing, styling, MUA, providing full production teams or any specific production crew needed and any other pre-production needs, to handling any problems that arise during filming and organizing the sets, crew, and talent to insure smooth shooting days, to finally providing editors and any extra post productions needs. What sets me apart is the fact that I understand all parts of production, I know what it’s like to be talent in front of the camera which helps me to be more understanding on what need to happen behind the scenes and my production skills have significantly improved my acting and modeling skills. Beyond that, being a woman of color helps me to give new perspectives and outlooks on all ends that can sometimes be missing from a male dominated set. I believe it is crucial to have women and POC in more positions of power within the industry in order to bring new and fresh ideas to storytelling. The main thing I want future clients/followers/fans to know about me and my work is that everything I do with passion, efficiency, and conviction. If I am going to put my name on any project, I will go above and beyond my job title to make sure I provide the highest quality content, teams, and production necessary to bring the story to life.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

There are so many things I wish I knew and would have done differently when I first started, but luckily for you I learned it all the hard way so that you don’t have to. First is investing in high quality actor headshots (~$300-600), and for modeling finding a reputable photographer to take your digitals (clean, form fitting clothes, no make up, look up your favorite models digitals to know how to pose). This is an expensive industry to be in and it seems easier to cut a few corner when you’re new, but when you are trying to make a legit career out of this you have to remember that you are competing with professional actors and models for the same gigs and making yourself look as professionals as possible, especially when you don’t have a huge resume yet, it is very beneficial to actually booking gigs. Next is making an account on LA Casting (aka Casting Networks), Casting Frontier, and Actors Access. Once you do find an agent you will be needing to have these accounts anyways and you can find representation through these websites as well. This is where you will find all the legit casting for the industry, be sure to spend a minimum of an hour on each site submitting yourself to castings throughout the day, everyday — also make sure to have your emails and texts set up so that you don’t miss out on any new castings/auditions you got/or important notifications. It will be overwhelming at first, but if you stay on top of it you can submit to 50+ castings a day and be doing up to 5+ auditions everyday just by submitting with quality headshots. Lastly, be sure to invest in a quality ring light, your auditions are a huge part of your job and you can’t book gigs without doing these auditions — when you do book an audition be sure to read EVERYTHING and follow all directions to a T. Again, you are going up against professional actors with expensive self-tape set ups, you want to come off as professional as possible as well! Dedicate a small part of your place to doing auditions with a clean backdrop (even if it’s just hanging a bedsheet up — white and blue are some of the best colors for me personally to use as backdrops). Lastly, the best resource you can have in this industry is a good group of supportive actors/models that can help you audition, can send auditions to each other, work on content/personal projects with to gain more experience and give each other moral support. This job isn’t easy and having any help at all will make all the difference in the world, so when you do start booking paid, unpaid or BG gigs, make friends, network, get to know your fellow co-stars because none of us got to where we are now alone!

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://m.imdb.com/name/nm12227392/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_2_nm_6_q_madison%2520santos
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/madisonsantosofficial
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madison-santos-a048351b7?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
• Other: https://poplme.co/hash/LWUyPthO/1/s

Image Credits
Demian Tejeda-Benitez Spencer Sun