We recently connected with Mandi Christine Kerr and have shared our conversation below.

Mandi Christine, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I knew I was a creative since I was very young. I think the earliest memory I have, I may have been about five years old listening to music in the back of our family car. I told my dad I wanted to be a singer. I loved to memorize the words in the songs blasting on the radio and then make them my own as I sang along. It always felt like such a releif to even do something simple creatively like singing to top 40 hits at the back of my dads head. I needed to get it out and express myself in that way.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am an actress. My most notable credits include AMC’s “The Walking Dead”, Sundance Chanel’s “Rectify”, and recently I made an appearance in Netflix’s “Pain Hustlers”.

Among all of my childhood activities, my favorite extracurricular by far was theatre. We had to take a mandatory class in high school. After my first monologue, I would think about it nonstop even when I wasn’t in class. It became an immediate obsession of sorts. When it was time to figure out what the heck I was going to go to college for, I could only think of my love for my theatre community and how I couldn’t let it go. I started out going to college to be a theater teacher but about a year into my bachelors degree, I switch to a performance/directing track. After college I started dipping my toes into he film and television world and fell in love with it.

I am the type of person that will remember your life story but forget your name. I think that is why I love what I do. My obsession with human stories. I get to experience and explore a little piece of others outside of myself.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Early on in my career when I just started to see some traction, I thought I had to put every single drop of myself into work. I would eat, sleep and breathe it. I thought the only way to be an actress was to sacrifice everything else. That led to really high highs..and some extremely low lows. The thing about the film industry is, you really don’t control much of your career. You just do the best work you can when you get the opportunity. Many times the rest is up to other peoples opinions and luck. I know I am lucky to have even gotten paid as an actress. There are many many brilliant actors that never see a day on a set.

I had to learn that a full life is the one worth living. I got married to brilliant husband who is also a film maker. We have two beautiful sons. Our family really takes priority over our careers. We love to be with friends, cook, do home improvement projects, go on adventures with the kids, volunteer at school and just live a normal life. Work isn’t everything.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

It isn’t linear. You cant “do this” and the result will be “that.” Some peoples careers start at fifty years old and others as children. Some people have long careers and others have short ones. Many of my actor friends talk about how their non-industry family and friends ask them what their backup plan is. I get asked alot why I don’t also teach or have another job related to my other interests. I want to ask them back…” well, why don’t you have another career on top of the full time one you already have?” The creative jobs don’t always look the same as yours, but there are thousands of hours of work that you don’t get paid for and others don’t see. Sometimes a creative looks “successful” to the world and other times they don’t. I am willing to bet they are working just as long and hard in both seasons. Bottom line; just because your creative friends’ career doesn’t make sense to you doesn’t mean they don’t have a real job.

Contact Info:

• Website: imdb.me/mandichristinekerr
• Instagram: @mchristinekerr

Image Credits
Josh Stringer Chasity Posey David Noles