We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shanie Schwartzman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Shanie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

The simple answer is yes, I love what I do, however that doesn’t mean I haven’t questioned this choice more than once and probably will do so again in the future. It isn’t an easy career path and rarely is it as glamorous as it seems. Honestly, I think this is a really great and vulnerable question because it can be a love-hate relationship with this career. It doesn’t matter what level you are at, one moment you can feel on top of the world and the next you’re having an existential crisis about all the choices you’ve ever made to pursue this kind of life.

Even now, getting to do this article is an exciting way to put myself out for recognition but I have to fight my imposter syndrome. What have I accomplished in my life that has made me worthy to be interviewed at this time? How have I affected the world, what credibility do I have to my name to speak about the life of an artist?

Every journey is different and unique, but that’s the point. If this were easy, then everyone would do it. I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be an actress. I love expressing deep emotions that move people or just making others laugh. It feels like my life’s purpose, and yet I still question whether I am cut out for this. I found that I love writing and creating work for myself, rather than just waiting for someone else to give me a job, I’m able to fulfill my own needs and give power back to myself. I have written, produced, and stared in a short film that is making its way through the festival circuit and has already won some major awards. I have co-written and produced a short comedy sketch with a fellow filmmaker KJ Sadural. It was one of the most fun projects to create and act in so far. We plan to submit it to festivals and the end goal is to make a whole series of sketches. I have written a pilot episode with Rick Worthy, an actor I deeply respect. We have even shot a sizzle reel to use for pitching. These are more accomplishments than I ever thought possible for myself.

I try to imagine myself doing anything else. A job that doesn’t require me to have to rearrange my whole day because I got a last minute audition, a job that has a linear progression to success, and I can’t imagine it. No matter how hard this gets, even when I question whether I’m even cut out to do this, or whether I am even capable. It does not matter, there is nothing else I want to do, there is nothing else that fulfills me or makes me feel like I am following what I meant to be doing.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Today I consider myself an actress, writer, and producer but for a large part of my life I thought I would only pursue acting, predominantly in theatre, and nothing else. It was only in the last few years I found myself feeling confident in adding these other titles to my career. In retrospect, it isn’t surprising because as a kid, I was always trying to put on shows for people either as a solo performance or with friends. There would be multiple acts, characters, and definitely a lot of costumes. It may have started as a love for acting but at the root, it has always been about storytelling.

I would do Oral Interpretation competitions in middle school, writing short scenes or stories and performing monologues. I was part of my community theatre group, and I participated in all of my high school’s musicals. I attended Emerson College in Boston where I received a BFA in Acting. Shortly after, I made the move to Los Angeles. I took classes in theatrical combat, improvisation, and began studying with Craig Archibald at the Archibald Studio. He and a few others in my life really encouraged and inspired me to try to create something for myself. I was submitting for auditions but you really learn so much and take action in your career when you create for yourself. That is when I started finding other likeminded artists to collaborate with and began learning about producing. Creating my short film ‘Because of This’ changed my life. I learned that my ambition and capability could be so much greater than I ever imagined it could. So far, it has won Best Actress in the spring season of the VENICE SHORT FILM FEST. It has also won Best Actress, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and Best Visual FX in the 4THEATRE SELECTION. It has been such an honor for this project to be recognized and appreciated in so many ways. My team and I are still submitting it to many festivals happening this year, and it has been a wonderful domino effect since the making of ‘Because of This.’ Each project leads to more connections and collaborations. My life feels full knowing I have so many different kinds of projects in the work and all at different stages. I welcome the new friends and experiences each one brings.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

There are many challenges in pursuing a career as an artist, in any capacity. I have struggled, and honestly still do at times, with the balance between supporting myself to pursue my dreams and living a life that feels full. I have doubted my own abilities to feel worthy in this career path and I have let the opinions of others cloud my judgment. My high school theatre teacher was a particular type of bully. One who encouraged competition over collaboration. My junior year of high school I was one of the leads in the musical. Over the rehearsal process, I was made to feel that the work I was doing was never good enough with an ensemble hoping I would fail. I came home to my mom after one of the performances incredibly upset and feeling horrible about my work and myself. I remember telling her that I no longer wanted to pursue acting, and that I was not good at it and I should just quit. Thank goodness, she was not having any of that! She knew that this was a low moment and what I needed was encouragement and inspiration. She found me an amazing audition coach to help me prep for my college auditions and reassure my talent and abilities to pursue a career in acting.

Nevertheless, that was not enough, my mom found this amazing performing arts summer camp called BIMA held at Brandies University. I had to audition to even be accepted to attend the camp. It was there that I discovered Emerson College and knew that was the school I had to attend. During my time at Emerson, I had a teacher who questioned if I should even be pursuing a career in acting. She saw I was struggling to connect to the work in a truly deep and vulnerable way. No one had ever challenged me on my career choice and to have one of my acting professors bluntly question this was a hard blow. It was an incredibly important moment for me. Was I going to give up on a lifelong dream because one teacher doubted my abilities? Or was I going to face the challenge head on and continue to grow my passion and confidence? I spent a lot of time after that watching Inside the Actors Studio in order to ground myself and gain inspiration. I was really pushing myself to work through whatever I felt to be uncomfortable in my craft. I ended that year not only proving to that teacher, but also to myself, this is the career I am meant to be pursuing. Later on when I was in LA, I had a meeting with a top agent once who took one look at me and my resume and told me I was too old with too little credits to be competitive and marketable as an actress. It was a hard day on my ego. In all, honestly I think I cried in my car for 40 minutes but I did not let that stop me from continuing to look for representation or focusing on what I could control to move forward in my career. You never know when these low moments are actually blessings in disguise or learning lessons preparing you for something bigger and better to come in the future. I’m a big believer of everything happening for a reason and each of these low moments in my life helped me grow and move towards a greater achievement.

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

I thought about this a lot when I was forming my production company Scarlet Maze Productions. What are the stories I want to tell and why? I have always been drawn to flawed characters who through tremendous journeys end up growing into better versions of themselves.

I believe a lot of my passion for filmmaking and storytelling come from wanting to reflect what I am seeing in the world. It is a way to connect with others and when it comes down to it, I think all we really want is to feel seen and heard. Film and theatre can be incredibly healing for the soul, even when the content is a comedy purely meant to make you laugh. It brings people together, it can make you think about what is going on in your own life or the world, and even inspire you to take action. My goal is to make meaningful work that moves people in some way. If someone is able to see my work and take value away from it, I’ll know I have done something good.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.shanieschwartzman.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shhh_kneee/?hl=en, https://www.instagram.com/becauseofthis2021/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Shanie-Schwartzman/100055747669008/, https://www.facebook.com/Because-of-This-105625924763113
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7071910/

Image Credits
Casey James Knight Sierra Shay Pedi Missaghi and Jonathan C. Fernandez