MADEFEATURE
MADE: Have there been any lessons
you’ve learned from living out
Angela’s mistakes?
Lela: Angela’s
life is pretty messy
and chaotic, which makes for great
entertainment but terrible for
personal wellness. The characters of
Power traffic in manipulation and
selfishness and ego; by contrast,
my life is extremely boring: I like to
cook, I hike and own a cat. That’s
as exciting as it’s going to get and
I’m really happy about that. I think
I get to vicariously live in the fast
lane through Angela’s
experiences so I don’t
do much outside of
my job.
One thing that I’ve
learned from playing
her for all these years
is to be more bold
and resolute with the
things that I want out
of life.
MADE: You’ve
said that it’s very
precarious to put
celebrities, especially actors, in the
position of role models. What did
you mean
by that?
I get concerned about our
society idealizing celebrity more
than activism and education. There
are other voices that I wish we would
do a better job of holding to a higher,
more visible regard. For example,
there are people that I want my
future children to revere that are
far outside of the entertainment
industry. When I think of role
models, actors aren’t typically the
first people that come to mind,
and I’m definitely not putting
down my industry, but I think of
Maya Angelou, Justice Sonia Maria
Sotomayor and others in that ilk. I
love my profession and I wouldn’t
Lela:
trade it for the world but there’s
a difference between the world
of acting and the entertainment
industry. Entertainment is much
more tricky.
MADE: What’s the best piece of
advice you can offer aspiring actors?
I think, very early on, when I first
fell in love with the craft of acting, I
had to divorce myself from society’s
definition of success. I also had to
make myself let go of this idea of
making it. If your goal
is to “make it” I think
that that is setting you
up for failure. There are
no guarantees in this
business. No one owes
you anything. There’s
no rule that says that all
your efforts will ever be
rewarded in the way that
you think they should. For
example, I made peace
with the fact that I could
be waitressing my entire
life, but I was going to be
happy as long as I could
act, somewhere. If Van
Gogh didn’t have any accolades, do
you think that he would look back
on his time here and think that he
didn’t have a worthwhile life? No.
He still lived out his passion and
made art.
You have to be comfortable living
frugally. For years, I didn’t have a
car payment, I ate at home, I bought
only what I could afford to buy twice
and just worked on my craft. You
really have to block out what society
deems successful. How much talent
you have doesn’t matter. It’s your
discipline that will take you far.
Once you realize that, that’s when
you’ve truly made it.
FOLLOW
Lela Loren at
#mademaven
@LelaLoren
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