FERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

This one is going to be short and sweet; I wish I could say like me but I would be lying. I am of an average height and would hate to be considered sweet. Or sour come to think of it. Maybe fizzy? Yes I can deal with fizzy... like a packet of Nerds or a Sherbet Fountain.

I digress. As per usual. So, I have spent the last two weeks of my life partaking in work experience at ELLE magazine. I like to think in the manner of The Devil Wears Prada but my brother quickly assured me that that was not the case and that Ugly Betty was a much more apt title to be comparing myself to. The twat.

As you may have guessed from the sheer volume of blogs/articles/general nonsense that I have been bookfacing and tweeting recently, I have decided to pursue the written word as a career branch. Not that I have given up on acting (I still have my Tena Lady commercial to make for crying out loud!!) but it seems that vowels and consonants and the arrangement of the two is apparently what's tickling my tackle at the moment. So why not see where it takes me?

There is an unspoken feeling in the acting world that if you have a change in career or direction or simply decide to stop acting then you have failed. A look of pity crosses people's faces when you say such things as 'Oh I'm doing a bit of writing at the moment' or 'Actually, I've decided to go into teaching'. And to those faces and that pity I say, 'BOLLOCKS'.

To be in the acting world you have to be so driven and so focused that life often becomes linear, you are solely thinking about where your next job is coming from and how to deflect the question, 'So... what are you up to at the moment?' To be quite frank- it is exhausting. 

Amazing, exhilarating but exhausting.

My friends and I have frequently missed weddings, baptisms and funerals for acting work and something in me is telling me that actually those weddings, those baptisms and those funerals are really what is important in life. I think it is that "growing up" malarkey again, biting me on the arse as per usual.

So I have decided to throw caution to the wind and see what else the world has in store for me. I am hunting down work experience in magazines and newspapers like there is no tomorrow; I'm even in talks with a company about writing a comedy tampon advert. I know. It has got my name written all over it - spelt out in tampons. Applicator ones obviously- for length and dexterity.

(Just to clarify, I sourced this image off the internet. I did not take the time and effort to lay out a blue background and spell out GO GIRL in my own applicator tampons. For once.)

I have been an actress all my life so it feels like cheating on a dearly loved spouse to even consider another career option. But I don't see writing as another career, merely another string to my bow that can only enhance and improve my acting... and let's face it, it needs a lot of improvement. Winking, gurning, corpsing and crying- that's what makes good acting right??! RIGHT?!?!?!

I have no idea what 2013 has in store for me but I intend to go in guns blazing and go wherever my gut (and it will be bigger and stronger because of the Christmas feeding) takes me. Life is there for the trying, so I have decided to try everything: I’m jumping out of a plane, I’m going to Glastonbury and fuck it, I might even try drugs.

(JOKING MUM)

(I’ve done loads already)

(SERIOUSLY JOKING MUM!)

I may have lied when I said this blog was going to be short and sweet. Ah well, the government lies and apparently that’s okay, so I think I should be alright.

I have one last thing to say before I tuck myself up in bed with a camomile tea and Game of Thrones (I’ve always been a sucker for books with maps in the front- I’m a teenage boy stuck in a 26 year old woman’s body) and that is, very simply: 

Ferry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

Be brave, be bold and be yourself because those who mind won’t matter and those who matter won’t mind.

But more importantly, eat more turkey than is humanly possible and then enjoy a really good Christmas poo.

I know I will.

UHOH..

This is not good. This is not good at all. So here’s the story morning glory…

Last week, I went to a casting for The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s witty and wonderful comedy about mistaken identity. I have performed in this play before as Cecily Cardew (Cesspit, as I lovingly nicknamed her) but am always more than willing to return to a part as one’s choices and decisions on character alter with age. Age being the operative word.

I pulled out all of my best moves (they mainly include a wry smile and a wink) and acted my socks off. Literally. I walked home bare foot.

I spent the next few days twiddling my thumbs and trying (as always) to forget the fact that I’d had an audition and trying (as always) to ignore the fact that I would quite like the job.

I finally buckled on the third day, (other famous third days include God creating light and the giving of three French hens) and rang ye olde agent to ask them to ring the theatre company for feedback.

By now, I had figured that I hadn’t gotten the job; however, I just wanted to check that it wasn’t because my acting was as bad as Keanu Reeves’ in The Day The Earth Stood Still (WORST FILM EVER) or because I had tucked my skirt into my knickers. It has happened before.

Apparently, there is an actor out there in the mists of time or the ether or any other spectrum of time/place/being, who actually, deliberately goes into auditions with his flies down to ensure that he’s remembered.

I don’t know whether to shake his hand or simply buy him a pair of jogging bottoms sans flies to put an end to this mental act of exhibitionist desperation which is on par with Princess Beatrice’s hat at the Royal Wedding.

ANYWAY back to the story (I wish it was a story. And not the cold hard truth. Which it is.) My agent phoned the company and (THANK GOD) they gave lovely feedback, cracking speech, good choices, great clarity and purpose but (THERE’S ALWAYS A BUT) she looks too old.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!?!?!?! Ever since I came out of my mother’s womb I have been told that I look too young. I have the round moonish face that some would want to call cherubic but I like to call circular. Circle Head. Baby face. Call it what you will. I got ID’d the other day buying a lottery ticket for which you have to be sixteen. SIXTEEN. And now I look too old to play an eighteen year old ingénue… WHAT IN MAGGIE SMITH’S NAME HAS HAPPENED TO THE WORLD?!

Something has gone very wrong. I instantly looked down to check the sagometer on my boobs- not doing too badly; I then pulled at the bags under my eyes- also not doing too badly, a mere Louis Vuitton handbag rather than a Primark wheely suitcase. But something has changed and apparently I am in massive denial (a thing that surprisingly does not surprise me) and I am getting older.

But that's okay. The best people get older: Judi Dench, my Gran, Edd the Duck. (Actually Edd the Duck never got old. He just disappeared. What in Daffy's name happened to EDD THE DUCK?!?! Nobody knows.)

I digress. My solution to this aging malarkey: to cast all my girlish vanity and pride aside and accept it. Because the sooner I can hit some kids with sticks the better.

I obviously mean in a crazy Gran type way. Not in a mentalist way. Maybe.

So until next time... BRING ON THE SAG, BRING ON THE GREY and dare I say it... BRING ON CHRISTMAS!!!!!