My “Gut Feeling” Saved My Life
I’ve been wanting to write about this experience for so long but just until now I got the courage to do so. I feel that some of you might relate to this experience.
On my late teens, I moved to New Jersey to live with my dad where I Started attending Barbizon modeling and acting school. That led me to participate in an acting and talent convention and out of all the competitions, I excelled the most was the acting competitions.After this competition, I gained some courage and decided that I was going to start pursuing acting as a career.
I started looking for auditions in websites such as nycastings.com, mandy.com, actorsaccess and craigslist. I would send out hundreds of resumes with pictures hoping to land a manager and agent. After a month or so I got my first gig as a featured extra in a movie and I can’t tell how super exciting this was, I felt as if I was on my way to stardom.
My journey in the entertainment industry had its good moments. I landed my first speaking role in an indie movie, then I was one of the leads in another indie film. I did a Spanish commercial, modeled in a runway show for a French lingerie line and worked as a model for a very famous R&B singer at his 30th bday bash. I had so much fun and met so many amazing aspiring actors, models and directors, and the pay was great too :).
The thing about the entertainment industry is that you also meet people that often want to take advantage of you and horrible things can happen to you if you are not careful.
So many shady things happened to me that led me fall out of love for the entertainment industry — one producer said that I wasn’t hungry enough!
Late 2007, I saw a craigslist ad in the film/tv section that said: looking for a female actress for a feature film” but it didn’t say that much on the body of the posting, just that it was to work with a major award winner. So I submitted my resume and picture, and on the same day, I got a call from a lady who introduced herself as the assistant of the director. She asked me how old I was, and since I was not in my teens anymore, she said that the director was looking for younger females and told me she would have to call me back to let me know if I could audition. Later on, the same day, while I was at my job, she called me and told me I had an audition for next day, advised me on what to wear and that I had come alone.
She told me that if I did a good job on the audition, I could become a star because this director had already won an “Oscar”. She gave me his name so I could look it up. She also told me not to feel intimidated by him because he was going to be the only one in the room with me acting the scene and not to feel intimidated by all the awards he had on display.
I looked up his name and I was so mesmerized by having my first audition with a real Hollywood Director, I was going to have an audition with an academy award winner, although he had won an award for composing a song not for directing, I said to myself “he must have connections”.
But then something went through me and I started questioning why the assistant was emphasizing that I had to go alone and dressed in a skirt. I realized that it was too good to be true and something bad would happen to me If I would go to this “audition” so I didn’t show. On that day, I saw many missed calls from the assistant and that kind of made me feel even better about my decision because NO Casting director or Producer will beg a No name actress to go to an audition.
To be honest with you, I forgot all about this… and almost 2 years went by. One day while I was reading the news online, I saw the news about this academy award winner who was being investigated for casting couch rape and when I read the name of the person and also reading the name of his assistant who was also charged, I cried my eyes out! because I could’ve been one of those women if I wouldn’t have listened to my Gut feeling telling me not to go.
I feel we don’t give the importance that our “Gut Feeling” deserves. Our Intuition A.K.A “Gut Feeling”, besides sometimes potentially saving our lives could also help us to make really amazing decisions that could make us live a happier and more successful life, so I invite you to try to hone your intuition and the best way to do this is by using it more often.
Have you ever had a bad or good Gut feeling? Did you listen to it? share with me your story!
Thanks for spending some time with me!
Neisha Alvarado
Follow my Journey designing a better life
