“Be really strong in who you are”— Sarah Withers

The actress talks about taking a mindful approach to the entertainment industry.

Sarah Withers is killing the game…literally. The scream queen recently starred alongside Mickey Rourke in Nightmare Cinema as Samantha, a terrorized teen who must take down the man who has killed her friends. Withers took time to talk to me about how to network genuinely, why and when to hire a publicist, and how meditating has helped her thrive in the entertainment industry.

Who are you, and how did you get to where you are today?

I started acting when I was eight in San Francisco at the American Conservatory Theater. I really wanted to do TV and film from that age, so I got a modeling/acting agent in San Francisco when I was 10, and then I started doing some commercials and was sag eligible for a couple of years. Then, when I was 12, I did a showcase in Santa Rosa — where I’m from — and they had agents come up from LA.

I remember being obsessed with this agent who had repped Miley Cyrus when she was first starting out. I did a showcase and that agent was interested in me, so then I had an agent in LA as well, and I did more commercials with her. After a certain amount of time, I needed to join sag.