Super Nanny

It's been a busy summer! Drag Me to Hell is finally finished filming and is due to come out in May of 2009. I'm pretty sure the role I had will be cut by the final edit that goes to theatres, but hey, thats fine with me. "drag me to hell" is not your grandma's kind of movie. it's not my grandma's kind of movie, either :)

I've made some career changes lately that have me pretty excited. It was a really hard decision but I left my old agency and moved on to a new one called GLA. I have a manager now who is AWESOME and I've already have a few promising auditions. I think working with them is very exciting and I can't wait to see what happens in the next year!

I had two auditions on thursday... interesting. The first one was a PSA (commercial) for anti-smoking. I had to pretend I was 16 and hadn't ever smoked cigarettes before (by the way, I'm not and I haven't). Good stuff.

The next audition was for the film "Children of the Corn" to be filmed in Iowa over the next few weeks. I got to the casting studio and, surprise surprise, there were five other girls in the waiting room that looked EXACTLY like me. Wonderful. I take my turn waiting patiently and then am called into the room.

Casting Director: So... this is for Children of the Corn. You okay with that?

Me: of course!

Casting Director: ...and... you know that this is a sex scene at the alter of a church, right?

Me: um... no

Casting Director: Yeah, well, it is but it is very tasteful and there will be nudity but only in a tasteful way.

Me: ...right.

Needless to say I won't be filming in Iowa next week :)

During the days I spend my time as a nanny to two BEAUTIFUL boys, Jake and Alex. Aren't they gorgeous?

Lamias and Babies

This is Caleb. He is awesome.

Isn't Emily Gorgeous?! I'm so excited to have a little nephew and I can't wait to see him in July!

Los Angeles is certainly awesome with it's many opportunities, and I've had my share of excitement over the last couple months... I started working for a woman named Juliet Funt (the daughter of Alan Funt who created Candid Camera) as a personal assistant and a nanny for her two kids. At the same time this job started up I was also offered a job to stand-in/photo-double for Alison Lohman in a film called "Drag Me To Hell". I thought it might be a day or two of work so I took the job...not realizing that three months later I would still be on the set every day for at least 13 hours a day. At LEAST. EEeesh! Talk about raking in the hours! 

You may remember Alison from films like White Oleander or Big Fish..

She stars opposite Justin Long who you may know from the Mac commercials or Die Hard 4 or as Drew Barrymore's boyfriend...

Sam Raimi is directing the film... I didn't realize how big he is in the entertainment industry until I started working on the film, but he is big. big and awesome and funny, to boot.  He gained notoriety from the Evil Dead films and gathered quite the following of horror fans, and then went on to direct the Spiderman trilogy along with The Quick and the Dead. Drag Me To Hell is something he wrote with his brother in the 90s and is his return to the "Classic" horror picture... I feel so lucky to be involved! The film is basically about a girl named Christine (Alison) who has "Lamia's curse" (a goat-demon spirit who drags people's souls to hell) cast upon her and we follow her for three days to see how the curse plays out...scary stuff. I'm regularly showing up for work and finding out that I have to have maggots thrown up on me or dead bodies sucking my eyes out or blood poured over my face. It's gunna be a ringer at the box-office! Here's a pic of Sam hard at work... or maybe he's doing a crossword puzzle. He is also fond of sudoku.

As a stand-in I often act out Alison's scenes for Sam before she gets there and he works through her motivation and blocking with me and the director of photography so they don't waste her time and the production runs a little smoother if she can get into makeup/wardrobe during this process. Its SO intense/exhilarating/humbling to be able to act for and take direction from this amazing director... and I can't believe I'm at a place now where I'm regularly reading lines with Justin Long and eating lunch with Alison. It's bizarre... and my feet haven't quite hit the ground since February...

Sam gave me a few lines in the last scene of the film, and I am so grateful! The lines are in an alternate ending--which almost certainly won't be used in the theatrical release, but I'm still excited about being able to be a part of the film. Here is a picture for mom's fridge captured when I signed my first film contract and got my first trailer for that day of shooting in downtown Los Angeles... and it was a moment to remember! :)

...more to come :)

I.heart.los.angeles

  I love it here. Period. There's nowhere else I'd rather be.

I'm not working AT ALL in film/television because of the strike. I wish I were working (for obvious reasons) but I really do support what the strike is all about and I hope the writers win. Rumor-mill has it that things will wrap up soon... hopefully in time for the oscars. Rumor also has it that they'll postpone the oscars to April if the strike doesn't end by then. It'll make for an interesting February, don't you think?

My [very pregnant] sister flew in from Washington to see me this week! Her hubby Brandon is flying in and out of Iraq right now from Turkey so she said, "I'm not sitting at home by myself," and joined me for a sunny week in LA. Too bad it rained every day. except this one:

Thats downtown in the background! Directly behind me is a very large HOLLYWOOD sign! We're up on the mountain! Woo! No climbing for pregnant women though. So we just parked our car for a few shots.

This was a little while later with Aimee Auclair at the Melting Pot. MMMmmm!

The above picture was at Santa Monica pier... where I filmed an episode of Ugly Betty this fall and also where last episode of 24 from season 6 takes place. Josh had some fun, too!

Because of the strike I've been doing two things to make money. 1) being a NANNY to a wonderful family in Beverly Hills. Amos is a pirate. Or maybe Abbie is the pirate. ARrrrrg.

I also do birthday parties (I think I mentioned this before) and dress up as Disney Princesses or mascots (like Dora the Explorer, for example). Its really fun! I also trained to be a "bubble master". yeah. you heard me. I can put your kid in a bubble faster than you can say "pay me seventy dollars an hour."

I have an audition tomorrow for a "skin cancer awareness" commercial. wish me... luck? hmm. maybe thats one of those auditions you hope you don't book. Like the audition Josh had last week for a thirty-year-old hispanic guy. This is a strange town, but I love it.

Leave Lindsay A-Lohan

So... The episode of Cavemen that I did aired last night and it was pretty funny... you can watch the full episode online at this site:

http://ll.static.abc.go.com/streaming/move/00070006/static.html?d=20070521&aff=kabc&useexternal=0&channelid=27716&episodeid=55442&partner=&campaign=null&wrapped=1&dmarank=2&dmazip=90001

...or you can just go to ABC.com and follow the links to 'watch full episodes' and click caveman 11/06 - The Shaver. I am on for a bit at the beginning and then one more scene at the end...it's not as bad of a show as I thought it would be, although there are a few parts that could stand for a re-write or two :0)

I just had an audition for a Hallmark commercial... it would be so much fun to shoot! The spot is apparently a take of a Steel Magnolias-like scene... there are two beauticians (a hair girl and a nail girl) talking in a beauty shop and a scruffy delivery man comes in and we whisk him into a chair and get to work... his girlfriend walks in later and cries at the sight of her boy reading cosmo while under a hairdryer... don't know how it relates to hallmark, but I thought it was pretty funny. I auditioned for the nail girl ... hoping for a call-back!

Josh is working on several short films right now... he's pretty excited about that. The writers strike is keeping us from working as often as we have been, but we're all hoping it will blow over soon enough. Its strange pulling into a studio inch by inch because you're afraid you'll hit a protester... we definitely support their cause even though their action is keeping us from working as often. Lets just pray they get the situation solved soon!

Lindsay came into Josh's starbucks the other day. I saw more paparazzi in those 5 minutes than I've seen my entire life. Josh and I want to buy these Tshirts now:

The site is hysterical! http://www.bustedtees.com/

Spring Awakens in LA

The past two months have been CRAZY busy for me!!

I found the Ghost Whisperer promo online... can you find Abbie? She's really scary...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZsytRdVKuQ&mode=related&search=

Two things to look for... I'm playing "Julie" on an upcoming episode of Caveman (#103). The show is a spin-off of the Geico commercials... not sure if it will be a hit or not. The episode I did was hysterical while we were on set (but then again, not sure if it will be AS funny to watch). Basically the story goes: there are two cavemen who suspect that a businessman (more of a motivational speaker selling business books) named Jake is what they call a "shaver". They have hunch that Jake isn't a 'sape' (homosapian) but an ape and seek to expose him in front of his fellow colleagues at a business conference. I play Julie, Jake's personal assistant. should be a good 2 seconds of screentime. heh. I'm moving up in the world, right?!

I also have a featured part on one of the final episodes of Wizards of Waverly Place. I'm playing 'Marianna O'Shaunessy' and cause the daughter, Alex, to get a tad jealous when her boyfriend looks my direction. Josh is also in this episode. It'll be a funny one to watch. Wizards premiere is October 12th and you can find me somewhere in almost every episode... although it might be just an elbow for half a second. that one might be hard to find

THEATRE UPDATE!!! I was cast as the female lead for the play "Spring Awakening" and it just opened this past friday. WE SOLD OUT EVERY SHOW! I have NEVER been involved with a play that completely sold out one show, let alone the entire opening weekend. I am thrilled to see how the rest of the run goes. We had a critic come opening night and I'll post the link to the article here:  http://reviewplays.com/9-7-jr-springawake.htm

Spring Awakening is on Broadway right now as a musical... but we're doing the play that the musical is based on. The musical, mind you, is much more raunchy that the production I'm involved in (whew! no nudity in ours!) but both shows do have some serious sexual content. The musical has modernized things a bit, such as turning a rape into consensual sex with nudity and adding the F-bomb left and right to their songs... thankfully this play version is staying true to the script and I feel that the message speaks loud and clear: parents should TALK to their children. If you lie to them, and the children in turn make bad choices, they're going to end up destroying themselves.

The website for the show is www.myspace.com/springawakensinla