Podcast Episode
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EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
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no way you're gonna hold me down right yeah, place, it's going down, we're going gray in Tinseltown, Welcome to going gray in Tinseltown, I'm your host, Mandy May Cheetham on this episode. I'm going to read you an essay that I wrote about, don't get excited, it's not a school essay, it's a medium article that I wrote about the first audition that I went to after I decided not to dye my hair now, the night that I formally made the decision and I went on instagram and told the world that I was no longer going to be dyeing my hair the world, I mean my mom and I was no longer going to be dyeing my hair. It was because the next day I had an audition and I have been living my life around auditions and hair dye for a very long time, at least seven years since I've been a professional actress and just making sure that I dye my hair before I go to an audition or God forbid I get an audition when I've been letting my roots grow in a little bit to give my scalp a break. So I knew that you know when the first audition came up that this was going to be a big deal, so I documented it on instagram and I also wrote this medium post, I hope it helps you in your journey, Here we go, my name is mandy and I am a die aholic, it's been 9.5 weeks since I last dyed my hair As they say in the most famous of 12 step programs. It's not the drinking, it's the thinking. When I first started acting as my professional career, I was 35 years old. I was very worried that it was too late. But after an insane series of events, losing my business, my house and the passing of my father in the same year I decided to take life by the balls. I didn't just decide I did the artist's way by Julia Cameron. If you don't know what that is, go and buy it immediately. You're welcome early on. I met with a neighbor who was an agent for some advice. She told me I'd have a rough time breaking in because I was competing with other women my age with very deep resumes. You don't look your age though so that will help you can pass for younger and pass. I did, I've never been the right age for anything. I left home at 15. I had a child at 17, graduated from high school at 20 started my first business at 22 actress at 35, always trying to fit in, but always either way behind or way ahead of everyone else in the room. In any case her words stuck with me, You're behind in skill but ahead and looks, I clung to that unknowingly through stints in New York Toronto and Los Angeles building a resume of mostly work I created myself, I wrote, starred in and sold two shows to networks in 2016. Thank you very much and digging deeply into the exploration of the craft despite being the wrong age for everything. I never felt there was anything wrong with my age until I started acting. I hadn't realized how deeply ingrained the idea that I had to be able to pass for women who were younger was to succeed as an actor until I turned 40 than 41 than 42 and now 43. And as the work is just starting to dwindle away. I'm furious. I'm furious that I'm just starting to become great at this acting thing because in midlife I'm just starting to feel free enough as a woman to speak the truth about humanity through my art and I'm furious with myself for having acquiesced to this game of playing young so I could fit in and get work and uphold the objectification and sexualization of women and entertainment. I'm furious enough that I decided to stop dying my hair because I just don't want to pass anymore. There's something that happens to you around 40. A reckoning of sorts. I realized on some level that I was approaching a precipice I had not anticipated. I didn't think I'd be one of those women who have a midlife crisis because I have a healthy set of self esteems. I'm living my dream. I've ascertained that I'm not delusional in my assumptions that I can make a living as an actress and I've been making real progress. But I did have a midlife crisis and it was a big one. I think growing in my gray hair is my midlife equivalent to a man who buys a Porsche and cheats on his wife. It was a big midlife crisis because I decided to face the truth not the truth as though there is only one of us and that we are all made of love. That is not something I believe we face, but that we practice moment to moment. The truth that needed facing for me was to tell myself the truth about myself. I started to work with some acting coaches whose work is based on this and it was an absolutely life changing experience. They helped me to stop lying to myself by telling me the truth about the games I was playing by trying to pass as a little girl crying, hiding, whining, denying my strength, denying my rage, manipulating all of these things were and still are getting in the way of the artist that I am. The artist in me. Didn't want to play all of those games or hide all of the facets of my personality, the beautiful and the ugly She wanted to use them in our work and use them in our life as I slowly let my true self shine. I realized how normal it is to be angry, gunning ugly old sexual, poor, successful, healthy dysfunctional, all of it. The problem is once you start to admit the truth in one area of your life and do so consciously, it is really difficult to live the rest of your life in an unconscious state. If I listen to my artist and do what she says, which is really my only job, She will tell me to eat to exercise, to do my vocal exercises, to study my lines, to show up early, do my laundry and to play because she wants to express fully and deeply and she treats the work as a sacred expression of joy. She has also told me not to dye my hair. I mean maybe yours tells you the opposite, but for me, the message has been clear for some time. I'm not dying my hair because I feel there is a deep connection between the vulnerability of facing the world in a truthful way about my age and the vulnerability necessary to be the type of artist I desire to be. So it's been a week of going out without spraying or powdering my roots and in that time I've had four auditions. Each one occurred with varying degrees of terror. The first one was the catalyst for my making the choice to stop dyeing my hair. I had a meltdown on instagram. I decided to publicly come out about going gray because I knew if I didn't make a big deal out of it, I likely would not follow through the night before the audition. I stayed up all night, Googling videos about gray haired women, what they did to get through the grow out stage. If there were any ways to do it without the demarcation line as they called it and if there were any mostly not working actresses who were doing the same, I didn't find any of those, but I sure found lots of opinions from friends and family about my hair off of my instagram post. I got a lot of very supportive messages of course, but a small percentage of two categories of folks, older women and men, We're not impressed. I got all the go to response is you look 5 to 10 years older, you won't be able to be as successful as an actress, you should meet my colorist, you're being naive. If you think you will work as an actor with gray hair, why don't you use natural dyes? You look like a grandma. By the time those messages that started coming in, I was in touch with my middle age rage and I had already decided so they didn't really affect me that much as I had learned in that fabulous acting class, it's making the admission that sets you free from the block that is holding you back and once I had admitted that I was scared of dying my hair, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted, I strode out of the house the next day after negative five hours of sleep and took the world by storm. I felt like a superhero, iron haired man, The gray hornet skunk woman. I realized so many things in that one trip to the audition, I was in my shoes and my eyeballs as my mom would say looking people in the eyes striding. I felt like a woman, not like I was passing for a young girl. People were staring granted. It may have been because I was overcompensating with my outfit, lots of leopard gold and very red lips. But I like to think it was because I had that air about me, the same one that kids have before they hit like seven or eight excited, engaged present alive as I sat in the waiting room, I saw the other women looking at me too. I resisted the urge to talk about my gray as much as I wanted to. I long ago learned my lesson of losing my chi in the waiting room by talking to everyone else. So I sat quietly, my hair at the stage that I could just be delusional enough to think that no one sees the roots or that the blowout is working as a comb over. But one or two of the women noticed one of them even looked at me with slight admiration in the studio next to where the audition was held was a dance rehearsal. I could see the silhouettes of the women in the class through the curtain covered glass doors, they were dancing to pussycat dolls, the siren songs of us club going women in the aughts. I long to be in there with them. No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than the monster and me tried to shut it down with. This is L. A. All the women who dance here are young and professional. You can't go to a dance class here, You're too old, caught it, but not until I had finished the complete rant in my head. But due to my new gray haired awareness, my next thought was, wait a minute you have gray hair. Now if you went to dance class, you'd actually be able to be the older woman that you are and not have to pretend it doesn't hurt or that your memory isn't as good as it used to be. And they would have zero expectations of you. You'd be the cute old lady who needs help in dance class. Joy. It's not the drinking, it's the thinking. Okay, so all of those thoughts were pretty messed up and the deeper concern I have from my sweet self is all of this drama about what everyone else thinks. That is getting in the way of my joy. It's getting in the way of my ability to see the world instead of being seen by it, which is not only a waste of time, It is making me go through my day at the effect of the world instead of affecting it. Imagine this, you're seven, you walk into a room, your first instinct is to look for the fun, fun toys, fun colors, fun people, fun smells, fun, fun, fun. Now you are eight. Just before you go into the room, your friend tells you that your hair is ugly. Now you walk into the room and think everyone is looking at you, you get quiet, you realize people can think mean things about you and that makes you sad, you stop shining. There's a point between childhood and early adolescence when we start to become concerned with how we look to the room instead of how the room looks to us. One of the most important instincts I have been trying to recover as an artist is to see the world instead of worrying about how the world sees me and the audition room is the toughest place in which to do so because it feels like a firing squad. I recently helped a friend run an audition and I seriously thought about sitting beside the actor while they performed, sitting on the other side of the table felt combated. It pulled the essence of the person out of nearly every woman who came in no matter how welcoming we tried to be and most of them just gave us the safest version of themselves and covered whatever it was they thought they were getting away with us passing us, I discovered that we are all trying to pass at something. So back to my audition, it was for a play written by a man about abortion in which many of the characters experiences are based on misinformation and assumptions and that although attempting to portray a liberal view presented some very deeply misogynistic views about the practice of abortion. The whole process was troubling. I very much wanted to call him out on many of the issues I had with the script, but I can only fight one battle at a time. And right now it's a battle with my addiction to passing as a younger woman and dyeing my hair to feel like I still have sexual power over men. After a first reading of the sides, he asked me to redo the monologue and make it more personal. The monologue was about another person having the right to determine what someone should or shouldn't be able to do with their body. I'm not into mellow dramatics, but it was pretty easy to get personal about this speech by thinking, oh this is about my hair. I spit it right at him. He asked me immediately to come back for a callback. I was elated. I felt like anything was possible. I got on the phone with my friend Alice, a fellow actress and redhead who had said the night before, she would do it with me, she confessed she had relented and decided to keep dying until she finds a new agent. I felt all powerful. I told her I loved her no matter what she did and that it would be better for the podcast. We were going to start if she decided not to die so we could have alternate experiences. But I knew I was right. I sent her a picture of my hair. She said if the person casting you was a guy, he may not have noticed your grades, they aren't really long enough yet. That was a kicker. You mean I've been walking around thinking everyone sees this and it's just accepting me and it's just because they haven't actually noticed yet. ****. Okay now I'm just going to take a quick pause from this essay. I haven't read it in a little while and have to back up a little bit here to the fact that I was elated after going in for an audition with material that I had serious problems with but did not say anything about because I was so obsessed with how I looked like Not only me but the 20 or 30 other women that I saw over the course of these auditions for this play, no one said anything to him about the fact that he just had a series of women in this play who had all had abortions and could not have Children again, which is like misinformation that that's like 1975 information. It's not that's not the case anymore. This addiction is real serious guys. It interferes with your ability to interact with the world, It's interfered with my ability to interact with the world. I had an opportunity to say something to this man who was trying to write something meaningful and help it to become a better piece of work. Whether I booked the role or not and I didn't because I was too obsessed with my freaking hair, let's continue audition number two the callback, he called a lot of people back and gave us 25 pages of sides to prepare. Don't get me started on how disrespectful it is to ask an actor to prepare 25 pages of sides for a callback, particularly if the subject matter is heavy and the writing is awkward. Sorry, had to do it. God, I'm such a judgmental control freak. Okay, 25 pages is fine. If it's like a feature film, this was I think an honorarium of $100 or some ****. So no, he told me I would read through five scenes with the different actors in the room. I read through two and he cut me off and told me I could go a clear sign that my auditioning process was over for this project. I left feeling dejected with that adrenaline you have when you know, you've blown it. My first thought The gray was longer today he discovered that I'm too old for the role firstly the character is a lawyer with several years of experience married for 11 years with a nine year old daughter. So shut the **** up. But what I realized is that old is my go to response. Since the beginning of my acting career, I've been working hard to ensure that no one discovers the secret I've been hiding and the one that is blocking my artist from playing as deeply as she desires. The secret that I am older than I look, that I have a grown 26 year old child. I always feel like if casting knows these things or any other thing I'm trying to hide on that particular day that I'll be out of the running for doing the thing that I so long to do to act to play. So I try to hide it and in return miss out on what casting really wants me. I went to a coffee shop to drown my sorrows in a chocolate chip cookie and called my mom. I told her all the things I hated about the project and compared my disappointment to the same disappointment I felt every time a guy I knew I was better than ditched me. We are all one. We are all love guys know when you don't like them. Writer, director, casting directors know when you're judging their plays. I only want them when they don't want me, what the **** is up with that I felt better. I threw out my script. I remembered that I now had my gray haired superpower. I started to notice how many men have gray hair. I wonder what going gray is like for them. 20 minutes later I'm on the subway and a barely 20 year old guy sits across from me and tells me I'm really beautiful. Thought number one, can you see my gray hair? Thought number two, do you have mommy issues thought number three are you trying to steal my wallet? He's fresh off the plane. Still has that starry look in his eyes. He wants to hang out because he has no life here yet. I can't, I have gray hair and have to start my new life going to art openings where gray hair is seen more as a political statement than giving up on your career. He's confused but he moves on easily from the rejection because he's still young. As I walk away from him in my hurried older woman pace, my phone pings a message from the director, writer, casting director asking my availability for a second callback for the project. I was slamming not less than 60 minutes ago. I was thrilled and felt like an ******* and I would have to print those 25 pages out again. ****. Next audition is for a mom and a movie of the week. I drive to calabasas in a torrential rainstorm because I need to stay in the habit of going to the places I say I will go otherwise I will crawl into a pit and not leave again until my face catches up with my hair. The audition itself goes well. I think I showed a lot of love and some conflict, no notes just on to the next because they're running late on my way out the door. My ego takes over and starts moving my mouth so I'm growing out my hair aggressively flicks hair down at the part so I can spray it. There's this root spray if they don't like it or they can just let me rock it like this or whatever. The man smiles and nods and fake chuckles while escorting me out of the room. I realized that my having gray haired roots has made me think that I'm suddenly one of the people that I'm no longer just a lowly actress trying to pretend she's younger. I'm honest and truthful and way better than everyone else in the waiting room. We are all one, We are all love and I know what it's like to sit on that side of the camera because I did it those other two times and I know you would have just cast me right away if I just emailed you about the gray hair thing before coming in And I wouldn't have had to have risked my life on the Zumba flume log ride. That was the 101 after three days of solid rain. But I came and I just said, what was on your mind already because I'm sure the gray roots are a big consideration for this job. Oh my God, mandy, shut the **** up. It's not the drinking. It's the thinking. It's not the dying, it's the hiding. I have a lot more work to do, to get to the state where I'm in my shoes and my eyeballs present, doing my work. Not concerned with approval. Just collaboration. I'm practicing it with my day to day life. The choice to go gray is accelerating that learning. I am proud of myself. I am taking it one day at a time. This is a little side note that I added to the article about my midlife crisis and feeling old. I actually think middle aged rage is some sort of Darwinian trait that rears its head at this point in life to make sure we, as elders get mad enough to use our wealth and power to fix all the ship in the world that we can before we die, to secure the survival of our progeny. Now that the sexual urges and motivations are waning. We need something to take its place. No, potentially. Thanks so much for listening. I'm really enjoying this process and so grateful that so many of you are walking through it with me. Please reach out on instagram at Amanda Morehead. M A N. D A M U R H E A D. And say hello and also do the liking the subscribing and the reviewing and rating of all the things on the podcast because apparently that helps get the word out. And I really think that it's important for us to talk about this and go through this together because women have spent way too much time thinking, we have to do it all ourselves. Love you see you next time, peace. Yeah. So no way you're gonna hold me down. I said, I'm going down replace this. It's going down with going gray in Tinseltown.