PASADENA, Calif. _ Actress Emma Greenwell was born on Friday the 13th. She figures that made her especially lucky. It doesn't sound so lucky.
Greenwell, who was born in America but brought up in England, decided as a teenager that she wanted to be an actress. It was a foreign concept to her British father and French mother.
"My parents very much didn't want that to be my career but I was a stubborn 17-year-old and I was like, 'I want to apply to drama school and I want to give this a shot.' So I did. And I ended up going a year at LAMDA (the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts), which was amazing. And then I worked in a restaurant for almost two years," she laughs.
She landed at the restaurant, she later admits, because she was rejected by LAMDA for their following three-year course. "I was young and didn't have enough life experience," she shakes her head.
"But I think it was the best thing ever. I was very good at school, found academics very easy, very good at sports. I had friends. I wanted for nothing. I led this charmed life. There wasn't anything I had to overcome. And that was the first time I was like, 'OK, I'm NOT good enough. I'm not what they want.'
"And I think it was an incredible learning curve where I was like, 'That's OK. That doesn't define me.' I remember I was crying my eyes out, but I realized this isn't easy. And that's better."
At first she felt sorry for herself. "Then I said, 'Are you crazy? It doesn't mean it's always going to be a "no." I think I just have to pick myself up.' I was learning about self-reliance and that moment was about realizing that I'm not in control most of the time, but I am in control in that sense: I can either feel sorry for myself or better myself and try again."
That mulish determination eventually led to a role in "Shameless," where she was signed for only three episodes, but the part grew into a recurring role. And that evolved into a juicy turn as a drug addict in "The Path."
With her latest role in Starz's spy thriller, "The Rook," premiering Sunday, Greenwell is the bona fide star. She plays a young woman who suffers from amnesia but soon discovers she works for a secret British agency and is endowed with special supernatural abilities.
In spite of her feeling lucky, the journey hasn't been easy. Greenwell came to Los Angeles as a tenderfoot. "I was so naive, I had no idea what to expect," she says. "I'd never been to Los Angeles. I had to Google what 'pilot season' was. I didn't want my agent to know I didn't know what she was talking about. I was totally clueless. I was very naive. So, why not? Let's just go. So I found a place on Craigslist, got a cab at the airport, and said 'Here I am!'"
The next five weeks were fruitless. "I was adamant that I would stay in L.A. until I got a job. I stayed. But I had a flight booked on a Saturday and got cast in something on Tuesday, had to get a car by Thursday because I was shooting the following Monday. So it all happened very, very quickly. And I was living in a motel at the time."
For a while she stayed with a long-lost cousin, introduced to her by her mother when she came to visit Emma.
"When I stayed in his house, he said, 'Help yourself to anything.' He was an adult. I was not. He had a pantry that was full of dry food. I finished the whole thing: pastas and rices and crackers and weird sauces _ olives in jars," she says.
When the chance to audition for "Shameless" arose, Greenwell sold some clothes to buy enough gas to get there.
"It was really exciting when I first moved to Los Angeles because I relished the idea of being anonymous," she says. "I knew no one. I could walk down the street and be whoever I wanted. I was 22 and didn't go to college like my friends, and I felt I'd missed out. And I would just go sit in a bar by myself. And that was lonely."
Her toughest time came when she was 27, and her parents separated. "We go through life and nothing is for sure," she says. 'And I think I learned that _ fortunately or unfortunately _ quite late in my life that nothing's for sure. I like the idea of the thrill of hope _ everything can be falling around you, but there's hope that it will get better. And that's what spurs you on."
ACTRESS LANDS ON TROPICAL ISLAND
ABC's new caper show, "Reef Break," marks the return of Aussie Poppy Montgomery to series television. Montgomery filled our TV screens with "Unforgettable" and "Without a Trace" for many seasons, and now we find her on a tropical island playing a reformed thief who's an intrepid "fixer" for the island's governor. It seems ideal casting for the self-motivated Montgomery.
She says she's always been a self-starter. "I was rebellious, very independent and very single minded," she says. "I wanted what I wanted when I wanted it. I didn't want school and dropped out when I was 14 and 9 months.
"I moved out of home when I was 16, but I was very close with my parents, but I wanted to live by myself. In Australia it's a law that you can drop out of school at 14 and 9 months without parental consent. So instead of threatening me, they supported me, which was smart because I didn't rebel. I went and got a job and took care of myself."
CONTESTANTS SOUGHT FOR GRUELING RACE
National Geographic isn't looking for the lost tribe of New Guinea or the shrunken heads of Borneo this time. It's looking for a team of warriors to take on the harshest of adventures to win a rousing $1 million. It will be survival of the fittest as four teams of three race through jungles, frozen tundra, complex cities, steaming deserts and uncharted lands in this "Race to the Center of the Earth."
The race is to begin from different parts of the world where the teams will compete to be the first to reach a remote location and the big prize. Of course, a camera team will be documenting it all for the eight-part series that will go into production later this year.
The show is being produced by the couple that were so successful with "The Amazing Race." This challenge will really test the mettle of those who participate. It's definitely a job for Superman and Superwoman. If you think you fill that bill, applications may be made at racetothecenteroftheearth.castingcrane.com.
GRILLO ROAMS THE UNDERWORLD IN FILM
Frank Grillo is lurking on the other side of the law in Netflix's new film "Point Blank," premiering July 12. Grillo, who was so great in "Kingdom," "Blind Justice" and "Prison Break," plays a career criminal and murder suspect who reluctantly joins an ER nurse in the search of his kidnapped wife and unborn child. Roaming the underworld of vicious gangs and corrupt cops, this unlikely pair has their work cut out for them.
Grillo admits he has grown into his roles the hard way. "I grew up in New York in a certain economical environment that was not easy," he says.
"And I think it affected me as an adult. I tend to lean toward the darker things in life. I exist in a melancholy place. I like music that's kind of downbeat, I like poetry that is sad. And I've been a fighter my whole life, in real life. I was a boxer, I wrestled, did jiu-jitsu my whole life ... It's been a passion of mine since I was a little boy. I consider myself a fighter that became and actor, not an actor that's fighting."
