Buzz Magazine Los Angeles features local stories about amazing Los Angeles Businesses and People.
Neighborhood
The Valley
I started my acting career in New York City. I worked on an off- off Broadway production, of Tennessee Williams's, Camino Real. This was in the 80s, I had been modeling and acting in commercials, but studying Acting with Susan and John Strasberg. A writer I met, Guerdon Trueblood, suggested I move to LA for pilot season. I met with quite a few casting directors. However, nothing much was really happening with a writers strike. However, I met a brilliant actor, Robert Knepper, in my 1930’s building’s laundry room. Rob suggested I work with his coach at Roy London Studios.…
Neighborhood
West LA
I was born into two vastly different cultures to a Persian father and an ethnically diverse mother of mixed Mediterranean and Native American descent. I began my story on a stage, like many young actors do. I was six, performing in an interactive, gaslight theatre rendition of Robin Hood (a comedy). But it wasn’t then, with all the laughter from the audience about the deadpan-faced child playing a moody Sheriff of Nottingham, that I fell in love with performing. Since I could crawl, my mission was to entertain people and make people laugh as a character in some movie or…
Neighborhood
The Valley
When I was 12, I attended a talent scouting event in Upstate NY for acting. Out of the thousands of kids that auditioned, I was one of the 20 that they chose to fly to LA for The Acting League event at The Hilton Los Angeles/ Universal City. In February of 2014, I flew on an airplane for the first time to attend the event. During the week, we all had training for the day of auditing in front of talent agents and managers. A few hours after my audition, the head of the event called my parents & I…
Neighborhood
South LA
I started as a costume designer, actually. I graduated from San Diego State University with my Bachelors of Art, and during school, I went to lots of parties. I loved how much fun they were. Somehow I came across Vashtie Kola, a female DJ, director, and designer, a true Renaissance woman. When I saw that she could do all of those things, I realized that I could too. I didn't have the resources I needed to really be a DJ so it was a slow start, I would practice on apps via my iPad. Then I met a DJ who…
Neighborhood
The Valley
When I was 16 I went on a Foreign exchange to Mexico for my Junior Year of High School, and while I was there I wrote a song in Spanish about my experience and how I fell in love with the people and the Culture. A singer from the Celaya Guanajuato (the city I was staying in for my exchange) heard my song and decided to bring me into his studio and record it and he made a video for it as well. People from all over Mexico heard it and began flying me all over to sing for big…
Neighborhood
South Bay
I initially became interested in the restaurant business because I wanted to be a female Sushi chef which is rather rare in the Sushi world. I am passionate in providing Japanese style hospitality especially to the multicultural scene in Southern California.
Neighborhood
West LA
I discovered my passion for acting very early, when I was about four years old, and since then I made sure that I performed literally at every corner, singing songs and reciting poems. Or just clowning. I loved to make people laugh. My parents were sure that I'd become eventually a professional clown. Then, in middle and high school, I constantly performed in school plays. But then, at the age of 18, curiosity and a thirst for adventures brought me to television news, where I first became a reporter, and later one of the anchors. From TV news I decided…
Neighborhood
Downtown LA
It was a series of events over a long period of time for me to conclude I wanted to go into coffee. I was a former CEO and Vice Chairman of South East Asia's largest shopping mall owner and analyzed a lot of tenants/retailers' businesses during my 14 years tenure. I learned a lot about coffee just being in the mall business. Secondly, my distant cousin back in college pitched me the idea to open a coffee shop on our campus in 2001 but never made it because he passed away inside the plane crash WTC Tower 2 during 9/11.…
Neighborhood
The Valley
I grew up as a missionary kid in the country of Albania. My parents moved our family over there shortly after communism fell, in 1993. I pretty much lived solely there until I graduated high school in 2005. I loved every minute of it and it really shaped my view of how music is perceived around the world and much a song can cross all kinds of barriers. It doesn't matter what race, creed, or background you come from, people can unite around good music and that's what drove me to pursue songwriting and the performance arts. I studied music…
Neighborhood
Hollywood
Well, it started when I was living in Hawaii with my family. At the time, my mom and dad were both in the military and my mom was deployed to Afghanistan for a year. During that time period, I was in the car when I heard a commercial on the radio about being an actor. That piqued my interest, so I told my dad. He said to remember that for when my mom came back. Time goes by and she came back, and I heard the same commercial. “Calling all actors!” I told my dad again and he took me…