This is Our Story

We're the Sprayberrys and we moved to Los Angeles about four years ago to have our go at Hollywood. When we met the folks at Children In Film, they thought it would be a great idea if we documented our story. After all, our failures and successes (hopefully more the latter than the former) can be your lesson book.

So here you have it - Dylan and Ellery working through the ups and downs of being child actors - their mother and I working hard every day to ensure their success not only as actors, but also as well-adjusted members of society.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Desire + Endurance = Success

It’s March 24, 2010 and my job has come to an end, the hotel I managed was sold and I was replaced... it happens. So I jump in to help my wife Dana with running the kids to school, auditions and all the things she had primarily been taking care of for the last two years. As school let out and summer began, we decided I would take care of Dylan and Dana would handle Ellery. You know, split up the running around for auditions and all kid-related business matters.

As we continue our journey which has been going on for four years now, we go through levels of growth, and with that our kids become a bit more defined as to what type of actor they are. I'm sure a lot of showbiz families experience this. What I mean is you see what their range is and how they respond to different character roles. I will write another BLOG on that subject later on; this is a BLOG about Dylan’s success and the very hard work that came with it during the summer of 2010.

Dylan, as a rule, ends up in leading roles or as an ensemble lead or supporting lead. With these roles come big sides/scripts and more often than not tricky characters with many layers. The roles require research to really take in the entire landscape of the film and characters. In short, Dylan was fortunate in going out for many theatrical auditions this summer and many of them brought on big and tricky characters, which takes time and serious commitment. The good news is you grow as an actor with this hard work in the same way as if you had practiced baseball all summer or gymnastics and so on. The point is, our kids do get better with this expensive and time-consuming investment and there is measurable benefit in the kids' growth as actors and this is a big part of the actor's journey.

So after coming in second on a few significant roles he finally booked a fun role. Parents, let's pause and really appreciate how hard it is to book a role; if your child is booking theatrical roles, you are very lucky so please CELEBRATE!!! As your kids do, Dylan has worked so hard to get "so close;" it makes you crazy at times. We hear, "he’s not the look" or "he’s too tall,"... "oops, wrong color of hair," "he’s too much of a heartthrob," "the director didn’t connect with him." It's like we're thinking, "when will he get a break????"

Well, after much hard and excellent work, he did; he gets to fly to Vancouver for three weeks where he will work with a fun ensemble cast of kids and dogs. One of the actors is a friend of his; how cool is that?! Dylan is so very excited, and we are so very grateful and of course proud of him for booking this fun role.

Through the process for the film “SPOOKY BUDDIES,” he auditioned for three different characters and, again, finally booked one. Yes, it was a hard and relentless summer of work for Dylan, but it paid off and he will have the time of his life in Vancouver, but it didn’t come without hard work and resilience... lots of resilience!!!


Have a great school year!

~CS

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