By Kevin Woodhouse
www.thesuburban.com
After graduating from Westwood High School in 2002, Vanessa Lengies went to Hollywood to pursue her dream of acting full time after having worked in Montreal and last week, she returned to Hudson and her alma mater to talk to 200 drama students about her experiences.
While working on such programs in Montreal as Radio Active and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Lengies was able to balance work in the classroom and on a film set, determined to get a real high school experience as she “didn’t want to be home schooled,” she said. “I wanted to be part of student life.”
In fact, Lengies credits Westwood Senior High for having the energy to take rejection in Hollywood, an all too common trait for actors. “I went on 75 auditions last year and was able to get one job so when ask me why I’m so positive and I tell them it’s because of my high school,” said Lengies who also took part in student life activities.
One event where she heard a guest speaker talking to leadership students about “leadership and kindness, “It changed my life, I got deeply involved in student life as I realized were all in this together and how great can it be when we are kind to each other.”
This attitude helped her take on the tough business wrought with failure but Lengies, who is a regular cast member on Glee, told the students to “develop a positive attitude now and it will stay with you the rest of your life.”
“Write, make movies, act–you can have any job in the world and be a story teller–you need to share those stories even if they`re not pretty; share those stories because that is where life will happen,” Lengies told the drama students as well as suggesting that their formative high school years are the best venue to try different aspects of art to find their true creative passion “because after that, it’s real life, where you have to think about things like paying the rent.” Lengies will be appearing in the ABC comedy Mixology that will air early next year.
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