Sierra Symone: Not Your Average Daddy’s Girl
You might say she’s come so far because of her privileged parentage, but Sierra Symone, daughter of megastar CeeLo Green, will affirm that her achievements have materialized because of her devotion and determination to see her goals realized.
Having moved beyond her days as the star of MTV’s Sweet 16 in which Symone was depicted as a spoiled Bentley-driving, out-of-control teenager, she has matured into an accomplished 21-year-old who has learned that to get what you want involves sheer tenacity and commitment. “I’m a big girl now,” says the wisely ripened Symone, “I use to shut down when I didn’t get my way, but now I just keep moving forward, trying to make things happen.”
“I know I’m very lucky,” she says, “I have an awesome dad who is also a great role model.” Yet for having one of the most famous fathers in the music business, Symone remains humble and hardworking, never taking her “poppy,” as she so sweetly refers to him, for granted.
“I know that as a celebrity daughter I have a bigger advantage but that only makes me more appreciative,” says Symone, “but I also know that it’s only action and drive that’ll get you where you want to go.”
Although she has sung backup on all her dad’s CDs, her upcoming solo album will spotlight Symone and her own unique style. She co-writes her lyrics, a talent she attributes to her father’s careful training. “He had me listen to artists like Robert Flack and Diana Ross,” she says, “and trained me to hear particular features about their individual music.”
In addition to her new album, Symone has a new show brewing on the Oxygen Channel. And having always had an eye for style and fashion, she now produces a cosmetics line called “Kiss and Makeup” and she is in the process of opening a signature boutique venture in Atlanta.
While others her age may be partying or “trying to find themselves,” Symone will be the first to acknowledge she does not have much free time to waste. “My motto is work, work, work now, play later,” says Symone. And she pulls that off by spending her time traveling between Atlanta, Vegas, Miami and Los Angeles.
“I already know where I’m going,” says the unshakeable artist. And for those of us with an eye on Sierra Symone, watching her journey is sure to be a ride both entertaining and inspiring.
Movers and Shakers: “You Look Good … for Your Age.”
By Blane Bachelor ~
The comment wasn’t meant to be a dig, but it was impossible not to take it that way.
“Oh my God, you look great for your age!” a 20-something gushed to me recently.
Just to clarify: I’m thirty-friggin’-one, people.
Let me back up a minute. About once a month, I host media networking parties, and it’s my job to welcome first-time attendees. Which is exactly what I was doing in striking up a conversation with this woman. She had just moved from a city where I interned the summer before my senior year of college. She asked when I graduated, and I could see the pieces clicking satisfyingly into place in her mind: I was – gasp! – in my early thirties!
This revelation must have been stunning for her two 20-something sidekicks, too, because they both chimed in with comments like “Girl, you don’t look 31 at all!” and “Good for you!”
In a nanosecond, I went from feeling like the hip, in-the-know hostess to an American Idol reject. I mean, I know our society is obsessed with youth and all, and I know I look younger than my years. But for the love of Botox – I’m thirty-friggin’-one! When did being 31 start provoking those sort of “for your age” qualifiers – the ones that reverse a compliment into a snarky little dig?
Even more alarming: What did this trio of teenyboppers think a normally aging 31-year-old should look like – a wrinkle-infested, cane-wielding, muu-muu-wearing spinster who couldn’t possibly be out in public on her own?
To be fair, I’ve been a little more sensitive about the age issue lately. I look in the mirror and fixate on the lines that have etched themselves in my forehead. I see the roundness of my cheeks, which are a large part of the reason I often still get carded, and imagine that before long they’ll have drooped into jowls so long I’ll be able to wrap them around my neck like a scarf.
And, while I recently was grooming my bikini line, I almost fainted when I thought I saw a single gray curly. It wasn’t, thank heavens — just a much lighter one among a patch of dark. But it was a serious wake-up call that one day both the drapes and the carpet are going to lose their shiny luster, along with the rest of the façade as gravity takes its inevitable toll and Father Time, damn that bastard, marches forward.
I’m sure some 40- or 50-something woman will be reading this and roll her eyes, much in the same way I want to snap in half those twiggy little women when they pinch a quarter-ounce of skin and shriek that they’re fat. But it’s at those weak moments when I’m nitpicking my reflection, or confronting flippant remarks from girls a decade younger, that forking over hundreds of dollars to have the bacteria that causes botulism injected into my face sounds like a fine idea.
The thing is, those moments aside, I’ve never felt more confident, more at home in my skin, more me than I have in the last year or two. Of course 31 isn’t old, but it’s a crying shame that our youth-crazed culture has made enough of an impression on at least three 20-somethings that they had to throw in the “for your age” qualifier as they assessed my appearance.
And despite all the talk of “40 being the new 30” and the population aging in record numbers, there’s still plenty of collective trepidation about getting older. At the dentist’s last week, I glanced through AARP magazine, and I couldn’t help notice the contradiction in an organization that trumps getting older gracefully putting a story about looking younger on its cover.
So what do we women do amidst all this age angst? We make plastic surgeons multi-millionaires. We delight in the fact that Demi Moore is married to a smoking-hot husband 15 years her junior.
We also resort to less classy moves, like making the distinction between ourselves and our older friends, even if it’s just in our minds. Just as I did the other day with a friend who’s three years my senior when we were commiserating over her ex’s new flame.
I asked how old the trollop was. “Our age,” my friend said, and I felt the urge to respond, “Don’t you mean your age? Because I’m only thirty-friggin’-one!”
A catty thought, indeed. But at least I held my tongue. Because, unlike those twenty-somethings, I respect my elders.
Blane Bachelor is an internationally published writer, syndicated columnist and author of On Being a Bachelor: Thoughts on Dating, Mating and Relating, a book based on her popular and long-running newspaper column. Bachelor has written hundreds of articles and columns about dating, relationships, travel and pop culture for outlets including Marie Claire, Women’s Health, People.com, Tango.com, Modern Bride, Zink!, the Christian Science Monitor and USA Today. Her dating advice column, “Ask a Bachelor,” appears in newspapers nationwide. And yes, Bachelor is her real last name. Visit her website at www.askabachelor.com.
Movers & Shakers: Christine Taylor – The Holiday Celebration Never Stops
Crown Features Syndicate™ ~ 
When you think of Scrooge, the odds are the last person you’d connect to his yuletide-bashing way of thinking is Christine Taylor, an actress who truly is all about sweetness and light. She’s a mom of two, the wife of Ben Stiller, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty from the factory town of Allentown, PA who never has a disparaging thing to say about anyone or anything. A nicer woman you will never meet.
So how did Taylor wind up playing a woman who positively loathes Christmas and all it represents in the Hallmark Channel Original Movie “Farewell Mr. Kringle” premiering Saturday, December 4 (8 p.m. ET/PT, 7C).
“I guess that’s a pretty good question,” Taylor says with a laugh. “Yeah, that Scrooge thing isn’t really me. But the truth is that the film is truly a love story. My character finally sees the light, literally. This movie just has a lot of heart. So it isn’t like this was really so weird for me to play. I mean, come on. It’s a Christmas movie on the Hallmark Channel!”
That it is. In “Farewell Mr. Kringle,” Taylor stars as Anna Wahl, a magazine writer who hates everything the yuletide stands for, from the warmth of the season to Santa Claus. So naturally, she’s assigned to do a story about a small, charming town named Mistletoe with Christmas-themed street names and shops and Kris Kringle (W. Morgan Sheppard), who has been assuming the persona of St. Nick for 50 years. The skeptical Anna blows into town ready to scoff at and ridicule everything.
But Anna slowly opens up to Kris, who it turns out has something sensitive in common with the writer: he, like she, lost his spouse at Christmastime. This of course helps explain Anna’s negative feelings about the holiday. But as she interviews the townspeople, she’s charmed rather than irritated – especially after meeting an ex-divorce lawyer (Christopher Wiehl) whom she falls for. The only question that remains is whether the power of love on Christmas will prove magical.
“It has such a great message,” Taylor believes. “I just had an awful lot of fun working on the movie. It brought me back to the whole belief and innocence I had as a kid about, you know, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy. ‘Mr. Kringle’ is kind of like a Hallmark card, you know, just really warm and appealing and reassuring. The director also gave us a lot of license on the set to just sort of play and explore, do some improv stuff, which was fun.”
A certain amount of make-believe had to be navigated during the shoot as well, given that it was shot during the spring in Simi Valley, CA in 95 degree weather but was supposed to be a cold day in December. “Poor Morgan (Sheppard) had to wear this hot Santa Suit while it was boiling outside,” Taylor recalls.
“But I’ve got to say, I’ve never worked for Hallmark before, and it’s just a wonderful company to act in a project with. They’re all about creating a great working environment. The crew does a lot of these movies together, they are like family, and they really embraced we actors, too. It was all just an amazingly positive experience.”
Like we said, you will probably never hear Christine Taylor complaining about much. She’s a glass-half-full kind of gal, and the positive vibes just sort of flow out of her constantly. It’s really been that way since she had her first high-profile introduction to America when she was cast as Marcia Brady in 1995 in first “The Brady Bunch Movie” and, the following year, in “A Very Brady Sequel.”
Taylor has worked pretty consistently in films and TV ever since, including appearing in three of her husband’s comedies: “Zoolander” (2001), “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story” (2004) and “Tropic Thunder” (2008).
But over the past few years, Taylor hasn’t put out a lot of effort to advance her acting life with small children at home in eight-year-old daughter Ella and five-year-old son Quinlin. “The kids come first and the career comes in second now,” she says matter-of-factly. “You don’t get a second chance to spend time with them at this age, and I want to spend as much as I can. It has to be something special to lure me back to the set.”
“Farewell Mr. Kringle” provided just such an opportunity for Taylor. “It was a dream job for me,” she found. “I was able to do it Monday through Friday, never working longer than a 12-hour day. I was able to wake up with the kids and drive them to school and go to work and be home before they went to bed. My attitude toward work now is that it needs to fit into my life, works for the kids and fits the family dynamic. But now that I’m a mom and I’ve taken a few years off, I don’t take the work for granted. There’s a real freedom in it for me now.”
There was another reason this project particularly appealed to her. “It’s important to me that my kids see what I’m doing in my work and I don’t have to hide the kind of material I’m in,” Taylor says. “A Hallmark thing is obviously family-friendly. I mean, right now, I wouldn’t want to go onto a horror movie set. But it’s a good thing for my daughter to see that mommy goes to work and comes home and can still be a mom. I think it’s a good example to set.”
Christmas season is a wild time in the Stiller-Taylor home, in part because it’s also Hanukkah season. Taylor was raised Catholic, while Stiller is Jewish. So their kids wind up getting both Christmas Day and the eight nights of Hanukkah, a tree and a menorah – eggnog and latkes.
“It’s a little bit nutty for sure,” Taylor observes. “I always had a very traditional Christmas growing up in Pennsylvania with all of the usual stuff. All of the houses in our neighborhood would be lit up. We left notes for Santa and played Christmas music. And we still do all of that now. I’m very particular about how my tree is lit. But we also do Hanukkah, and I think it’s great for the kids to have all of the traditions under one roof.”
Sometimes, the Christmas tunes grow to a bit too much for her hubby, Taylor admits, “and he’ll casually go into the other room and turn off the Nat King Cole.” But the truth is that Stiller too grew up with as much Christmas as Hanukkah in his house, she notes, since his mother Anne Meara grew up Irish Catholic even though she converted to Judaism.
“It’s a nice hodgepodge for us,” she sums up. “We just throw everything in the pot, and it all works. Plus, Ella’s really gotten serious the past year about the Jewish religion. She’s got lots of Jewish friends at school. She even came home and wanted to make latkes. But the bottom line is that, no matter what we’re celebrating, it’s all about spending time with family. That’s what makes it special.”
But this year it’s going to be even cooler, because mommy’s starring in a Christmas movie.
“My daughter especially is going to get a big kick out of that,” Taylor predicts. “It’s bound to make things even crazier in our home than usual.”
“Farewell Mr. Kringle” premieres Saturday, December 4 (8p.m. ET/PT, 7C)
Movers & Shakers: Emily Ransom ~ First Place Winner Andre Sobel Award 2010
Emily was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia at age 11. Through her experience with cancer she learned to appreciate relationships with others and to embrace opportunities in life. The Andre Sobel Award gave Emily the chance to share her story with others. Emily knows the feeling of lying in a hospital bed being told you have a terminal illness. Fear, confusion, sadness, loneliness, and even anger take over your body as the message sinks in. Emily hopes that others will connect with the feelings and emotions she felt throughout her journey and that they will continue to fight back. Never give up hope!
Today, Emily is a healthy 18-year-old living life to the fullest. She is currently a freshman at Boston College in Massachusetts. Her major is Elementary Education and she plans on becoming a kindergarten or first grade teacher. She is honored to be part of the BC community and has happily transitioned into college life.
The Andre Sobel River of Life Foundation helps with urgent expenses to allow single parents to stay at their child’s bedside during catastrophic illness. Learn more about the foundation at: www.andreriveroflife.org.
The poem Emily wrote is meant to inspire others on their journey back to health:
I Had Cancer; Cancer Never Had Me
By Emily Ransom
It is not my blood under that microscope
They must have mixed up the vials
I will never have to take steroids or chemo
Nausea will not overtake my body each morning
I am not sick, that blood is not mine
My hair will remain attached to my head
A port, what is that? I will never know
Other kids will not pick on me because of my appearance
I will never sleep in a hospital
I am not sick, that blood is not mine
I will never be a cancer patient
Mutated cells are not destroying my body
My life will not change
I will wake up from this horrible nightmare
I am not sick, that blood is not mine
I lost weight because I didn’t eat
I didn’t eat because I wasn’t hungry
I was pale because I didn’t go outside
I didn’t go outside because my body ached
I was exhausted because I didn’t sleep
I didn’t sleep because I couldn’t quiet my mind
I was weak because I didn’t exercise
I didn’t exercise because my muscles were feeble
I didn’t play with my friends because I watched T.V.
I watched T.V. because it didn’t take any effort
I wasn’t acting like a normal eleven year-old because I was different
I was different because I had cancer.
It was the chlorine in my drinking water
It was the polluted air in which I breathed
It was the genes passed on by my parents
It was the radiation emitted from the microwave
I am trapped in a body that sabotaged me
It was my blood cells that mutated themselves
It was the spoiled milk that I drank
It was the pen cap I chewed on for days
It was the school lunch I consumed
I am trapped in a body that sabotaged me
It was the time I didn’t wear sunscreen
It was the rusty nail on which I stepped
It was the aerosol spray that entered my lungs
It was the pesticides sprayed on my food
I am trapped in a body that sabotaged me
I swallowed the pills because I was sick
I was sick because of a mutated cell
I cried that morning because it hurt to stand
It hurt to stand because my muscles were sore
I fell down in the shower because my back gave out
My back gave out because it was poisoned
I wore a bandana because my hair fell out
My hair fell out because of the chemotherapy I took
I lay in my bed because I was stuck in my room
I was stuck in my room because I couldn’t walk down the stairs
I didn’t look like a normal eleven year-old because I was different
I was different because I had cancer
I take back the time I yelled at my siblings
I take back the mean names I called my friends
I take back the anger that escaped my body
I take back the times I forgot to say thank-you
Why is this disease destroying my body?
I take back the times I broke something special
I take back the lie I told my mom
I take back feelings of jealousy towards my peers
I take back the time I said that I hated my family
Why is this disease destroying my body?
I take back the time I ruined the surprise party
I take back the guilt that I made my dad feel
I take back the envy I felt for my sister
I take back the times I pretended to be sick
Why is this disease destroying my body?
I wanted a cause for my terminal illness because I needed a reason
I needed a reason so I would stop blaming myself
I stopped obsessing for answers because I had to face reality
I had to face reality because the truth is that I may never know the cause of my disease
I learned that cancer was more than a disease because it changed my life
It changed my life because it threatened to take it away
I continued to fight because I wasn’t ready to die
I wasn’t ready to die because I had much more to accomplish
I didn’t think like a normal eleven year-old because I was different
I was different because I had cancer
It was my blood under that microscope
They didn’t mix up the vials
I had to take steroids and chemo
Nausea took over my body each morning
I was sick, that blood was mine
My hair because unattached from my head
A port was an IV’s pathway to my veins
Other kids did pick on me because of my appearance
I slept in a hospital for more nights than I can count
I was sick, that blood was mine
I was a cancer patient at Fletcher Allen Health Care
Mutated cells were destroying my body
My life changed dramatically
I never woke up from that reality
I was sick, that blood was mine
I look at the world with different eyes because I am a survivor
I am a survivor because I never lost hope
I look forward to the future because I know it is bright
I know that it is bright because I will embrace every opportunity
I will pursue my dreams because I desire to become a teacher
I desire to be a teacher because that is my destiny
I am thankful for my doctors, nurses, family, and friends because they helped save me
They helped save me because I had a life to live
I am proud of myself because I conquered leukemia
I conquered leukemia because I am strong.
I had cancer; cancer NEVER had me.
Movers & Shakers: Who is Susan G. Komen?
There is hardly a mention about breast cancer prevention without the reference to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. But do you know who Susan G. Komen actually is and how this dynamic organization came to be?
Movers and Shakers: Sally Asling and Sarah’s Story ~ How Self Esteem Can Affect Your Success
Sally Asling, inspirational Author, Speaker, Mumpreneur and Voice for Young Women tells of how Self Esteem plays a huge part in women’s lives and their chances of success and how their teen experiences can contribute to their lack of self esteem.
Since launching my own business, writing a book and breaking away from the corporate world, I have been actively promoting Women in Business and writing about how Women can “have it all” in life, their career, their family, their dreams, by doing things on their own terms. The hurdle most women have? It’s a poor sense of self esteem. When we discuss it, it’s something that’s plagued them all their life.
When I was a teen, I had a loving family and came from a good background with a good education. However, background and education disappear when bowing into peer pressure. My first sexual experience, in those critical teen years was a drunken fumble that turned into a sexual encounter I had anticipated, but not understood. Far too late the word “no” was futile and unbelievable. Later to only be called names by those in my peer group my Self Esteem fell into tatters; I became anorexic, which in itself is a mind altering disease that tears your confidence to shreds in one way or another.
I went through university then into the corporate business world, met a great man and got married and now have a family, however the search to find that inner Self Confidence and Self Esteem took almost a decade to repair and heal itself.
People confuse quite easily external confidence to inner Self Esteem. Having great Self Esteem and confidence doesn’t mean you have the loudest voice in the room. Real Self Esteem is how you feel about yourself, about liking yourself and being confident about who you are, and radiating this positivity from within.
But where do we get that from? How or when is it taught? If we have it, what happens when a life changing event takes the wind out of our sails and pulls the rug from under us? How do we build it back up?
It is a fact that for a child to develop positive Self Esteem they need to feel appreciated loved and wanted, to have a sense of achievement and be encouraged to make choices of which they are supported within. This is the same for adults regaining self esteem. A positive Self Esteem is pivotal to a positive mental attitude towards life. Self Esteem affects how you think, how you act and how you relate to other people; it also has a direct impact on your happiness and wellbeing. Without a Positive Self Esteem the road to success in all aspects of life will be hindered.
In 2009 I met a girl called Sarah whose story is told in my book Appreciating Angels: Sarah’s Story. Sarah was viciously attacked after being a victim of peer pressure and that evening alone left her with no self esteem. I could relate to this on a much lesser scale; however Sarah’s story demonstrates how poor self esteem led Sarah through eating disorders’, promiscuous behavior and resulted in self harming and suicide attempts.
A year after it was written I created a series of workshops to accompany the book dealing with Self Esteem and exploring the issues that are raised. In addition I am launching a national campaign ‘EsteeN’ to make PSHE education in schools compulsory, and that PSHE should make one if its focuses on Self Esteem.
With a positive Self Esteem and PSHE our teens should be shown how to differentiate between what is “real” and what is not. Teens learn about sex mostly from their peers and learn from magazines from as young as 13 years old. Good PSHE education should be building Self Esteem, discussing Sex Education as an emotional journey and not just as biology. STD’s and peer pressure should be equally accessible along with open discussions on self image separating what we see in the media and what is real, so that our Teens have a clear sense of Self when dealing with events in the real world.
So what a breakthrough it will be to take active steps in getting our schools to start installing a positive Self Esteem into our youth today. A positive self esteem that will give them the confidence to handle themselves with the respect they truly deserve.
Movers and Shakers: Jennifer Esposito in “The Wish List”
Jennifer Esposito might be excused for believing that her latest project was written specifically with her in mind. She had been married to actor and “A-Team” star Bradley Cooper in a union that lasted mere months in 2007, a time that was understandably difficult. But today, she’s engaged to be married to Australian tennis pro Mark Philippoussis in an example of the kind of happily-ever-after we all eat up.
So it has to be seen as a kind of kismet that the vivacious Esposito, 37, finds herself starring later this summer opposite David Sutcliffe (“Gilmore Girls,” “Private Practice”) in the Hallmark Channel Original Movie “The Wish List” premiering Saturday, August 28 (9p.m. ET/PT, 8C).
The film finds Esposito portraying Sarah Fischer, an anal-retentive, by-the-book human resources executive for a book publisher who has had it with bad dates and thus decides to create a “wish” list featuring all of the traits a man must have to meet her stringent criteria. But then after she meets Mr. Perfect, the question will become: does she really want him?
Was Esposito following her own personal wish list after meeting and dating Philippoussis? Probably not. But we can at least call this a case of serendipitous timing.
“All I know is that I had a blast doing this project,” Esposito offers. “The director Kevin Connor was wonderful, just so great and accommodating. It was a really sweet script.
“But it was crazy. My character is so nutty that her wish lists get totally out of control and I had like 36 wardrobe changes during one two-day period. Seriously! Thirty-six of ‘em! It would be like, one line, change wardrobe; another line, change wardrobe.
“After a while I finally just asked, ‘How about if you just shoot me from the top for a while so I don’t need to change what I have on below the waist again?’ It literally was something like 120 wardrobe changes during the five weeks of the shoot, which is just totally obscene. But it was so much fun to do.”
The Italian-American native of Brooklyn is certainly no stranger to changing clothes, or characters. Her busy career has spanned both regular TV series (“Spin City,” “Samantha Who?”, “Judging Amy”) and feature film (“Crash,” the 2006 Oscar winner for Best Picture) roles. She also got a spear through the chest in the 1998 horror sequel “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.”
This fall, Esposito also has a recurring role in the medical drama “Mercy” in which she portrays a Mafia daughter who has an affair with James Van Der Beek’s doctor character.
“Some people might see it as a little stereotypical, the Italian girl playing the mob daughter,” Esposito admits, “but the truth is that it’s like the first time I’ve ever portrayed someone like that. I’ve been a lot of things, but never that.”
But it turns out that Esposito is doing a lot of new things these days. Being happy in a romantic relationship is one. Another, more challenging aspect of her life surrounds a curveball that life served up in 2009 in the form of Celiac Disease, a somewhat rare, inherited, autoimmune condition in which the lining of the small intestine is damaged from eating gluten and other proteins found in various grains and likely a host of other foods.
“It was my wake-up call,” she says. “Finding out I had Celiac told me I had to change my life. I knew that I’d been sick my entire life with something, yet I could never figure out what it was. Here I had this time bomb ticking inside me that really could have killed me inside of a year – and I had no idea.”
What has been especially difficult for Esposito to face in the wake of her diagnosis are the dietary restrictions, being the self-described “foodie” that she is.
“There’s no processed food in my life, there’s no wheat, there’s no bread,” she laments of her cleansing diet. “I love to bake, I love to cook, so to learn that in order to get better I can’t eat everything I adore was devastating. But I’m dealing with it. And you know, gluten-free bagels are pretty good. Especially the ones I bake.”
Other than the Hallmark movie – which was shot in Southern California – Esposito is more than content to stick close to her home base of New York doing the occasional series guest shot, hanging with family and working on her Celiac-themed passion projects that include a new cookbook.
She grew tired of living in Los Angeles. “The energy I put out there that wasn’t reciprocated from such a narcissistic business,” she laments. “It means more to me to be home around people who care about and love me and give back to me, and to be able to put my energy into something that really matters.”
Esposito also cherishes her work teaching acting in New York both privately and through the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.
“I also am able to teach kids privately as well,” she says, “and to be able to give something back to my profession that way is just the greatest thing in the world. It allows me to be with people who radiate a positive energy, as opposed to so many of the people in my profession who couldn’t care less if I’m around or not.”
Her illness has proven a blessing in disguise in terms of bringing her a perspective that was previously lacking in Esposito’s life. It’s allowed her to get off of the career treadmill that forced her in her mind to work constantly or miss out. Now, she’s able to pick and choose her spots and be far more discriminating.
And that’s where “The Wish List” came in.
“It was one of the jobs I’d been offered just after my diagnosis, and I really wanted to do it despite being kind of physically on the bubble,” Esposito recalls. “They allowed me to bring in my own food and lay down when I really needed to.”
She also now finds herself being cast as an expert and advocate for a malady that Esposito shares with “The View’s” Elisabeth Hasselbeck, MSBNC host Keith Olbermann and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” regular Susie Essman, among others.
“On the set of ‘Mercy,’ the woman doing my makeup was telling me all of her symptoms, her thyroid problems, how it all ties in,” Esposito says. “It all comes down to what your eating is what’s eating you. But you just don’t know until you’re armed with the information.”
The bottom line is that Esposito now has a goal in her life that has nothing to do with the next role, the next gig. And it’s given her a freedom she’s never felt before. “I feel like my life is full now, finally,” she stresses, “and I don’t even need a wish list to feel that way.”
“The Wish List” premieres Saturday, August 28 (9p.m. ET/PT, 8C).
Movers & Shakers: Childhelp, USA ~ Champions For Children
Childhelp founders, Sara O’Meara and Yvonne Fedderson first met on the set of The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, when they played the girlfriends of Ricky and David Nelson. Their mission for children began in 1959 when they were sent on a goodwill tour to visit troops in Japan. Check out this video about their ongoing effort to combat child abuse. Learn more about the organization at www.Childhelp.org.
Movers & Shakers: Erin Withers and Picture Healing
She’s an entrepreneur, a philanthropist and an energetic go-getter. Meet Erin Withers, who co-founded one of the most creative outlets to benefit charitable causes, Picture Healing. The Savvy Gal caught up with her to uncover how this Mover and Shaker is set to make a lasting impact with the launch of this new service.
1) Who is Erin Withers?
I love to travel… everywhere! When I’m not out in the world, I enjoy reading, cooking (and eating!), and spending time with family and friends. I am a certified Pilates instructor and scuba diver, a competent ballroom dancer and chocolatier. I have a passion for tea (black, herbals, and tisanes), play the cello (though not very well), and skydive whenever the opportunity presents itself.
2) What is your professional background?
I have a 15-year background in Clinical Pilates as both an instructor and Program Director. I also started my own gourmet chocolate business about five years ago, which I have kept fairly small and local to preserve the quality of the product.
3) What are you most passionate about?
Creating opportunities for people to help each other and to ultimately help themselves. As it was so eloquently expressed by a truly Savvy Gal, Eleanor Roosevelt: “When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.”
4) What has been your greatest personal triumph?
Getting Picture Healing off the ground. This may sound like a professional triumph, and it is, but launching this platform for unlimited philanthropic benefit is the fulfillment of a life of standing by and feeling helpless as I saw friends, family, animals, and complete strangers suffer and sometimes die from conditions, and events beyond their, or my, control. Giving back is the best revenge!
5) What is the most challenging part of your life at this point?
Staying organized! … And L.A. traffic!
6) Can you describe what Picture Healing is and how it works?
Picture Healing is a philanthropic photo hosting and sharing website. Users earn points for each photo they upload, referring friends, and using all of the other features on the site. Those points are converted into contributions from our ad revenue to the causes that they select. Our affiliate organizations receive their own custom Hub within our site, inclusion of all of their events on our event calendar, and bi-annual donations among other things.
My partner, Christopher Brereton, and I set out to create a forum for people to learn about philanthropic giving, to those who may have never been exposed to the idea before. Users can also contribute to causes that they are already familiar with, simply by doing something that most of us do on a regular basis – backing up our photos from trips and events onto a website and sharing them with friends and family.
7) What is your chief role at the organization?
Officially, I am the Co-Owner and Director of Administration, but we all wear more than one hat around here! Some days I’m on the phone or sitting in front of the head of a major non-profit organization negotiating a contract, and then two hours later I’m in my Picture Healing t-shirt taking photos at an event, followed up by the uploading/editing of the photos to the site and maybe going over a marketing idea or design layout with our amazing team.
Check out Erin’s charitable site at www.PictureHealing.com.
Movers & Shakers: Natasha Henstridge ~ From ‘Species’ Babe to Dog Whisperer
It’s one of those basic truths of Hollywood that Natasha Henstridge always had heard: Never work in a project with children or dogs. The reason, of course, is that they will steal your thunder and make you effectively disappear.
“And so what do I do?” Henstridge observes with a laugh. “I do a movie where I work with both! Great career move, eh?”
Well, maybe it is. The film of which Henstridge speaks is the Hallmark Channel Original Movie “You Lucky Dog,” which premieres Saturday, June 26 (9p.m. ET/PT, 8c). And in it, not only does she have to compete for camera attention with canines and kids, but also sheep.
In “You Lucky Dog,” the statuesque Henstridge – who burst on the scene with her sexy, mesmerizing role as a genetically engineered alien/human hybrid in the 1995 sci-fi thriller “Species” – portrays a New York City fashion designer who returns home following the death of her mother to help restore her family’s struggling cattle farm to function and profitability.
Henstridge’s character, Lisa Rayborn, adopts a Border Collie named Lucky that was recently dumped by a competing rancher, who works with the dog tirelessly to turn him into a sheep herding stud and save the farm. Harry Hamlin of “L.A. Law” fame plays her brother, Jim.
“What inspired me to want to do this movie is that I have two sons of my own now, and it seemed like a great opportunity to have a role in a family movie my kids could watch,” Henstridge explains. “Plus, the storyline wasn’t such a great leap for me, about a small-town girl going to the big city and all of that.”
It wasn’t exactly a snap being around all of those kids and animals, either. They had to shoot around a fire and winds so heavy Henstridge says she often couldn’t hear her own dialogue.
“But working with the animals and the kids was the easy part,” she reasons. “They were just amazing and professional.”
Henstridge cites as an example one time during the shoot when she was trying to convince her father to keep the sheep they had imported for the farm. In the story, her character, Lisa, is supposed to have a heck of a time rounding up the sheep and moving them from one side of the farm to the other.
“Instead, it’s the opposite!” she recalls incredulously. “As soon as I told the sheep to ‘Go west,’ they went. On the first take. They listened to me completely, and they weren’t supposed to. We wound up having to perform more takes to show me screwing it up. I was too good for my own good!”
In some ways, that incident mirrors Henstridge’s own experience as a young phenom. Born in Springdale, Newfoundland in Easternmost Canada and raised in a small town in Alberta, she became legally emancipated from her parents at age 14 so that she could move to Paris and become a model.
Having the right height, the right blonde hair, the right blue eyes and an exceptionally beautiful face, Henstridge landed on the cover of the French edition of Cosmopolitan at 15 and followed it up with several other covers along, with a slew of TV commercials for perfumes and cosmetics.
“It was a big life change, for sure, and a massive culture shock,” Henstridge admits. “Then my first movie (“Species”) turns into this major sleeper hit when I was 21.
“All of that success so fast definitely spoiled me and did a number on my head. There was a too much, too soon aspect to it, for sure. I got pulled into this world where everyone wanted to meet me and see what I was about, and I wasn’t ready for it skill-wise or mentally. It’s easy for me to see that now.”
Some struggles followed for Henstridge as she worked to become a real actress rather than simply a former model with a splashy acting debut and a killer body.
“I heard a lot that I didn’t look everyday enough to play certain roles,” Henstridge recalls. “They’d tell me, ‘We can’t believe you, because you’re just too pretty,’ which is both a compliment and a curse at the same time. But I was determined to go beyond being the girl from ‘Species’ with the body.”
That she has. At 35, Henstridge has played Donald Sutherland’s right-hand woman on the political drama series “Commander in Chief” (2005-06). She was cast as an astrophysicist in last year’s miniseries “Impact.” And she most famously depicted a lawyer on the offbeat legal drama “Eli Stone” (2008-09). She also had plum roles in both the 2000 comedy “The Whole Nine Yards” and its 2004 sequel “The Whole Ten Yards” with Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry.
“I’m really proud to have been able to make that switch to intelligent roles,” she says, “which with my looks wasn’t easy at all.” She calls her time on “Eli Stone” “just phenomenal. The scripts were terrific. We had an amazing chemistry. It was a brilliant undertaking. But the show went away far too soon.
“It was a special experience, one that’s spoiled me. Once you’re done something you adore as much as I did that, everything else you try out for seems secondary.”
Henstridge also has certainly found that being an actress means having to learn patience. The past two years – or since learning that “Eli Stone” was canceled – she has worked to get back onto a series during the hectic time known as pilot season, when studios cast performers and shoot pilots for possible inclusion on the future prime time schedule.
“I turned down a film to be here this year for pilot season,” she admits, “but I didn’t get what I went for. It’s tough. The year before, I held out for a show I really wanted while passing on something else. Both years, I came up empty. So now, I’m completely jobless. I’ve learned a lesson that you can’t always be as picky as you want to be.”
Henstridge still has her physical being standing in the way of roles sometimes, as well. “Lately I’ve had a lot of hearing, ‘She’s too tall.’ I’m 5-foot-9 1/2, which is like 6-foot-5 in acting height. But what am I going to do? I can’t shrink.”
While shooting “You Lucky Dog” just outside of Toronto, Henstridge received words of encouragement from Hamlin, a performer who has done pretty well for himself in Hollywood over a career stretching more than 30 years.
“What an amazing, misunderstood man Harry Hamlin is,” she observes. “You think of him as just this good-looking ‘L.A. Law’ guy, this laid-back guy from UC Berkeley. But what he is, is this incredibly intelligent, kind, giving, funny human being who has led an amazing life, who tells terrific stories and adores his family. Harry is a lovely man. He made my time working on this film just a total joy.”
When she looks at what Hamlin has managed to accomplish, it gives Henstridge hope for her own future.
“I know something great is going to come along,” she says. “I just need to keep that understanding close by. And in the meantime, it’s pretty great that I get to star in something for Hallmark that makes my boys proud of their mom.”
The Hallmark Channel Original Movie, “You Lucky Dog” premieres Saturday, June 26 (9p.m. ET/PT, 8c).
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