Chantal's Hollywood Adventures

Hello my lovely subscribers, readers and friends,  So.. I love LA, it's an amazing place and I couldn't be happier to have the opportunity to be living here but coming from Essex in England to the huge City of Los Angeles can be a bit of a shock. I was here for over a year before returning back to England and then coming back for the remainder of my two years out here. I've put together this little post for you Brits who can't decide if LA is for you or not. I had a friend recently who came to LA to do some applied theatre work and after being here for only a few weeks, she told me she couldn't understand how I could live here and it was nothing like she expected. It's always hard moving to a new place and adapting to a new way of life, I've certainly had difficulty adapting but once you get used to the way, it can be very worth it if you allow it to. Anyways here's a few things for you to know before making a decision. 1. It's nothing like t...

Hey Guys,  My first week back in LA has been a bit of a whirlwind already. After returning home to England in May and being convinced I would be able to afford to come back for my second year, it feels almost surreal that here I am in September sitting in an organic coffee shop on sunset boulevard writing this blog.  I really had the best summer, although I spent most of my time working, I made the most amazing new friends, who definitely made the whole process so much easier. I've never worked anywhere where we all just click straight away, but working for Coca-Cola over the summer really showed me that there are people who can really make an impact on your life, even if you haven't known them for very long. I had another one of my dating fiasco's as per usual which only ended up in an awkward situation of having to work together on a deserted man made beach in the middle of a theatre car park in Camden...don't ask. I also found out that in the space of two short m...

Hello my lovely readers,  So, the other day I was with my best friend and her fiancé and we were talking about the difference between dating in Los Angeles and dating in Britain. Whilst spending the last year in LA I had a bit of a whirlwind in the dating department and realised that many of my dates were misconceived by what dating a British girl means. Now really it shouldn't make a difference where you're from right? but, from my experiences and from many of my British friends, there definitely seems to be different rules and ideas on what it means to date a Brit.  Here I've written a little fun blog on 11 tips to consider before you go out into the big wide world and date a British woman. Enjoy :) 1. Don't make fun/mimic her accent. As I've learnt from dating in LA, it's not fun when your date spends the whole night mimicking your accent because 'it sounds funny and posh' . Please stop, we've heard it all before, its not...

Hey guys, I hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful sunny summer weather, oh sorry my mistake if you're in England then you're probably probably ditched the swimsuits for something more practical like a raincoat since all its done is rain since I got back in June (typical British Summer for you). Anyway apart from the horrible weather it's definitely felt good to be back in London mainly because I can buy a packet of healthy nuts without spending $10 and scoffing them down in a record breaking limit of one minute. One of the main things I was looking to do when I came back to the UK other than work my butt off to actually afford to return to LA is to get a lifestyle photoshoot done. This includes a range of different outfits that represent you and your life. I was searching for ages to find a photographer whom was affordable but that cold take a decent picture. I searched Google for ages and found a few photographers but nothing that really stood out. Most of the peopl...

Hey guys, Before moving to Los Angeles I always very much believed in ' method ' acting and using substitution in order to get into character. For all you non-actors or starting out actors out there who may not know what 'substitution ' is I will briefly explain. Substitution in acting terms is when you take situation from your own life to replace the emotion within the scene or character. By replacing the characters situation with one from your own life helps to trigger an authentic emotion that assists you as an actor to feel and respond truthfully. My first semester at  The American Academy of Dramatic Arts  was dedicated to finding different activities and practices to initiate my substitutions. As a class we analysed this method through the book Respect for Acting by Utah Hagen, before putting the methods into practise. So, now for the big question.. Does substitution actually work? Well, I believe that this question is a subjective because everyone is differ...

Hey Guys, So.. my last month in LA was a bit of crazy one. My apartment lease was up at the end of April so I didn't really have any other choice but to move into an air b n b for the remainder of my trip. I'm still not too familiar with the different places in LA so choosing a place that wasn't too far from my my campus, where I was still currently working limited me to only a few places. The first one I moved to I only lasted for two days because it was probably the most disgusting place I had ever stayed in. The place turned out to have nearly twenty people living in the one house with, where the neighbours would play music all through the night and I was grace with a pair of stained sheets on my bed. Refusing to stay there anymore I decided to leave and move to another apartment close to Beverly Hills. Although it did cost a fair bit more at this point the money wasn't really an issue, so I finally moved into this new place. It seemed really nice unt...

Hey Guys,  I hope everyone is ready for a great sunny weekend (unless your in somewhere like England because it will probably be raining, sorry) I know that I am.  I can't believe I finished school now over three weeks ago, it's gone so fast but I've enjoyed every minute of it. I'm currently sitting in a little coffee shop with my passion fruit ice tea whilst I reminisce to myself about all the great memories I've made over the past year here in LA.  Looking back on my life from when I was in England to now I cant believe how much my life has changed. People warned me before I moved to LA that I would come back a completely different person and I always thought to myself, can people really change to that extreme, but this year in LA has proved to me that the experiences you go through can impact your life drastically and change you as a person. I have learnt so many lessons out here but the one that has really stuck with me is remembering that everyone in life...

Hey guys,  I am currently sitting on the plane at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank waiting to go to San Francisco to see my family, whilst I write this last blog of the year about the American Academy of Dramatics Arts . Thursday was officially my last day at The Academy . We had been working for the past three weeks on two exam plays that we would perform at the end of the term. I was lucky enough to have two of the most amazing casts and two of the best directors. The thing that made the experience so worth while was that both directors had very different styles of directing, one which was more research based and the other was physically based and all about jumping straight into it. I loved learning about different ways of working and how as an actor you need to be able to adapt to these changes. The whole experience showed me how far I have come as an actor since I first started and enabled me to evaluate myself, so I know which areas I need to improve. I am so sad for my first y...

Hey my lovely readers, I hope everyone has had a great weekend. So, today I am writing a blog about a recent boudoir photoshoot I had done and the reason behind choosing to do this specific one. Although I am actress, I have always had an interest in modelling, when I was younger I was in a child modelling agency and booked a few different shoots. I loved it and felt so free and proud, however, as I grew older I became less and less confident with my body. I have always been short and and this was something that really made me uncomfortable. I would always get people making comments on this and although they weren't usually said to be in a negative way, it still just make me shy away more. I felt different to a lot of girls and when I would read fashion magazines such as Vogue I felt very jealous by all the models, who were tall, skinny and seemed to have perfect curves all in the right places. I always wished that I could look like that and it upset me that I would never be a...

Hey guys,  On Tuesday night I went with a family friend to watch the play The Revisionist by Jesse Eisenberg (from Social Network) at The Wallis in Beverly Hills . After previously reading the synopsis I went into the theatre with the knowledge that the play would be focusing on the Holocaust and the destruction it had caused, however, when I actually sat down to watch the show I realised that it was completely different to what I had originally anticipated.  I love watching different types of theatre and being an actress I feel that this is a very important part of research. For the nature of this blog post I will start by reviewing the set design and the writing before moving onto reviewing the acting qualities  (which is my favourite part).  For the set I was extremely impressed with how it was set out. The stage was set up in the middle of the of the room with the audience seated on either side. The stage was set up as a house, fea...

I have now been living in Los Angeles for eight months and there is still so much that I find a mystery about the States.  I love living in the States, but I there is a lot that will never quite understand. So, here goes my top ten list of what confuses me most about living here. 1.  The term 'Fuck boy'.  I hear this a lot, especially when I'm out clubbing and I point at a guy to show my friends if I think he's hot or not and usually I get an awkward stare from my friends and then they will say "you don't want to date him, he's a  fuckboy"  hmmm...OK then! Eight months later I am still unsure of what it really means, although my guess is that it's equivalent to what we call a chav. 2.  Driving.  Ok, so for a British girl with dyslexia remembering my left and right is already a nightmare. It took me 3 times to pass my theory and 2 years to actually learn to drive with an instructor that would constantly say to me 'I don...