An Acting Career in Fits and Starts

As the writer’s strike rolls on, actor Ericka Kreutz reflects on her love for the industry

Ericka Kreutz, actress. (Photos: IMDB)

When I was a tween, I had to get allergy shots every week. During the needle’s painful, slow release I would shut my eyes and silently repeat a meditation to myself:  “Acting, acting, acting, acting, acting.” The drama club was my happy place and I couldn’t wait to rush back to rehearsal for my school’s production of Anything Goes. For me, acting was bigger and brighter than any physical puncture they could give me. 

I recalled this memory as I circled the Disney lot, picketing in solidarity with the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA). As an actor and member of the sister union SAG (our own strike looms), I have shown up to support writers. These have been peaceful, doughnut-filled, social meetups. But the conversations all tend to circle back to job loss. Major job loss. And dread at how drawn-out this standstill might be.

Sitting with the silence of my non-ringing phone, I’ve found myself reflecting on my bumpy career as an actress and how, for better or worse, I’m in it for the long haul. 

I pursued acting relentlessly. It was all I wanted to do. After college, I packed up my Shakespeare lexicon and moved to New York City. I got a waitressing job working brunches. One morning, in a tizzy to refill coffee for table 32, I pulled out an industrial-sized pot while it was still brewing and a lump of scalding wet grounds hit my hand. I watched my stinging skin burn and thought to myself, “acting, acting, acting, acting, acting.”

I would wake at 4 a.m. and take the 7 train to 46th Street to stand in line for open calls. I scoured the trade papers and hustled to every audition listed. I got gigs here and there. I performed in makeshift theaters in bar basements, and eventually worked up to performing in regional theaters in Cincinnati, Burlington, and Knoxville. I booked a few commercials for pharmaceuticals and mayonnaise.

When Wall Street crashed in 2008, I lost my receptionist job, hostess position and catering gigs all in the same day. I scrolled online as theaters across the country closed their doors. I tossed my IKEA furniture to the curb, bought my mother’s old Passat off her, and moved to Los Angeles. 

L.A. felt weird. It was oddly quiet, except for the hum of constant traffic and clicking chatter of ladies at lunch. It was hot white sun, low beige buildings, mirrored closet doors and vertical blinds. I sent out my picture and resume to anyone who had an address. I used my savings from a NyQuil commercial to pay for casting director workshops. I made a handful of connections and received calls for small roles on TV. The first time I walked onto the Paramount lot I practically passed out from sheer adrenaline and joy.

And just as doors started to open, I became pregnant with my first son. As my belly grew, I shared the news with my agent. She wrote back a terse email: “Cool, let me know when you’re back.” Back? Wait, what? 

I had finally gained a little momentum in this career and now it was on hold? 

Seeking reassurance, I signed up for a reading with a well-known astrologer. She would, no doubt, see it in the stars that I would be able to juggle motherhood and my acting career. 

She examined my zigzag-y chart of symbols and dates and told me something like Neptune was transiting Pisces; what a beautiful opportunity to just wade in a river and feel the wonders of pregnancy. She invited me to stay present, to connect to my growing body, to breathe deeply.

I stared at her blankly. This was not my thing. I mean, no offense to all you breathers out there, but my energy was better suited for pounding pavement, not floating downstream. I was a dramatic actress, after all and I needed something more sensational, like maybe a guest star role on Grey’s Anatomy?

Grey’s didn’t call. Nor did anyone else for that matter. 

So I signed up for prenatal yoga and experimented with exhaling. I attempted to connect to this miniature bouncing human inside as I chanted in a circle with other moms-to-be. 

Two years later, my second son was born and I sunk deep into mom mode, unrecognizable to my former self. My days consisted of pushing a double stroller down the jerky sidewalks of Los Feliz, chasing garbage trucks because my cracker crumbling children found them captivating. I scowled at young tattooed couples nursing their cream-topped lattes as I passed. I had morphed into a crabby woman in salmon-colored maternity pants who didn’t care.

I wasn’t auditioning. Heck, I wasn’t bathing. I lived in a two-bedroom apartment full of rainbow gates and bouncy things. I felt dead inside.

I hysterically ran back to my astrologer begging her to tell me I hadn’t completely lost myself, that I would find my way back to acting.

“I see that your identity is very important to you,” she said. “What if you loosened that grip on yourself?”

At no time did she use the words “windfall”, “stardom” or “Vince Gilligan.”

I left her tranquil office, tried my best to soften, and attempted to find new ways to identify. I found a therapist and used all her tissues. I told her that I had recurring nightmares that I was interminably stuck in waiting rooms and asked her if it might be time to quit acting for good. She said we could start the grieving process next week if I was ready.

But the truth was, I couldn’t quit. Acting was in my blood, the only thing that made me feel truly alive. Cut me and soliloquies spill out.

I called my agents and told them I was “back”. Although this time around, I felt different. Motherhood had split me open and laid me out flat. My brain synapses worked considerably slower and I wasn’t as quick with comedy. But my emotional well had been dug deeper and that translated into some dramatic work. My first gig back was playing a dead body in the back of a truck for a zombie show. It was a start.

Then the pandemic arrived and all production ground to a halt for what seemed like forever. And yet, even with a worldwide health crisis, Hollywood transitioned and found its footing. My kids were invited back to school, temperature-taken and double- masked. Productions persevered with drive-up Covid testing and Zoom auditions. 

When I finally returned to set, I felt so grateful and elated for any morsel of work, any opportunity to return to storytelling and be a part of it all.

One job had me rigged and suspended 40 feet in the air. As the giant crane raised me higher and higher I relaxed into the stirrups. I felt the wind slap my cheeks, my clothes flapping furiously on my skin. I stretched my arms and screamed my lines into the heavens thinking, hot damn, this is everything. 

Now I find myself in another void with the writer’s strike. It’s a fight well worth fighting — a fight that puts humans first. But with no work in sight, I feel like a naked turtle panicking without a shell.

But I’ve been here before. The fits and starts. The full stops. The transitions. And I know what I have to do. So, I lace up my boots and join in picket lines on the outskirts of Paramount. I stand for what is right and equitable in this fickle industry. 

I bounce my picket sign in the wind and chant in a chorus of the collective voice. 

And I stand with my community. ‘Cause anything goes.