Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with Robyn Cohen

Robyn Cohen shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Robyn , we’re thrilled to have you with us today. Before we jump into your intro and the heart of the interview, let’s start with a bit of an ice breaker: What makes you lose track of time—and find yourself again?
When I’m in the work: communing with the audience, breathing in tandem with another actor, fully inside the moment — time disappears. The clock falls away. The noise quiets. My cells rearrange. I drop into something timeless, expansive, and true.

This happens in class, too — when I’m guiding an actor into the marrow of a scene, when the room begins to hum with presence and creative electricity. There’s this click — like the universe turning a key. I’ve seen it in my students. I’ve felt it in myself. We enter a field where nothing else matters — and everything matters all at once.

That’s when I lose track of time — and find myself again. Every time.

I believe that’s what we’re here for. To collide with our calling, to light up from the inside out, to remember who we are and what we were made for. And when we hit that chord — that resonance between what’s inside us and the world around us — we are brought home.

It’s not just a moment. It’s a return.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Hi, I’m Robyn Cohen — a professional actor for over 30 years, an acting coach, teacher, and the founder of The Cohen Acting Studio. Since graduating from The Juilliard School and earning a Masters of Fine Arts from The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington D.C., I’ve appeared in a variety of television shows, films, stage productions, national commercials, and toured the country with the Broadway musical “Cabaret.” It’s been a wild and amazing ride — and one I’m grateful for every single day. But there’s another side to the story: for much of that time, I was suffering in silence: dejected and disillusioned by show business and running myself into the ground. I was living inside the myth of the “starving artist,” and it almost cost me everything.

That’s why my studio — and my newly rebranded podcast, “Thriving Artists: The Daily Joyride with Robyn Cohen” — exists. My work today is a movement: to dismantle the belief that being an artist means living in scarcity, struggle, or burnout. I’m here to champion a new narrative — one of fulfillment, creative joy, artistic power, and genuine success — not just on the stage or screen, but in the life we build around our art.

My classes and coaching aren’t just about acting technique. They’re about expanding what’s possible for an artist: transforming the inner landscape, healing the relationship to craft and career, and creating a space where community, empowerment, and transformation thrive.

This work isn’t about becoming famous — although that can certainly happen too, if that’s what’s meant for you. It’s about creating lives we’re proud of. It’s not just a class or a podcast — it’s a mission. A call to rise. A reminder that the work is sacred. The art is holy. And the life we’re building? It’s meant to be magnificent. It’s about doing it messy, doing it bold, and doing it together — and I’m all in, for all of it!

Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
I believed I had to earn love.
That if I wasn’t dazzling, exceptional, applause-worthy… I wasn’t enough. That love was something to achieve — not something I was inherently worthy of.

I thought: if I shine bright enough on stage, if I get the grades, if I impress the room, book the show — maybe then I’d be worthy, and even better, I’d be safe. Seen. And loved.

That belief shaped me for years. I learned to hustle for my worth. To perform for approval. To collapse my creative success with my right to belong.

But I don’t believe that anymore.

Now, I know that love — real love — was never something I had to earn. Not from my family. Not from God. Not from the audience. Not even from myself.

It was always there. Quiet. Steady. Waiting for me to remember.

I’ve spent the last two decades unraveling that old story — and now, through my classes, my studio, my podcast, my life — I help other artists do the same.

We don’t rise by proving. We rise by remembering.

Remembering who we are.
What we’re made of.
And why we’re here.

We stop dimming our light.
We stop performing for approval.
And we start thriving like we were meant to.

Because that’s the revolution I’m here for.

That’s what I teach my students now — how to access the radiance that’s already within them. To let go of proving. To stop shrinking. To finally, fully be.

And to know that that is more than enough.

What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering taught me to stop outsourcing my worth. It also taught me that I was telling myself a bogus story.

Not just about what was happening… but about who I was.

When I didn’t get the part or book the job, I wasn’t just disappointed — I was devastated. Because I made it mean I was nothing. When the door didn’t open, I didn’t just feel frustrated — I decided I was a terrible actor, doomed, invisible.
Suffering wasn’t just in the circumstances. It was in the narratives I wrapped around them.

And those stories — unchecked — nearly took me out. Physically. Creatively. Spiritually. Success could never have taught me what that darkness did: That pain is inevitable — but suffering is a choice.

And that choice begins with the story we tell ourselves.

Now, I know how to rewrite that story.

Through the Grace of God, I now actually guide others out from under the shame spiral, the lies of scarcity and separation, the belief that they are only as good as their last gig or their best performance.

I’m no expert in cooking, or tech. I’m not the world’s craftiest DIY-er.
But I am an expert in my own life.
I’ve been through some fires, and these days, it’s the honor and joy of my life to get to hold the light for others.

What suffering taught me — and what I now teach — is that there is another way. A way rooted in compassion. Creative power. Ownership. A way that rewrites the artist’s story from “starving” to thriving.

And that, to me, is the most important work there is.

Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. What do you believe is true but cannot prove?
I believe we are all One.
Utterly, ineffably, indivisibly One.

Not metaphorically — literally.

I can’t prove it. I can’t measure it. But I feel it in the marrow of my being:
That there is no real separation between you and me,
between the dancer and the floor,
between my brother who passed and the trees that bloom each spring,
between the breath in my lungs and the sky that holds the stars.

I believe we are all made of the same sacred stuff —
stardust, stories, divinity —
and that this world of form and division is a magnificent illusion,
a training ground for remembering what we’ve forgotten.

That “individual” doesn’t mean “separate.”
It means “undivided.”

The lie of scarcity, of loneliness, of not-enoughness…
it vanishes the moment we catch even a whisper of this truth.
In the stillness between two heartbeats.
In the shared breath of a scene partner.
In the goosebumps when presence fills the room.

I can’t prove it.
But I believe it with everything I am:
That we belong to each other.
That we are already home.
That we are not here to compete or compare or conquer —
but to remember.
To reunite.

And when we do — even for a moment —
it feels like joy.
It feels like peace.
It feels like the truth.

Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. If immortality were real, what would you build?
If immortality were real —
if time stretched endlessly like golden light into forever —
I would build more Love.
I would build more Peace.
I would build a transmission of divine light
so luminous and irresistible it would reach into every crevice of suffering
and gently melt it into joy.

Not a monument made of stone —
but a living, breathing, global resonance.
A humming, radiant web of consciousness
that reminds us who we really are:
limitless, holy, interconnected beings made of stardust and soul.

I would spend eternity crafting a frequency,
a vibration, a curriculum of compassion —
a movement, a pulse, a force —
that unlocks human hearts and dissolves fear at its root.
Something that children could learn.
Something that artists could express.
Something that could outlive war and outshine despair.

It would not live in a building,
but in every conversation,
every city square,
every rehearsal room,
every dinner table,
every mirror.

If I had all the time in the world,
I would build a planet of presence.
A civilization of creative joy.
A love field that expands from Earth
to the next galaxy
and the next
until the entire cosmos is shimmering
with the music of healing, truth, and wholeness.

I wouldn’t need statues.
I wouldn’t need credit.
But I’d know, in every moment,
that I was helping to turn the tide —
from fear to love.
From performance to presence.
From scarcity to soul.

That’s what I’d build.
And I’d build it with every breath.

I’m on that mission now —
through my acting studio, through the podcast, through every class and collaboration.
We are rehearsing a new way of being —
on stage and in life.
We are unlearning the myth of the starving artist,
and building a generation of bold, creative souls
who are thriving in their power, presence, and light.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cohenactingstudio.com
• Instagram: @RobynCohenActingStudio
• Facebook: Robyn Cohen
• Youtube: The Robyn Cohen Acting Studio
• Other: Robyn’s Podcast: “Thriving Artists: The Daily Joyride with Robyn Cohen”
  Available on:
  Apple / Spotify / Youtube