Meet Isabella Vigil

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Isabella Vigil. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Isabella below.

Isabella, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

I think resilience is something I have learned through the years. It is definitely difficult to move out to another country to pursue a dream, and maybe more difficult to pursue a dream that involves becoming a professional artist. I was not used to big changes. I have always lived in the same country (Peru) and hang out with the same friends and had family nearby, and I was happy about having people I love around me, but when I got the opportunity to study Acting abroad I did not think twice before I took it. And all the changes started to hit me after a few months of living in New York City.

There were two things that helped me never gave up on my dream and put all my effort on it: my friends and family, and the awareness of all the effort my mom had put into making this happen for me. The first four months, I felt like my friends from back home were next to me all the time, we found a new way of communication that made me feel they were next to me and visceversa. I am very grateful because they did not let me feel lonely. Sometimes when I felt that things were too much for me, I would remember a conversation I had with my mom when I was younger; she used to ask me what would I do if I had all the money and time in the world. And I would answer, I would go to an Acting Conservatory and take acting, dancing and voice lessons and more, throughout each day. I really wished to be trained in this field, and when I got it I felt very grateful. Also, I knew we did not have all the money in the world and I really wanted to make the most out of this opportunity.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am an actor and in my mid-twenties I decided to relocate to NYC to pursue this career professionally. I started studying the Stanislavsky technique and after a few years I was introduced to Meisner. In The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, in NYC, my education was also Meisner based and I had the honor to learn about different acting masters. One of my most rewarding experiences in school was to work with professional director Sarah Blush in the modern satire: Men on Boats by Jaclyn Backhaus. This play showed me that I was able to do anything I wanted if I put my mind and body into it. First, I have always been inclined to do drama; but for this I was challenged with a comedy, which I end up loving. Second, all characters were male, so I had to do a lot of research on men physicality and play with my own body and movements to reach the result I was looking for. I really enjoyed this experience.

In New York City, I have had the experience to work with amazing directors from students and independent ones to known directors of big productions. I had the opportunity to work as a key performer in a MAX production: The Penguin, starring Colin Farrell; and a new Netflix production: Zero Day, starring Robert DeNiro. My experience in the last show was great because I got to watch on action a director I really admire: Lesli Linka Glatter, who also directed Love and Death starring Jesse Plemons and Elizabeth Olsen. At the moment, I was given a lead role on a web series called #Hashtag, directed by independent director Stephen Doe. This show is about a foreign influencer (Brianna) trying to make it in NY alongside her ambitious cousin who is also her agent (Blanca), played by me.

I look forward to having big opportunities to perform in the US. It is a big industry and even though I know it is not an easy one, I am grateful to have the chance to audition for productions I always wanted to be part of. Auditioning is something I really enjoy to do because I get to practice what I love the most: performing.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Three qualities that helped me move forward on my journey are resilience, responsibility and humility. After having a degree and having a job back home, I decided to start again. Moving to New York was an amazing decision, but it also came with many big changes for my personal and professional life. I used all the skills I had in me to keep going emotionally. I had to be gentle with myself and understand that not everything was going to be perfect. That sometimes I would not be able to finish an assignment, or that, at the beginning, it would be difficult to understand some of my classmates because of the language, or that there were going to be times that I would forget my lunch at home. All of those were common things that would happen at first. Then, it was important to find a balance between taking care of myself and being a responsible student. I was not only learning new acting skills, but also how to live by myself and be in absolute charge of the housework. Finally, when you have a big change like the one I had and thousands of people have when they move to a different country, it is important to be humble. There is an opportunity to learn from everything that surrounds you. Starting from different ways to have fun to encountering new personalities. I learnt so much from the people around me, including teachers, friends and classmates.

My advice to someone that wants to pursue an acting career in another country is to move out with a plan and then let it go. Things are going to work the way they need to work. It is important to be open to change. Follow a big line, but be okay if you have to move in curves to get there.

What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?

In the past 12 months, one of my biggest areas of growth have been time management. Being an actor means you don´t have a fix schedule and also means that some weeks are going to be totally different than the others. Being in actor is like owning your own company. You are in charge of doing things and of deciding when to do them. Some weeks I would have 3 auditions I wanted to work on, and some weeks I would have 5. I learnt how to find the time to study while I was working and also living my life, and then, to find a right time to submit the auditions. Also, sometimes I needed help, or a reader to make the scene work. It is a lot to do, but I think I learnt how to manage my time and also how to enjoy what I am doing. It is also important to feel comfortable putting yourself first, because not everyone around you is going to be happy if you change your schedule at work or cancel a night out with your friends because you have to study or have a shoot, but it´s important to accept the fact that in the acting business you are going to work with very responsible people that have a plan and know what they want and when they want it, and also with people that sends you the schedule the night before the shooting day. Building a net of friends that you can trust and count on when a plan changes is very helpful in terms of time management. It is important to accept that you can´t do it all, all the time, and that´s okay.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.isabellavigil.com/
• Instagram: isabellavigil

Image Credits

Headshots by Laura Iron.
Suppliant Maidens Rehearsal by Michele Illuzzi.
Elastic Advertisement by Andy Boyle.
Artfully Ignorant Short Film by Fara Boyce.