Meet Madison Taylor

We recently connected with Madison Taylor and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Madison, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

Work ethic to me used to mean Forcefulness–powering through, not quitting, and making something happen for myself. But that burned me out pretty quickly. Instead of the results I pushed for, I’d end the day with all the little failures of what I didn’t do. I knew if I wanted to be in this thing, this career thing, this life thing, for the long haul, I needed to switch it up. I wanted something more sustainable, some kind of cleaner energy.

Instead of Forcing, I practiced Feeling & Trusting. Instead of ‘don’t stop til it’s accomplished’, I started getting candid with myself. I started to honor the ebb and flow of my natural energy cycles. How am I feeling about how I’m doing? How much do I have in me to give to this today? If I’m not ready for it now, how can I set myself up for it tomorrow? I released judgement and expectation, but held on to desire and goals. I built trust with myself by creating measurable bite-size steps and completing them, believing my instincts would guide me best. It became less about Productivity Rate and more about my Mind-Body Connection. It made me feel less like a rusty cog in the capitalism wheel, and more like a breath-filled human with an intrinsic life force.

And so far, so good!! I’ve become more aligned, articulate, and steady in how I work. It excites me, this meld of Discipline and Presence. It helps me tune into what I want most. It’s not about denying myself to achieve, but rather inviting more of myself to my own conscious experience. There’s a natural undulation between meditation & sweat, rest & focus. My body tells me what I need when, and I listen now. This is when I get traction, gain momentum, and take strides I’m proud of.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I am an Actor based in Los Angeles! Being an actor in LA is…wow, it’s a wild ride. It means I audition every chance I get, hear a whole lot of ‘no’, and then book dream-come-true contracts that end before I can process the new joy of it. But I LOVE the adventure! I love that it’s an industry built out of curiosity about what it means to be human, I love that it’s a journey of self-expression, I love that it’s a network of creatives working tooth and nail to be in it. It’s a lot of risk, a lot of grit, a lot of making money in other ways in the meantime, and a lot of self-care. So many of my Core Memories include movies & TV–borrowing TITANIC from the library the first time as a 12 year old with my girlfriends and sobbing all over the living room carpet, my dad & uncle wheez-laughing at the dinner table from recounting DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS scenes, the way EMPERORS NEW GROOVE stays somehow entirely relevant and quotable every time my sister and I see each other. I love too that film & theatre help us to encounter different ways of being, to learn a point of view we’d otherwise never consider. It helps us have compassion, gives us a way to disagree or be inspired, invites us back into our own lives with a fresh tenderness. When entertainment makes a meeting place for the real life people around you–yeesh. That’s what lights me up about it. And I’m working to make that happen.

You can stream my work on AppleTV+ as Morgan in feature film SEANCE GAMES METAXU. I most recently closed a theatre performance as Jo March in LITTLE WOMEN (Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company, CO), and originated the role of Rafaella in the World Premiere of IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPY (DOMA Arts Complex, DTLA with Play Down Cellar Theatre Co). Upcoming, you can catch me in TV Miniseries THE ANNIHILATOR and BIGFOOT & JEFF, and as a young Dee Wallace in THE DAY IS YOUNG short film directed by Taymour Ghazi. I study at The Markland Studio as well as Upright Citizens Brigade, and I achieved my MFA from the University of Houston PATP.

My inner tugs toward Imagination & Curiosity also brought me to education. I’m a part-time Teacher at Little Finch Forest School LA, an entirely outdoor toddler & preschool program. It’s patterned after Swedish environmental education, and follows a child-led pedagogy. Every day we meet at trailheads to hike out, and I love witnessing these children learn without the confines of four walls. The earth is our classroom. Our curriculum observes and responds to the students organic interests, promoting exploration, curiosity, and wonder. They’re experiencing responsibility from such a young age–how to assess, how to regulate, and how to relate out in the trees, wind, and sunshine. It’s absolute Magic.

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?

I’ve found particularly tasty artistic inspiration in three areas–training in the Suzuki Method, performing Shakespeare, and experiencing Ecology.

Developed by Japanese theatre director Tadashi Suzuki, this method of acting helps tune the body to the spirit. It’s a series of rigorous physical disciplines enlivened from our ‘animal energy’. It’s characterized by explosive movement, facial stillness, and group precision. If you search the Suzuki Theatre Training in youtube, it gives you an idea of the kinetic feast this movement is. It’s a fantastic way to explore intense physical expression with keen inner life. This practice concentrates on full commitment to each moment lightly, an entirety of effort with an entirety of ease, which has helped me translate my acting from stage to screen.

If the Suzuki Method of acting helps tune my body to my spirit, then performing Shakespeare helps tune my heart to my mouth. I’ve benefitted greatly from playing some of Shakespeare’s most iconic young lovers across this beautiful country. The text itself is a gymnasium to speak! It’s an athletic language, dancing back and forth between poetry and prose, thick with rhetoric, and dizzy with feeling. It’s an incredible training ground of linking thought to word, and of keeping moments active. The characters relationship with their own self is expressed through soliloquies to the audience, a juicy way to practice aloud what film requires as subtext. Performing Shakespeare also works out the muscle of taking larger-than-life circumstances and grounding them through personalization. There’s 400 years of distance between us and these imagined worlds, and yet connective tissue remains. Making the disparate parts cohere, the unimaginable relatable, the opaque transparent & pulsing–I believe this is a great part of an actors work.

I know ‘experiencing ecology’ feels like an outlier, but stay with me. During the 2020 pandemic, I had the opportunity to work with one of Nature’s Path organic farms on the south side of Maui for 6 months. They were experimenting with the Regenerative Agriculture farming model. This forever changed my relationship with food, with self-care, and with my acting craft. This approach prioritizes soil health and fights climate change by sequestering carbon more efficiently. It’s a holistic approach to land relationship, and is deeply rooted in Indigenous practices. My time learning here taught me a respect for the rhythms of life and a patience for the time it takes to tend what grows. I also found a direct correlation between an artistic life and this method of growing in biodiversity. At a cellular level, different roots attract different microorganisms, which in turn enhances the health and flavor of the plant. As artists, we are all joining in on a conversation with a far-reaching variety of social, emotional, and historical voices. Also, as an actor, there is a range of experience within me that is distinctly mine. The more range we allow ourselves to encounter, externally with each other and inwardly within ourselves, the healthier and more robust our expression will be.

My advice to any young actor starting out is Follow Your Bliss. Get after what lights you up, take it all in, share it in your own way, and respect the dignity of your own experience. Try not to judge it, downplay it, compare it to others, or mimic someone else’s path. Trust that gut of yours and enjoy the ride.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?

I’m happily hounded by the book, WOMEN WHO RUN WITH WOLVES. Clarissa Pinkola Estes is an American author and Jungian psychoanalyst, and in this book she compiles intercultural perspectives on the feminine nature. It’s a phenomenal read, and every time I revisit it I feel seen, grounded, and empowered. The stories highlight the strength of instinct, the beauty of the untamed, and the activating force of creativity. Our society is still extracting itself from stories that frame women as peripheral, as needing protection, as inadequate and ineffectual. This book flares against such limiting beliefs, and celebrates the innate power that is feminine energy. As Estes puts it, “A woman cannot make the culture more aware by saying ‘Change’. But she can change her own attitude toward herself, thereby causing devaluing projections to glance off…This dynamic self-acceptance and self-esteem are what begins to change attitudes in the culture.”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.madisontaylor.net
• Instagram: @madisontaylor_94
• Other: https://www.imdb.me/madisontaylor

Image Credits

Dana Patrick, J Bell Visuals, Anthony Tocchio, McLeod9 Creative, Jennifer Koskinen