We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Elena Campbell-Martínez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Elena below.
Hi Elena, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
Honestly, I think like a lot of people, my confidence and self-esteem are a “work in progress”. I guess the main way I’ve built and re-built them has been by reminding myself of what I’ve already managed to overcome and achieve. I was raised in a chaotic, violent home, so a feeling of safety was something I always searched for. When I was little, my go-to coping strategy was to make myself as small as possible, keeping my voice and my presence quiet. In high school, I realized that wasn’t good for me, so I started taking little baby steps to spread my wings and use my voice. I gradually built my confidence and tried to keep it from backsliding by reminding “five-year-old Elena” of my past wins. The other way I’ve sustained my self-esteem and confidence has been by taking the focus off myself and putting it on others. When I’m focused on helping someone else, whether it’s a client or a scene partner or a friend, I’m less likely to go down that rabbit hole of how I might not be “enough”.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I moved from Guatemala to Los Angeles 20 years ago to start my career as a TV and film actress. I had just spent 6 years in Guatemala as a volunteer, running the social work department for Common Hope, a non-profit that serves low-income families with school-aged children. While I was working there, I started doing community theater — initially my sole purpose was to try something that seemed fun — but also terrifying! But once I actually got on a stage, I found so much more than that, and I kept coming back for more. I found a wonderful teacher to study with and ended up doing 12 plays in 4 years! So I came to LA to continue the search for fun, growth and community that I’d found in the theatre in Guatemala. I’ve always said I will keep doing this as long as I can still get what I need from it – which for me isn’t measured in dollars or “likes” on social media. I love a great story. If I can be a part of telling a story that people need to know, from a voice that has historically been marginalized or silenced, so much the better. And I’m coming into a phase of my life now where I’m getting to play the strong, wise Latina characters that I grew up admiring in my own family – which I love! Whether it’s a network TV show, a feature film or even a low-budget short film, I get so much joy from collaborating with artists who are telling our stories and representing our people in their art. I also love my work as a financial coach, because I think most of us were raised with little to no financial education in our families. So I love helping my clients find more clarity and even more fun in the way they organize their finances! I named my company “Drama-Free Taxes” because tax prep was the service I first saw a need for — giving my clients a chill, no-drama path through what can be the most stressful part of many people’s financial life.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
For me, community has been a critically important component of my journey. I’ve always sought out community, even before I consciously knew what I was looking for! And that has become even more important over the past four years. Find your community because it can be a very lonely business, particularly now when we don’t leave the house as much as we used to. Find your community and get what you need from them and more importantly, be generous with what you have to give to them.
Secondly, I’ve never burdened my art with getting the rent paid. That’s a really big burden, and art is a very beautiful, fragile little thing that we don’t want to crush with something as heavy as, “This has to pay my bills.” Someday your art may pay all the bills easily, but we don’t all start out like that. So just have pride in yourself for having work — it doesn’t matter if it’s work that’s associated with the entertainment business or not. But figure out how to pay your bills, so that you can have some energy and joy to give to your art — because your art cannot thrive from lack. You can’t grow from the starvation of your soul or your body.
The third quality that’s been instrumental on my journey is that I’ve tried to live a full and interesting life. Before my Guatemala era, I was a management consultant for 14 years, and I worked a LOT of hours every week. I did my best to take vacations and spend some time with family, but it really felt like my whole life was just all work for a long time. I took six months off before moving to Guatemala which I called “The Year of Living Dangerously” which of course for me meant getting out of my comfort zone, traveling alone, taking a photography class in Mexico, driving around Europe alone in a borrowed car. Once I moved to LA, a fellow actor gave me some advice that I rejected wholeheartedly (and I have never regretted that). She said that as an actor I’d never be able to take any time off, because I wouldn’t want to miss any opportunities by being out of town for example. And I said no, been there, done that. I choose to live my life, and the opportunities that fit into that will be ones that are for me. So I tell younger actors all the time: Live a full life. If your whole life is this work, that’s not a full or interesting life. A full life contains whatever you can squeeze in: a family, partner, sports, hobbies, and pets. And that full life will bleed into your work and make your work better.
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
The best gift my parents gave me was that they both fully committed to making sure their four kids learned both languages – English and Spanish – with fluency and without accents. My dad was from a small town in Southern Illinois, and learned Spanish in high school and college, so he spoke accented Spanish. My mom was from Guadalajara, Jalisco, and she moved to the States as an adult, so she spoke accented English. When I was a baby and started to speak accented English like my mom, they realized they had to make a plan. They decided that my mom would only speak Spanish to us and my dad would only speak English to us. And that’s what we did no matter what. Our dinner table conversations always included both languages, but we were never allowed to mix the two languages in a sentence. Because they rightly said that we needed to make ourselves understood to people who weren’t bilingual. The trajectory of my life, which includes three years in Mexico City as a management consultant, six years in Guatemala as a Social Work director, and now 20 years in Los Angeles as a working actor in both languages, as well as the countless friendships I have around the world – none of this could have happened, or been as rich and rewarding, in only one language.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://campbellmartinez.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elenacampbellmartinez/
- Other: https://dramafreetaxes.com/
Image Credits
Viken Kazandjian Isaak Berliner
