It’s a safe bet that Faith Salie is the only Rhodes scholar doing sitcoms in Hollywood. She starred as the lovably intellectual Eleanor in the critically-acclaimed improvisational comedy Significant Others for NBC/Bravo.
Faith grew up in Atlanta and began her career in musical theatre. After graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard (where she performed the lead roles in Cabaret, Lysistrata, and Grease and also tangoed with Matt Damon in A… My Name Is Alice), she won her graduate scholarship to Oxford University. While completing her MPhil in Literature, she performed at the National Theatre of London and at the Edinburgh Fringe as the lead in Antigone, Chess, and Assassins. In 2002, she was part of the Ovation Award-winning LA premiere of The Laramie Project.
On the small screen, Faith has appeared in both dramas and sitcoms, most famously wearing nothing but gold lamé on Sex and the City. Having been beamed up on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, she is proud to be a “tradable life form” for Trekkers. A busy voiceover artist, she can also be heard on the animated series Astro Boy. In addition, Faith is a stand-up comic who appears regularly as a pop culture pundit on a variety of VH-1 shows.
Behind the scenes, Faith is the co-creator and executive producer of the new VH-1 reality show Spin Cycle. She has written for the Oxygen Network shows Girls Behaving Badly and Guys Behaving Badly and created a reality pilot for Endemol USA called The Done Thing.
Faith’s hobbies include baking Coca-Cola cake and giving it away before she can eat it. More information is at http://faithsalie.com.
My parents would say I wanted to be an actor all my life. I would place it at about eleven years old when I took an acting class in Dunwoody, Georgia. I was playing soccer and had Sunday School class—well, when you’re Catholic, Sunday School is on Tuesday night—and my parents always encouraged us to do whatever we wanted. I said, “I want to take an acting class.” I had been cast as the judge in a play in the sixth grade. It was all in rhyme. I liked it and I think I was probably the most successful because I was the loudest. At that age, they’re looking for someone who can articulate, read, memorize, and be loud. It’s all about projection! I’d been dancing since I was three, taking tap and ballet, so I knew I liked performing.
I would not be where I am today without my parents. I probably sound so cliché, but it is the truth. They were never the least bit “stage parents.” I remember being frustrated, wishing they had been more “stage parent-y.” I remember getting into a professional children’s company at the age of fourteen and thinking I was old. I felt like I was a late bloomer because there were these people who had been doing it forever and they could twirl batons and they had sashes and they would come into auditions with their tap shoes on and their sheet music. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe my parents didn’t help me more!”
When I wanted to get an agent, I was fourteen and I sat down with a phone book and I opened it to Theatrical Agencies and I wrote these letters—I gave them to my mom to do on the typewriter and she’d do them verbatim—and signed them, sent them off, and followed them up with phone calls. And then if I got an interview, my parents would drive me. But I remember going to auditions and feeling just sick and nervous: “I don’t want to go.” I remember my dad would slow down the car and say, “Oh, I’ll just turn around.” And then I had to say, “Oh, no, no! I want to go!” And he’d say, “Okay.” They were that sort of chill about it, which I think was pretty smart of them to do. I had to be the one to say, “I’m choosing this lifetime of rejection.” I’m only kidding! A lifetime of alternate rejection and success.
How do you handle rejection?
I can’t conceive of how I would deal with it or whether I would still be acting if I hadn’t had the family I had, because, I think if you want to be an actor you just have to think you’re a little bit special. That’s not “better than” other people, but you obviously think you have something to say that people should listen to. Or you think that you have a way of expressing what other people want to say that people should pay attention to. I understand that some people come to acting because maybe they never felt loved enough and seek that approbation from the public. I had the opposite story. I was insanely loved, made to feel very special and smart and pretty and all those things. Who knows if I was “all those things” as much as my parents told me I was, but in my mind, I thought, “I can do this.” I feel like that sort of unconditional love comes from coming home and saying, “Mom, the kids at school said I was fat,” and her telling me, “You’re not fat. You’re athletic. They’re just jealous.” That whole mentality, if you instill it in a child from day one, it kind of sticks with you.
It’s always hard to deal with rejection. Something gave me healthy calluses early on. You carry that through life: “They didn’t like me? Somebody else will. They didn’t like me? I like myself. They didn’t like me? My parents adore me.” I feel very lucky. I really don’t know how other people do this career. I don’t understand that. An actor without healthy calluses is a walking wound of a human. They’re just raw. When you’re given compliments and approbation, it feels wonderful, but it must be such a temporary psychic hug.
What was your first paid gig?
I was fourteen. I did a voiceover for a cartoon and I think I made like seventy-five dollars for about an hour’s work. My brother was eighteen and he had to work at a pizza place and mow lawns to make that much money. When you’re fourteen and you make seventy-five dollars—that is pretty amazing. There’s a theatre company I was involved with called the Atlanta Workshop Players. They had a children’s touring company. It was teenagers mostly performing for kids in other schools. I think we made twenty dollars a show. That instilled such dignity in me: “I’m a professional.” It encouraged me to act professionally: to show up on time, to practice at home, to know my lines, to go over it in my head on the way to the performance. It’s not mercenary. It really is about instilling professionalism. I think that getting paid at that young of an age—even though it wasn’t much—affected my whole adolescence: “I’m a working professional. I go to school and then I leave school and I go do my job.” There’s a sense to knowing that what you do is worth something, literally.
What makes someone a “professional” actor?
There is a very literal sense in which you can say a professional actor is someone who gets paid for it. What if you felt like you were a professional actor but you weren’t getting paid for the work you were doing? That’s a minefield and way too pat to say. I do sometimes look around at people who are thirty-five, don’t have health insurance, moved to LA ten years ago, go to scene study class twice a week, call themselves actors and I don’t know if they would be called professional actors. I don’t mean to sound condescending; I just don’t know where that line is. You almost want to say, “You could move to Montana and you could star in every community theatre play and have a house and not have to wait tables.” So, I guess I don’t have a good answer to that question.
However, professionalism is being on time; it’s having a strong sense that what you do is important and not just that you speak a part in a play. Professionalism is doing things on your own time—not showing up to rehearsals thinking that’s where all the work takes place—being there for everybody else on the team when it’s really a scene about them. I’m on a TV show now and I feel like every member of that crew is family. Maybe that’s because I’m on a show where there isn’t a huge star. It’s very much an ensemble—and for the most part people think “an ensemble of unknowns” although we’ve all been working for years—and the sound guy is my buddy. I think that’s part of being professional: being part of a team. You’re not more important because the camera’s focused on you. Guess what, if the guy behind the camera doesn’t want you to look good, you’re going to look bad.
Who’s to say what defines you as a professional actor? Is it the day you earn your insurance through SAG? You know it’s changed so much. Didn’t it used to be that you had to make six thousand a year and now it’s eighteen thousand dollars or something? And next year it’s going to be like twenty-seven thousand dollars for Plan I? I got my insurance in 1998 and I had been here two-and-a-half years. I had dental, which was all very exciting. The thing is, I had been acting professionally as a teenager and then happily put the professional acting on hiatus while I was in college—where I was doing tons of theatre—and then grad school. Neither in college nor grad school did I want to major in Theatre, but I was doing tons of theatre. It was the greatest experience of my life. It was amazing. I knew that I had this amazing creative outlet and became a much better actor and singer and dancer during college and felt like the same thing would happen during grad school. It did. So, I was in England for grad school—I won a scholarship my senior year of college that I couldn’t turn down—and right before I left, I auditioned for this TV movie-of-the-week with Donald Sutherland and Anne Bancroft and Diane Lane and got this pretty major part. You don’t know when you’re twenty-two how awesome that is. I’d leave Heathrow and fly back to Atlanta and shoot and then fly back and fly back again. It wasn’t a huge part but it was a huge break. I was Taft-Hartleyed for that job, but I didn’t have to join SAG because the job was in a right-to-work state. Then, two years later, when I left England and moved to LA, I realized that I should pay the money and get my SAG card.
What made you choose Los Angeles?
I still think about that: “Should I have gone to New York?” To me, New York is like when you backpack the summer after you graduate high school in Europe. You buy a Let’s Go and you go with your friends and you get a Eurail pass and it’s awesome. I would never do that now. Never. I would have it all planned out; we’d stay at really nice hotels—making sure that every one of them had a gym. I remember being in Egypt and running past men with guns and jumping over animal carcasses. I would never do that now!
Well, I feel that way about New York. That’s what you do either early on when you’re totally ready to be a poor, starving artist and you think it’s cool or you do it when you’ve made it and have a nice view of Central Park. But I do have friends there and I go back and forth—in fact, I’m going next week to pitch a show. It’s fun. It’s nice to do the back and forth.
But to answer the question, when I left England, it had not been sunny for four months and it was truly depressing. I had been studying for my exams and I needed the sun. Plus my college boyfriend was from Beverly Hills so I was familiar with the palm trees and the sun. I went to a college where tons of people went into the business and a lot of them were already out here. I moved out here already having a great network of friends.
How did you get your first LA agent?
I went to Kirk Cameron’s mom, Barbara Cameron, who was in Woodland Hills. She had an agency and mostly represented child actors and worked out of her home. She was representing Christine Lakin who was a little girl I used to baby-sit from the Atlanta Workshop Players. So, she was the only person I knew. I drove out there. She was very upfront: “I only represent kids, but sure, I’ll send you out.” She did, but the first audition that I got—and I got a guest star on a series—was because a friend from college was writing on the TV show. Actually, I had an audition before that because a friend was a writer for Beverly Hills, 90210, which I didn’t get.
In the beginning it was all about friends and now, again, it’s all about friends. Those friends from back then are now running shows. I have the most creative, amazing, brilliant people in my life with whom I would be friends whether or not we were in the same industry. It’s gotten to a point in my mind—because now I’m producing a show—that if you have two people to choose from and they’re equally talented and one of them is your buddy, that’s not nepotism. Why else do this if you can’t work with your friends?
You never know when you’re planting seeds. When I was a sophomore at Harvard and I was doing Lysistrata with Mary Dixie Carter, and Lindsay Jewett (now Sturman) was the producer bringing in Entenmann’s donuts, I wasn’t thinking, “This is going to serve me in the future.” I had no idea what anybody was going to be doing. But I was having an amazing time and I admired my friends. So you keep in touch. It’s having faith that your friends will use you when the time is right. You should never have to ask your friends, “Hey can I audition for this?” That creates an awkward relationship. If your friends are looking out for you and vice-versa, they’re going to call you in when it’s right. They save their bullets until it’s time to tell a network that this is your show.
I feel very lucky to be at a point in my career—and it’s only just beginning—now that I’m producing this show. I feel very lucky to be able to bring people in who I know will do me proud. And when I’ve met with people who aren’t right for it, it just means their creative juices would be better served elsewhere. It’s not weird or awkward. As long as I’m honest and not making promises I can’t keep, it works.
Did you know that you would end up wanting to produce?
No. I was so reluctant. I love acting first and foremost. Not to sound like an artiste, but I think that when you are an artist and that is your identity, there’s a lot more ways to express yourself than just acting. Frankly, if I could be hired right now and be as busy as Meryl Streep and have ten movies lined up and two plays, then I wouldn’t give a thought to producing. Acting is always my priority. My acting plate isn’t so full that nothing else can fit on it.
I have the blessing in my life of having a manager who encourages me all the time to do more: “Oh, you’re an actor? But look at how good you are at stand-up comedy. If you can write a joke, you can write this. If you can write this, you can produce this.”
What do you consider your first break?
Being born to my parents was my first big break. After that, I would say Significant Others. I was recurring on a sitcom in ’98 for one season and that was cool to drive to a set and have a parking space and a regular check, but I was still just in for eight weeks and didn’t know everybody on the set. Significant Others is definitely my break, but it’s not just because it is the first time I am a series regular. It is a break in my mentality. For better or for worse, it is outside legitimacy. You can walk around all day long knowing you’re a professional, but to have a secret gun in the back of your pocket is huge. When I go into an audition and I don’t get it, I walk out saying, “Oh, man, I wish I’d gotten that. But I’m still a lead on a show.” I honestly wish I didn’t get that extra sense of confidence from it, because that’s fleeting, and it only came because I got cast on this show and it could go away. But there it is. You’re like, “Here’s my resume. I’m the lead on a show.” It’s an important thing for me to recognize about myself, that I gain confidence from being cast. I need to try to transcend that, so that I feel confident and secure in my talent whether or not I get a part, whether or not I have a job.
The big lesson I’ve learned is that there’s never just one shot. This show may be cancelled, I could be recast, but I’m producing a show. Guess what. I’ll put myself on it! I’m not grasping at things anymore. The funny thing about having any sort of success is it just means you’ve climbed a mountain and then you have a view of all the mountains around you. If you had told me two years ago, “You’re going to be a lead on a TV series,” I would’ve thought, “Oh, my life’s going to be amazing! I’m going to have a house in the Palisades and I’m going to be on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno every night.” But all it means is I go to the set every week.
How do you prepare for a role?
Working in improv demands such a different kind of preparation—a different mindset—for a role than working in conventional drama or comedy. I think back to when I was doing The Laramie Project, which was just insane emotional preparation. Specifically for Significant Others, it’s keeping myself in a really open mindset. You almost can’t prepare or you do yourself in, with improv. On the other hand, you have to get yourself like a player before a game. That’s a good analogy. A baseball player knows he’s going out to play a game. He knows the rules of the game. He doesn’t know how it’s going to go, right? He doesn’t know what kind of pitch he’s going to get. I have to be in a very confident state of mind and also let myself off the hook: “They’re going to edit the funny. Half of what you say may not be funny. Half of what your scene partner says may not be funny.” I can’t worry about what I say being funny. You can’t worry about that in improv. You can’t go for the joke, really. Very specifically though, for my character, any time I come across a word that I like, I write it down so I can use it. Who else is reading The New Republic on the treadmill before going to the set?
Who are your favorite actors?
It’s so hackneyed, but Meryl Streep. Emma Thompson. The best actors to me are the ones who can seamlessly move between drama and comedy. They’re just acting machines. They bring that same commitment, it doesn’t matter what the genre is. I would throw Kate Winslet in there, too. The thing I admire about all three of those women is that I think their work is really marked by a lack of vanity, which I think is absolutely necessary to be convincingly dramatic or comedic. As far as comic genius: Megan Mullally. I bow to her. The thing she does so amazingly well is that she creates this really out-there character who never comes off as stagy. It doesn’t feel like she’s overacting. You really believe that this crazy person named Karen exists. You wish you knew her a little bit—but not a lot. Another thing all of these actors share is that they will surprise you.
Do you ever feel like giving up?
Not anymore. There were a few times that I really did. I sort of conflate that with the depression over losing my mom. It was just a very dark time. Certainly career issues didn’t help. I remember thinking, “This is stupid. Why am I not getting my PhD? I could’ve spent one more year at Oxford, gotten my PhD, and be teaching.” But that’s just not as creative as I need.
What do you wish someone had told you at the beginning of your career?
I used to—and I still do, sometimes—think, “Oh my gosh, this is it. This is my big shot. This is such an important audition. This is such an important project.” Especially when I pulled favors to get an audition, because I knew someone who knew someone, I’d get all wrapped up about it. I’d feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders; like I have to make this person proud, I have to get the job. I don’t have that mindset anymore. I hope it’s healthy; I’m just like, “Fuck ’em. They didn’t want me? Okay.” That sounds way too belligerent. Usually I feel that way when I go in and read with a casting director who doesn’t choose to look up from the script and I don’t get a callback. I know they didn’t really pay attention. I’m not going to lose sleep over that one. There was a time before I got my “big break” where I would go on five auditions, maybe get a couple callbacks, not get cast, and think, “Oh my gosh, should I not be doing this?”
When I moved out here, I was twenty-four. Again, like when I was fourtneen and felt like I’d started late, I thought, “I’m so old!” There are so many people who don’t go to college and they come out when they’re eighteen and they get that running start. It makes all the difference. They get to play high-schoolers when they’re in their twenties. I remember, when I was twenty-five, people would say, “Oh, you should do Groundlings classes.” And I would think, “I’m too old to start that.” But twenty-five is so young! I wish I hadn’t thought I was so old. I don’t know what a difference that makes, though, frankly. I didn’t realize that then, but I don’t think I was the type of person who was meant to hit in her twenties. I would hear that there are no roles for women over thirty so I felt this desperate need to make it before I turned thirty. And now I realize that’s just not true. I have a lot more to say now. Had I known, when I moved out here, that there is this great demand for girls who can do comedy, I would’ve focused on that more. Now, it’s sort of my niche. I wanted to do it all, then. Having said that, the first big part I got was a very dramatic part on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. So, it didn’t hurt that I wasn’t focused on comedy. I just wish I could’ve done stand-up earlier and I wish maybe I had done more improv earlier. But what would I have said? “Oh, I’m twenty-five. My life is good. My mom’s alive and I have no wrinkles.” There are no jokes there!
I’ve finally sort of realized who I am and what my marketable persona is, which is actually the same thing as who I am. Significant Others is all improvised. I’m literally scripting a character. It’s a phenomenal honor. It’s the biggest compliment ever. The go-to place, if I’m improvising off the top of my head, is me. The character I play in the show is certainly a hyperbolic version of me and I’m put in situations where Faith would walk out the door and yell at somebody, but I obviously can’t do that as Eleanor. It is a comedy, so I always go to the more comic choice, the more “patient wife” choice. I don’t want to be a bitch all the time. Having said that though, part of it is me. I think that I get to play an exaggerated version of myself. I have a feeling that one of the reasons I was cast is that I used this crazy word in the audition. I’m a wordophile—I just made that up—I love language, I got my Master’s in English Literature, and think that I have a great reverence for words and therefore scripts. It’s kind of ironic that I’m on a show where I improvise because I am the one person in a play who gets mad if someone misses an article. I’m like, “A playwright wrote this! You can’t change it! You can’t even add a semicolon!”
On the show, I’m a very intellectual character. Instead of making that off-putting, I try to make her unknowingly pretentious. I think the show handles it well because we’ll be in therapy and I’m spouting multi-syllabic words that nobody knows—including myself, because I looked them up the day before—and the guy who plays my husband gets us all to the point of laughter because he says, “I’d probably agree with her if I knew what the fuck she just said.” I tried to do that on the VH-1 stuff where I was a pop-culture commentator and I got to be myself. I don’t think there are enough funny, smart women on TV. I don’t really think we’ve seen a good one since Diane on Cheers. If she’s smart, she’s a DA on Law & Order or she’s humorless. Or she’s like Lilith, who is an amazing, hilarious character, but she is a secondary character. She’s not someone you can grab hold of and love. I very much run the risk of being self-aggrandizing here. I don’t want to say: “I’m so smart.” But I do have this very academic background and I feel like I’m at a point in my career where it’s appreciated and utilized. To me, the appeal of academics was that you work really hard and you get this grade that is a stamp of approval. I kind of conquered that, so now it’s like, “Let’s try something harder!” There is nothing objective about acting. Getting to be a series regular is almost harder than being chosen as a Rhodes Scholar.
This interview was conducted on October 16, 2004, and it originally appeared in Acting Qs: Conversations with Working Actors by Bonnie Gillespie and Blake Robbins, available at Amazon.