I’ve always wanted to be at the top of the acting game.  Always.  But what I’ve done up till now is live in LA for 13 years, work as a personal assistant to A-List writers, directors and actors, land some respectable acting gigs (pilots, guest stars, etc), crash and burn as an actress, go off to write and produce a bunch of stuff (okay good stuff, Sundance award-winning stuff), so I could rise from the ashes with a newly lit torch under my desires and THEN go make a movie, that I star in.  

After all of that, why would I ever not ‘call Tom’ (the phenomenon of going for exactly what you want, affectionately named after Tom Cruise, who in my eyes is still the quintessential Hollywood jackpot)?
 

I’ll tell you why.  It’s the same reason you wouldn’t.  Los Angeles is a very seductive town. There are shiny things everywhere to distract you from calling Tom. And there are thousands of messages and people telling you that you can’t have it.  It’s a convenient place to waste years, even decades hurling yourself down a road that looks a lot like what you had in mind, but isn’t.
 

And if you live in New York or Austin or Frankfurt or Madison, I’m still talking to you.  That seduction is everywhere.  It’s in self-doubt, in caring what people think and in the messages of your community and media.  
 

Hollywood wants us, wants me to believe that my dream is dead, that there’s no way at my ripe old age to actually catapult myself from anonymity to well-known valued asset.  That before it’s too late, I should really find a nice Jewish boy and settle down in the Valley, or better yet, New Jersey.  

But instead, I am making and starring in my first feature film.  And this time, I am calling Tom!

People get so used to not calling Tom that they do stupid stuff like this:  So you have a vision and then before you even pick up the phone to call Angelina’s agent, you think, “If we can’t get her, we should go for Maggie Gyllenhaal.” And next thing you know, you’re calling some girl from your acting class you thought was pretty good in a scene once. But you never called Angelina. You never even tried?!

That is exactly the opposite of calling Tom.

Years of working (and not-working) in L.A. have given me some perspective, and I can tell you two of the most important things I've learned. It all comes down to:  A) knowing what you want and B) asking for it (which includes saying yes when it comes your way).

Things started to shift for me when I said “no” to producing gigs and “yes" to offers like this one:  A hard working actor I’d known for years who crowd-funded his last two films, had mastered Twitter and Facebook and was seeing a private acting coach, said to me, “We should make a movie.”  I said… well, you know the story, I said yes.  Because I thought, this guy will be a good partner, and that is EXACTLY what I want.

So ask yourself, what do you want, exactly?  What is your ‘calling Tom’?
Do not settle, for anything.  If you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you want to only date red heads over 5’ 6” then start doing that now.  If you feel in your heart that buying fair trade is important to you, then do it, 100% of the time.  The world shapes itself around your conviction.

Start right now, cultivating the muscle of exactitude.  Because that is exactly what it is, a muscle.

And don’t worry about those people and messages that say you can’t have it. Secretly underneath it all, everyone wants you to win.  It’s the Obama Factor.  Because if you can do it, whatever IT is, than anybody can.  And that  is inspiring.  People want to be inspired.  They need to be inspired.  And it truly is up to the creators, the artists, innovators and storytellers of the world to inspire them.  It’s up to us to inspire each other.   So go call Tom.  If you don’t there’s no way he can ever call you back.