Film Courage: Does being an artist mean being better than everyone else at your craft?
Sheila Houlahan, Actor, Singer, Producer and Writer: No, no, no, no, no. It’s so funny to me that competitiveness is taught in a subjective field. I went to conservatory for music and it was a violent, cutthroat, deeply pessimistic school. So many of my cohort had depression and were struggling with mental illness and definitely my own mental illness took a bad nosedive while I was in conservatory. Looking back on it I can’t believe those professors taught us that you needed to be competitive and cruel to your fellow artists to get ahead because art is a collaborative field especially film. When I meet people, because I still meet people who are just mean in our industry, and every time I’m like you’ve got a lot of work. I mean it takes hundreds of people to make a movie and at the end of the day you want to make it with people who are like-minded and who are good people because you’re going to be on set for 16 hours and in that 15th hour you want to not hate everybody around you, that’s very important. I just don’t think that a competitive edge with others is something productive. I’m competitive with myself. I track my progress every quarter, every six months, every year and I want to see an upward trajectory in terms of how I feel about myself as an artist, my craft in terms of other skills that I’m working on and fluency in those skills. Shall we say I compete with myself. I always want to keep growing. I also firmly believe it’s my personal philosophy that we never stop growing until we choose to. The second you choose to stop growing is the second that you start to die. I’ve learned that from other incredible artists in the music field actually way back when I was living in Germany for a minute. I think there’s a way to have a healthy competitive spirit with yourself that isn’t going to spill over into other people. I don’t think that being competitive with others is productive. We all might work together someday so why are we being toxic? It’s not going to change my film…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
Sheila Houlahan is a Webby Award Winning Indian-American actor, singer, producer, writer and advocate. Sheila played the supporting role “Paige Callahan” opposite Denzel Washington in the Warner Bros. feature “The Little Things”, which was written and directed by John Lee Hancock. She also has a role in the Michael Bay thriller “Ambulance”. In 2021, Sheila was the executive producer for a feature film adaptation of Marsha Norman’s Pulitzer-winning play “Night, Mother” in partnership with Twitch.tv; this film was a “hybrid” film, mixing pre-recorded segments with live performance that was recorded and edited in front of a live audience. Over 8000 people watched “Night, Mother” live, and since then, the film has received critical acclaim and has been screened at 68 festivals in over 24 countries. “Night, Mother” has over 64K views on it’s flagship Twitch.tv channel and has been praised for its’ fresh, innovative approach to filmmaking winning over 60 awards including the Webby Award for Virtual and Remote Entertainment & Media. Sheila is a Celebrity Champion for Project HEAL, a nonprofit organization that helps people suffering from eating disorders source affordable treatment options and pay for treatment. She is also an ambassador for Ability Magazine’s platform AbilityE, a casting portal that seeks to increase inclusion and representation of differently-abled talent and creatives on both sides of the table in Hollywood.
WATCH ‘NIGHT, MOTHER’
CONNECT WITH SHEILA HOULAHAN
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