Conquer Fear & Self-Doubt with Amanda Crew

Amanda Crew is an actress who’s best known for playing Monica on the hit HBO show “Silicon Valley,” which I absolutely love for skewering tech culture in a loving but deadly accurate way. If you haven’t seen the show please, please do yourself a favor and check it out – season 4 recently premiered on HBO. But her career goes back many years: she’s appeared in a ton of shows and movies like Smallville, Final Destination 3, Life As We Know It and much more.

We touch on a bunch of stuff here that I wasn’t expecting to get into – if you’re thinking this is gonna be a bunch of inside baseball about Silicon Valley (the place or the TV show), it’s not that. What’s super interesting to me here is that Amanda deals with so many of the same things that you hear from the other people on this show: imposter syndrome, “post-success hangover,” being a hyphen and all the challenges that come with that, and a bunch of other themes you’ll recognize from other guests if you’re a long time listener. I love hearing how each guest grapples with these things, and I also love sharing the fact that these are nearly universal challenges that all creators face – so if any of these things strike a chord with you and sound familiar, rest assured that you are far from alone and the people you look up to deal with the same things.

Today on the podcast,

Like almost everyone on my show, Amanda is a hyphen – she’s a passionate photographer, although it took her a while to give herself permission to be more than an actor – she talks about overcoming the social bias that you can be good at more than one thing
She talks about the low point of her career a few years back when the recession and a writer’s strike hit at the same time one of her movies flopped and she didn’t work for nearly two years – and how rebuilding her career from scratch was actually the thing that made her believe in herself more than ever and conquer the imposter syndrome
We also get into the phenomenon of dealing with “what’s next” – as an actor that’s a constant thing for her: wrap a season of the show and there’s the instant question of “ok so now what?” It’s not an easy one for many people to answer and she has some great thoughts on it that apply to any creator.

Enjoy!

“It’s so interesting how life can take you down roads if you let it”

FOLLOW AMANDA:
twitter | instagram | website

Listen to the Podcast

Watch the Episode

Some Questions I Ask:

How did you respond to feeling like the representative of females in tech? [3:25]
What was the journey from being a not-put-together Canadian to a star in a hit HBO series? [7:17]
You still got your tap dance moves? [8:50]
Did you just know that you wanted to be a performer? [10:38]
Did you feel pressure to go to college after high school? [12:50]
Did you have any fear about quitting school to be an actor? [14:08]
How much of your success has been the result of humility and work ethic? [17:30]
What’s interesting to you now? What’s occupying your mind now? [22:23]
Did you always know that this was going to be your thing? What keeps you going on your pursuit? [24:50]
After you shoot your show, are you still buzzing because your show is on or does the excitement die down for you a bit and you’re on to the next thing? [27:45]
If being comfortable is not your gig, what is your gig? What part of you that you likes to be uncomfortable? [29:39]
When we first met out in the hallway, it felt like I already knew you. What’s up with that? [38:50]
How do you deal with the complexities of championing yourself online without feeling inauthentic? [42:30]
What’s next? [47:14]
What has been the differences for you between the releases of Season 1 and 2 and now 2 and 3? [52:30]
How is Mike Judge to work with? [54:38]
Is the Silicon Valley set as funny as it seems like it would be? [55:43]
What’s something that people don’t know and they’d be surprised to find out? [56:56]
If you could be teleported anywhere, where would you go? [59:17]
Why Iceland? [1:01:40]
What’s the thing that you love to eat that nobody knows? [1:04:12]
What kinds of habits and morning routines do you have? [1:05:55]
Do you have a point of view on the rise of the feminism? [1:10:45]
Who, besides Avril, inspires you? [1:13:40]
Are you going back to help high school students because that was where you struggled the most? [1:16:50]
What have I not asked you that I should? [1:20:05]
What about Brene Brown’s Ted Talk on vulnerability spoke to you? [1:22:10]

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

What it was like being the only female on an otherwise all male cast show, Silicon Valley. [3:30]
Amanda’s start in professional show business landed her exactly zero jobs her first year. [8:35]
The terminology differences between US and Canadian schools. [12:00]
How the recession, the writer’s strike, and a movie flop affected Amanda’s attitude. [14:20]
How ego and the fear of failure sent Amanda to hit rock bottom, and how she came out of it ready to do work. [19:27]
What the hustle and grind of being an actor in LA is actually like. [27:00]
How the spaces between acting jobs encouraged Amanda to find a creative outlet, ultimately landing her a love fo photography and starting a blog that she quit, then an interview series she calls Frank and how her creative outlet has helped her audition process. [31:00]
Why Amanda loves being a hyphen. [35:30]
The quick and dirty on why I wasn’t on Instagram, which you can read more about here. [37:20]
How Amanda’s personal trainer helped her realize she was being selfish by not sharing things she believes in. [43:00]
What a premiere screening of Silicon Valley is like when screened in Palo Alto. Cool? Yes. Awkward? Also yes. [48:25]
The one tattoo that Amanda has, and the hilarious story behind it. [57:30]
How I made it four minutes from curb to gate on my route to LA. I made a little video about it you can check out here. [59:50]
What you should and should NOT do in Iceland… and other weird things I’ve eaten. [1:02:00]
Why you might want to jump into a Morning Pages routine. [1:06:38]
Why Amanda continues to train with weights over cardio even after she finished filming a movie where she played a fighter. [1:09:08]
How Avril Lavigne impacted Amanda’s self esteem and how she’s trying to help high school girls realize they don’t have to fit in any mold besides the one they make for themselves. [1:10:30]
Amanda and I both share stories about pretending to be people we weren’t just to fit in. [1:15:00]
The neck and neck competition between the whiteness of Amanda’s and Conan O’Brien’s stomachs. [1:20:10]
How Amanda overcame her addiction to perfectionism by opening up to her closest friends which may have turned into an addiction to vulnerable conversations. [1:24:10]
How much Amanda loves 30 Days of Genius. [1:27:11]

This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.