The School of Greatness - 657 You Are Enough with Carrie-Anne Moss

Episode Date: June 22, 2018

“I AM ENOUGH. I DESERVE SUCCESS.” You have to fight for what you want if you want to accomplish anything. Otherwise it wouldn’t be an achievement, it would just be the way life is. Unfortunately, the struggle we have to go through to achieve our dreams can be overwhelming. It can be discouraging, and often times people give up just before they hit that pivotal point in life. One thing you can do to push through is remind yourself that you are enough. You can succeed. It’s going to take time, dedication, and a lot of failures. As long as you keep learning, and stay strong, you can achieve anything. To go further into this, I wanted to bring back a clip from a previous episode with Carrie-Anne Moss. You may remember her as Trinity from The Matrix. What you may not know is how much she struggled moving to LA as a young actress. On this episode of 5 Minute Friday, she talks about what a challenge it was to move to Hollywood and believe in her own value. She has no money, no green card, and literally nothing but the dream of being an actress. Learn about how just being her was enough to succeed, and how you can apply her mindset into your life, on Episode 657. What it was like for Carrie to move to LA (1:10) Carrie’s deal with her manager (2:13) How she thinks about her acting career (3:00) What she did to get through the hard times (4:52) Plus much more...

This is 5-Minute Friday! We've got an incredible interview today, and it's with Carrie-Anne Moss, someone that I recently got connected to through a buddy of mine, Eric Handler. Now, most of you might know who Carrie-Anne is as the character Trinity in The Matrix, which was a cult classic instantly and inspired and moved so many people who watched that movie. And she had an incredible role and did an amazing job. But Carrie Ann is much more than that. She is a mother, a wife, an actress, and a yogi who came to Los Angeles to pursue a career

in acting. Now, over the last 20 years, her work in the entertainment industry includes roles in The Matrix and Memento and many other films and TV shows. Now, success as an actress has brought her fulfillment, but for Carrie-Anne, it was marriage and motherhood where she found her deepest sense of purpose

and her greatest joy. sense of purpose and her greatest joy. I moved here knowing absolutely nobody. I had one person that I knew. I had no money. I had no green card. I just had a dream. And I wasn't super savvy. I mean, I have a great deal of naivety at the same time. That helps. In a, in a, yeah, totally helps. I don't know how. I lived for Oprah back then because she was my three o'clock, you know, I knew I knew I had something that I could do at three o'clock because I didn't have auditions. I didn't have friends. I didn't have anything here. That first year of living in LA, I lived right around the corner on Melrose. I met my manager who's from Vancouver. She and I have been together for 24 years. She

still lives there. So she was in Vancouver. She said to go to LA. I met her. I was walking by her office, bringing a guy that I knew to meet a modeling agent. And she saw me and she said, you come in. And we ended up talking and she said, you come in. And I, we ended up talking and she said, what do you want to do? I said, I I'm going to LA to be an actress. And she said, I'll help you. I was like, okay. She became my manager and her ex-husband lived here and part of their, you know, he, they had a child and I lived, I rented a room and I paid her the $500. It was part of his support or whatever. And he's a comedian and a talk show host and he's amazing.

He was always traveling. And so I lived in this one room in his apartment off Melrose, Sweetser and Melrose. Sure. And I didn't have enough money to go for a coffee. And I'm not exaggerating. Of course. Not even in the least. Sure. And I didn't have enough money to go for a coffee. And I'm not exaggerating. Of course. Okay?

Not even in the least. And I just knew that... Did she start sending you out on auditions or what happened? She connected me with an agent and I met an agent and I started auditioning and I started to work. Acting classes and... I started to do acting classes. So one of the things that I have always applied in my acting career, and I'm actually thinking

a lot about it lately as a woman, is I would always think when I'd get a job or something that I was part of the wheel, right? Like you have your wheel with the spokes coming out of the wheel, like on a bicycle. Sure. And that my value as an actor was no more important than the craft service, than the sound guy, than the camera operator, the producer, the writer, all of us. It takes all of us.

We all have these equal pieces that create the function of this wheel. And so it's always been very important to me to understand that. Because sometimes as an actor, you get treated so well. Can be, not always. Very, you know, probably pretty rarely for most people. But I've had that experience where I've been treated so well. Can be. Not always. Probably pretty rarely for most people, but I've had that

experience where I've been treated so well. People bring you a coffee and what do you need? Oh, can you get me that for my trailer? Those kinds of things that are pretty... The sound guy doesn't get that treatment necessarily. I always want to remember that.

That part of the whole. If the sound guy isn't doing his job, then you're going to suffer., that part of the whole. If the sound guy isn't doing his job, then you're going to suffer. The wheel's going to suffer. And it's just holding that we're all creating this. We're all part of this creative process together. We're all making, like if you look at The Matrix, it was this coming together of all of these people that all had such big heart and expertise and passion and drive to create this product. Unbelievable. And I love being a part of that. I'm a team player. I love to be on a team. I'm not alone. I don't want to do it on my own. I love collaborating. It turns me on to collaborate

with people. Like I need need that i'm not an island onto myself i need that interaction with other people so as an actress i think and then you know then some basic things like with as an actress often you're unemployed so i remember feeling and i feeling like if i needed to know that i was, regardless of whether I had a job or not. So I worked hard at that. Yeah. That was an ongoing... Because you might be a year or two,

you don't have something, right? It can be. I mean, if you were to look at, I have every journal I've ever written in since I was 10 years old. I have journals and journals and journals from that apartment on Melrose and Sweets that are saying, I am enough.

Wow. I am enough. I am enough. I deserve enough. I am enough. I am enough. I deserve success.