Andrea Dantas on Learning, Leaning in to Your Why, and Doing Work that Matters

Andrea Dantas could have ended up poor and broke in Brazil. Her father went bankrupt when she was a child and her mother struggled to feed two kids. Her one saving grace was her love for acting.

Andrea left Brazil to study acting in Australia. While she was able to get a tourist Visa, she had trouble getting a work Visa. So her mother smuggled her money by putting it inside books she sent through the mail. While she survived on a diet of canned beans, she was still happy because she was learning and doing what she loved.

She has been able to build a successful career in acting through years of studying, performing, and working in multiple countries.

In this episode, learn why you should never stop learning, why you should always remember your why, and what it takes to do work that matters to you.

Here are three things you can learn from Andrea:

Never Stop Learning

One thing Andrea made very clear is that you should never stop learning. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been practicing your craft for one year or one hundred years, you are never done learning. “You never stop learning, and if you think that you’ve got it, and a project comes along and it’s just going to kick your butt and prove to you ‘Oh my gosh, I thought I knew everything.’ Hang on a second, but that’s with everything in life I think.”

Andrea also believes your technique matters. You can’t just go through the motions. “Nothing is more important than technique until artistry comes along. It’s the only way that your art is going to come out.”

She also believes that once you’ve discovered and mastered what works for you, the possibilities are endless. “Once you find what really works for you, and you hone into that and you become a master at that, then you can do… pretty much anything.”

Remember Your Why

Some people get so caught up in trying to be rich or famous that they forget about their craft. They forget the reason they got into art in the first place. They are too caught up with their vision of the future that they forget to live in the present. “I think it’s that ability of not being married to a situation and holding on so tight to it that you don’t see the change right in front of you and also being silent and asking yourself ‘Why am I doing this in the first place? Why do I still love doing this thing?’ It’s important.”

When I asked Andrea why she loves her work, she said it came from a direct answer from the divine. “My reason for doing this is because this was a direct answer to a question I had forgot and I believe that vocation, which is the most important thing in my life, is in total alignment with the divine and I think that I’m answering a calling. And I see how it’s impacting these artists in New York because New York can be a pretty intimidating city and how they found each other and they’re making things together… It’s such a rewarding job. It’s not even a job because it’s so good.”

One thing to remember when you are going through your journey is, it’s hard to do it alone. You need to find people who are going through a journey too so you can help each other out. “Find your tribe. For an actor, for an artist, that’s so important. Find an artistic family, the family that you choose to go through this journey together, to go through this journey with, because it can be pretty lonely out there when you’re an actor.”

On Doing Work that Matters

When we are starting out on our artistic journeys, we have grand visions of what we can accomplish. We look at those who came before us and think “I can do that too.”

While this may be true, it can also be stifling. Our expectations become unrealistic too quickly. It can stop us dead in our tracks. So, remember to stop being so hard on yourself. Just do the best you can at the moment. The rest will come to you in due time.

Just listen to what Andrea has to say. “Don’t be so hard on yourself thinking it has to be a masterpiece. Chances are, your first movie is not going to be a Martin Scorsese film. It’s not going to be that. So, I say get that idea. Put it on paper. Get people together. Go do it. Give birth to your ugly baby, and then, what do you know, you learn something. And the next one, you learn something else… We live in a day and age where there’s no reason for actors not to be working, for filmmakers not to be working because we have access to technology and things and we can be making our own stuff.”

It all begins with starting. “You have to start somewhere. Start somewhere, don’t stop and do the things you’re passionate about.”

And don’t get too caught up in the future. Live more in the now. “The future is now. No, I stopped thinking about the future a long time ago. I go as I go.”

Read more shownotes from episode 59 with Andrea Dantas