Young and Acting the Part

Lisa Lewolt, petite and pretty with a cheerleader’s enthusiasm and a smile she can turn on like a light bulb, has an after-school job.

So does her mom, Kim.

At 14, Lisa is an actress with a sitcom credit and a long list of commercials on her resume. Her job is auditioning.

Her mom’s, it seems, is driving Lisa around. And waiting.

An hour on the freeway from their Thousand Oaks home to Lisa’s Sherman Oaks acting coach. Another hour while Lisa goes over her lines and learns her character’s motivation for her audition. Several more hours during Lisa’s acting class.

For Lisa’s actual audition? A minute.

It’s a routine familiar to Ventura County’s young professional actors, kids with stars in their eyes and enough ambition to devote their lives to the road to Hollywood--an hour away by car, but light-years away in attitude.

Kids like Tina Majorino, who’s worked steadily in films, including “Waterworld,” and Justin Berfield, one of the “Malcolm in the Middle” sons, continue to chip away at big-time careers, while living in the suburbs.

Some, like the Haney sisters, Vanessa and Briona, of Oak Park go to only a handful of auditions a year. Others, like the three tow-headed Kasch boys--Max, Cody and Dylan of Camarillo--are busier. The boys have been attacked by a tentacled monster on “The X-Files,” suffered from leukemia on “ER” and bullied the title character on “Malcolm in the Middle.”

They do it, said 14-year-old Max, a cool character in a knit cap, because they crave it.

They--and their parents--battle rejection, the stereotypical screwed-up show-biz personalities and the sheer number of auditions, in hopes that someday they’ll have a grown-up acting career.

Kim Lewolt likens it to going out for sports: You’ve always got to sacrifice something if you want to be successful.

In the Lewolts’ case, it was life in Fresno, where Lisa had just joined the cheer squad but also had to endure an eight-hour commute to auditions. The Lewolts pulled up stakes to start a software business in Ventura County and to work on the cottage industry that is Lisa.

Parents say their children’s youth is the best time for them to try for a professional acting career: They have strong family support and can remain relatively carefree. Mostly, they don’t need to worry about paying the rent, which is good, because they are not likely to make much money.

In the beginning, parents say, it’s difficult to break even, much less make a profit, when they are paying for acting classes, a manager and a coach.

According to Screen Actors Guild statistics, in 1996 more than 85% of its 90,000 members earned less than $5,000. In 1998, a little more than a quarter of its membership did not make any money at all.

It takes from 40 to 50 auditions for every job the child actor lands, parents said, which translates into many hours on the road.

There are talent agencies in Ventura County, but none specializes in children and few reach much beyond local commercials. Still, many families with acting children live here for the same reasons others do--the ocean, green hills, suburban lifestyle--and if that means driving into Los Angeles for every show business need, so be it.

So, on one typical afternoon, Kim Lewolt picks up Lisa from school and they head to an audition for a cable TV movie trifle, called “Phantom of the Megaplex.”

From the three pages of script before her, Lisa knows that her character is cute, devious in a teenager’s innocent way and has a face full of freckles. Lisa--easily cute, but without a spot on her skin--figures she can play freckled.

The next day’s audition will be more of a stretch: She has to look Italian, for a movie that will star Joe Mantegna and Danny Aiello.

“You never know. They may decide to change that,” Kim Lewolt said, half rolling her eyes as she packs up her daughter’s audition notebook, a day-to-day schedule of their nearly daily trips into Los Angeles.

During the drive to Sherman Oaks, Lisa wipes off her school-day makeup for the fresh-faced teenage look. She munches on carrots and looks over the script, trying to cram the lines into her memory.

At her acting coach’s house, for the Italian part, she also needs to be told who George Michael is--you know, that guy from Wham! in the ‘80s, she is told. She needs to come off a bit bratty, but not too much. She needs to say some things she’s a little embarrassed about.

And later comes the audition, in a tiny, ramshackle paneled office in a nondescript San Fernando Valley building.

She signs in. She sits for a moment. She says she’s not nervous, but she looks like she is. She sees stacks of resumes and head shots--all for her part. Kim checks out a boy, also waiting to audition, to see if he and Lisa could pass for siblings. She smiles upon deciding that they could.

When her name is called, Lisa heads into the audition room. Kim doesn’t get nervous. She doesn’t have time. Lisa is back a moment later.

Lisa is philosophical: Hope for the best, expect the worst.

It could be the theme of hundreds of young lives: all the kids in Lisa’s acting class, where they can’t practice audition material, because they’d all be reading the same scripts. All the kids coached by Kaley Brummel, Lisa’s coach, who has read the same three pages so many times with so many actors that she has them memorized.

But these kids and their parents are willing to move mountains--or at least search through them--in the hopes of getting a part.

One time, Kim tracked down Lisa at Six Flags Magic Mountain on her birthday--by having her name called out over the loudspeaker as a lost child--in order to get her to a last-minute, “sure thing” audition for “Touched by an Angel.” She didn’t get the part.

Cody Kasch, 12, articulate and polished, once received a call that he got an episode of “Nash Bridges,” and had a limo roll up to his house four hours later. He shot his scenes in San Francisco the next day with a 104-degree fever.

It’s worth it, they say, for a variety of reasons.

Vanessa Haney, with a cherub’s face and a mouthful of braces--they can be replaced in three days by clear ones if she gets a part--got to sing with Andy Griffith on an episode of “Diagnosis Murder.” While shooting “VIP,” Max Kasch got a hug from Pamela Anderson Lee, which he said with characteristic nonchalance was “kind of exciting.”

It’s fun, they say, and they make some money. Lisa Lewolt has a tidy little bank account to show for her efforts.

Not everyone involved in the industry agrees.

“There’s this fiction that this is somehow a pleasant diversion for parents and children,” said Paul Petersen, who played Jeff on “The Donna Reed Show” and founded the nonprofit group, A Minor Consideration, to protect child actors--mainly from their parents. “That’s why they’re willing to spend four hours on the 101 [Freeway] coming down to L.A.”

He counts the recent strengthening of the so-called Coogan Law--which requires parents to set aside 15% of their children’s earnings in a trust fund--among its lobbying successes. Jackie Coogan, who appeared in Charlie Chaplin’s films as a boy, saw millions of dollars squandered by his parents, before there were laws to protect professional children.

Experts say the investment in time and travel for these kids, combined with a taste of success, can change the laid-back attitude of even the most grounded Ventura County parents and turn them into the people they least want to be.

That’s what has Petersen concerned. When a child’s career leads to a major life change, such as a family move or career switch, it’s more than just a hobby. Who draws the line at how much is too much?

Stage parents, around since Coogan’s day, are alive and well, those in the industry say.

“I have had kids not get jobs because of their mother’s conduct,” said manager Holly Williams, who counts Lisa Lewolt among her clients. “The first meeting I have is to train the parents. I want them to be deaf-mutes when they’re out on auditions.”

The Kasches say they rely on their kids’ down-to-earth Ojai upbringing to keep them sane while dealing with showoff parents.

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Some parents, Jody Kasch said, arrive at auditions bragging about their child’s shoot in New Zealand; others try to “psych out kids” by making sure to slip in offhand references to hotshot agents and big-time auditions.

It doesn’t faze her son Max, who calls it a sign of nerves, something he says doesn’t worry about.

On the surface, though, the Kasches could fit the stereotype of stage parents. Taylor and Jody are both acting coaches as well as fixtures in the Ojai theater scene. They flirted with Hollywood careers themselves. They moved to Camarillo so their kids could be closer to their auditions and jobs.

When their children work, one of them is required to be on the set at all times, which means that their job hours must be flexible and take a back seat to their children’s careers.

That kind of relationship can lead to classic stage parents, Petersen said.

“It’s the height of arrogance. Pretty soon Dad thinks he’s smarter than the director,” he said. “It’s very difficult for parents. They have to keep a sense of proportion, one step removed.”

The Kasches, who have raised warm and likable children, say their boys were just naturally involved in theater when they grew up, were not pushed and chose for themselves to focus on their careers. The fact that they have talent--and just as important, “a look”--got the ball rolling quickly in the form of commercials.

“We left that Hollywood thing, and it really kind of followed us,” Jody said.

Both Kasch parents feel strongly that life is better for child actors than it has ever been.

“It’s different from the days of Paul Petersen. There was no one looking out for them. I think it’s changed a lot. People in the business understand parents more than they used to,” Taylor Kasch said.

Stringent laws limit a child’s time on the set and require that the young actor maintain a C average in school. But concentration on the set can be difficult, because of all the excitement outside of the classroom, Max said. At some local schools--particularly in the east county--there are rules about auditions, just as there are for any other planned absences, such as doctor appointments. But rules can chafe when an audition seems really important or springs up at the last minute.

“Oh my gosh, the school’s terrible about it,” said Vanessa Haney of her Oak Park junior high. “There are so many kids doing work, you have to tell them three days ahead of time. It’s impossible.”

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After the audition, which Lisa Lewolt thought went well but won’t end up booking, her mother ruminates on the business.

What can she say to her daughter when the call doesn’t come? “Just something like, ‘They were looking for a redhead to match the actress playing the mom.’ Or, ‘It wasn’t your day.’ Or, ‘You only need to get your big break once, and this wasn’t it.’ ”

But, for now, hope rules. Someone tells Lisa she looks like a much better fit for the role than another girl who sat across the room.

“Everyone has a shot,” Kim reminds her.

This is the truth the Lewolts take to heart.

And now, about 6 p.m., Lisa heads to acting class, while Mom waits outside in the car until 9:30.

After that?

Well, then, Lisa--the young working actress, the cheerleader type with deep brown hair and sparkling eyes, beckoned by the chance for stardom--heads straight home.

She still has to write a book report.