Interviews >> Carmit Levité                                                                         

Carmit Levité

(USA via Israel)

Pg.: 1,2,3,4,5,6

2. The moment of decision. “I’m leaving”
and how it all started.

Carmit: I don’t know why but I still remember the moment when I decided that I needed to get out of Israel. I was working out in my little home town, Ra'anana, thinking “My God, what am I doing this for?” seeing people around me showing their muscles as if saying “Look at me, baby!” I just felt I had to get out of there.

I was in the army at the time - a real army service (note: in Israel there is a mandatory army service term of two years for both men and women) but I lucked out. I was supposed to be a medic or some other thing, and then I would have had to come back home once every few weeks. But I was lucky. I got a really easy post, I was home every day which enabled me to join a theatre group. But still, you are in the army and you can’t have any aspirations or ambitions because you know that for the next two years you’re in your post. Take a guitarist, someone who’s been training all their life. Their skills get cut because of two years in the army where you can’t do anything else. But with all that said, I still firmly believe that every Israeli has to serve in the army. There is absolutely no reason why others should watch the walls of Israel and protect me while I sleep at night, that I should not serve my time. Israel is a little country surrounded by enemies, in constant war 24/7 - we all have to take our turns in order to survive.

But, when I was done, I just had to get out of there. Get out of my uniform, get out of Israel.

Cristina: If you had stayed, what perspectives would you have had there?

Carmit: Oh, I don’t know. Lots of things. Probably I would have done acting there. I didn’t want to do Shakespeare in Hebrew though. Believe me, I tried. It just doesn’t work.

3. A fated meeting and coming to America.

Cristina: So how did you end up coming to America?

Carmit: I met a man when I was in Tibet. He was hitchhiking at the foot of Mount Everest. At some point during the trip we split, he went back to San Francisco and we started this email connection. It was sort of a love affair on the Internet, which was very new because when I first started traveling there was no email, there was really no way to quickly stay in touch with people you met. This, to me, is a good thing because I think that if you are going to be a slave to the Internet while you travel, you might as well not travel.

Anyway, I stayed in touch with that man and I told him to come visit me – which he did. We went to the Dead Sea, and while I was floating there on the waves (there are no waves in the Dead Sea – she laughs) a couple of Americans drifted by. They heard us talking about me traveling and how I was thinking about going to London or New York. So I asked one of the guys, who was floating by, where he was from and he said New York. I said “Really? How interesting! I think I’m going to live with you!”

Cristina: Just like that?

Carmit: Yes. He said okay. We emailed a couple of times, the 21^st of December came, I flew, and he picked me up from the airport. I stayed with him for six months.

Cristina: Was he alright?

Carmit: Yes. He had a girlfriend though and at times things got really messy because we were three people living in a small studio. I had put a sheet between my couch and his bed and that was my first room.

Cristina: You didn’t really know anybody in New York, did you?

Carmit: No.

4. Beginning life in America.
New York, New York…

Cristina: What did you do from there? What was the plan?

Carmit: I’d told my parents that I’m only going for three months. I checked out a couple of acting schools, the main ones: Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg. I wanted to study at Lee Strasberg but I needed my student visa so I had to go home to get it and come back again.

That was the plan but instead, I did something really stupid. I went back home to Israel and I decided that I don’t want to go to Lee Strasberg. The teachers aren’t bad but I didn’t like the people who got into that school. I thought their work ethics was rather bad.

So I decided I wanted to go to Stella Adler instead, which you have to be accepted to. I went back to Israel pretty much to decide that I wanted to change schools and apply to the Stella Adler Conservatory. So I came back to the States, auditioned and I got it – I was very lucky because that year they decided to bring the class down from 35 people to 15. After that I did manage to get my student visa in the States.

Cristina: How did you do that?

Carmit: I just followed the instructions (on the forms) and they gave it to me. But I paid for it when I went back to Israel a year later: when I came back to the States they gave me a fine because of the fact that I hadn’t gotten it in Israel. It was such a chutzpah for the immigration service to give me a visa and say everything is alright, then I come into the country and they slap me with a fine.

Cristina: How much was the fine, by the way?

Carmit: $180.

Cristina: This was a lot of money for you at the time.

Carmit: Yes. And of course, it could have been much worse. But … that was the beginning of my immigration nightmares.

Cristina: So you got into Stella Adler…

Carmit: … yes, and I was there for two years, which were probably the worst two years of my life. It definitely balanced the fun that I had, the experiences from before. I had been traveling for a year and a half in the Far East. Afterwards, living in New York for a year and a half… was the hardest thing in the world. It was easier for me to travel in the Far East.

Cristina: Why?

Carmit: I’d worked for eight months before I left to travel. I put all my savings into this trip. I had enough money to go on for a while, no responsibility, nothing. I was free to go. If I didn’t like a place, I would just carry on. It was really cheap too. Renting a room in India costs you around $2. But living in New York… first of all the weather. I’m Israeli, I need the sun. It was a new place, the weather sucked and I didn’t know anyone. I was lucky to get into the school.

5. Loneliness and the beginning
of an acting career.

Cristina: Did you get lonely?

Carmit: Living through that period was actually the beginning of me realizing that I have to get my career started. Which I still have now, but it’s sort of a mistake because you focus too much on your career and nothing is going to happen. You need to have a life to have a career if you want to do acting. You need to learn about relationships. So I did get lonely, but I told myself “I have to do this. I have to build my career”.

The first semester at Stella Adler was amazing: fifteen people who knew they were going to spend the next two years together. We were very excited that we got into the school. But then, slowly, the real faces started to come out. Competitiveness. By the end of those two years I was a wreck. I had no confidence in my acting. Also the school was not very good. Stella Adler left the school and it became a money maker. Lee Strasberg left the school, it became a money maker.

Cristina: It often happens that when the founders go, the people who are left behind don’t really have the same spirit.

Carmit: Her grandson is running the school now. I left that school with no technique and I think that is the thing in acting that you need the most. You need something to lean on when you don’t know how to go about something, instead of trusting that you are lucky enough to get it. But it was a good experience because by the end of the year I got really good parts in plays that we did.

We all did a showcase at the end of the year and I actually got an agent through it. My first agent ever. It made me feel very special because he didn’t take anyone but me. I started going out to auditions though nothing really happened. The closest I really got to a job was a voice-over gig, 40 hours at $250 an hour. I thought my life was perfect. I got the job. It was for a bank – to do the voice “If you know which operator to reach, press…” I had to do a British accent and my agent told me to listen to British Airways. So I did and I got the job. But the bank that hired me merged with another bank so they didn’t need the work anymore.

Cristina: That was close…

Carmit: It was. Two weeks after I got out of Stella Adler I got a part, which was such a boost for my ego because I had left there feeling worthless and scared. “You’re out of the nest, you’re about to face the world”.

Cristina: So you got out of Stella Adler, you got your first role and your first…

Carmit: … agent, yes. But things were still going very slowly. I kept on meeting people and I felt like the first play that I did out of school was the best because I was able to meet people and appreciate them and their talents, work with them. It wasn’t the best production ever but it was an amazing start.

I did a couple of plays, did the “Backstage” thing – the newspaper for actors. Many people buy it for ads of all the auditions that are happening and I actually got auditions and I got plays through that newspaper. But most of them were terrible. I also got some movies but they were rather bad.

Because I got those parts I began thinking “Okay, I can survive in this business. I’m getting auditions, and I’m getting parts”, but the truth is that most of those plays were really bad. Badly written. Most of the plays that I got into and really enjoyed were through people that I knew, when I auditioned through introductions.

The last thing that I did before coming here (to Los Angeles) was Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”. That was the best month of my whole life in New York because I was doing a play, got called by a manager and was accepted into their management company. Also, within 10 days of being accepted with them, but without them, I got a print job with Levi’s. That meant good money, good exposure, for billboards all over Times Square. It was amazing and I did it but the campaign got cancelled, even though we did the prints and I did get paid. I wanted those billboards to be up there, for some proof that this happened. It would have been great for me. That would have been the beginning of something – I don’t know what though.

 Read more: pg.3

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