Interviews >> Carmit Levité                                                                        

Carmit Levité

(USA via Israel)

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

9. And then there is the language thing…

Cristina: When did you start speaking English?

Carmit: It’s my mother’s tongue. My mom is South-African so I have a South-African accent. We moved to Israel when I was eight – my dad is Israeli. I was born in Israel and three months later we moved to South-Africa. We wanted to live there for a while then we moved back to Israel. When you are that age you just pick up languages really fast. I got Hebrew really fast.

We spoke English at home because my mom said “In this house you speak English. With your friends you can speak Swahili, Hebrew, whatever you want”. She didn’t want me to speak another language at home because I was speaking Hebrew all the time. If she hadn’t done that I would “probably be talking to you like this” (insert strong foreign accent). But she knew that if I spoke only English I wouldn’t be able to speak to my relatives, I wouldn’t be able to have a second language so if I spoke to her in Hebrew she wouldn’t answer back. It was English, English, English. Always.

10. The beginning of a temporary “end”,
slight problems with THE Immigration MACHINE
and musings over choices.

Carmit: Everything was going well but then my life took a serious nosedive. I began having problems with my green card. My student visa ended and I would have had to go back to Israel but I didn’t want to do that. So the only way of getting out of that situation was if I got a sponsor – someone who decides that they need you because nobody else can do it. You get a working visa, I think it’s an H2.

Cristina: Isn’t that for specific industries only?

Carmit: Yes. It wouldn’t have been acting exactly, but I would have been working in a production company. I met somebody through a friend, who said “Sure, I’ll sponsor you”. We applied, my visa expired on the 13^th of September 2001 and the INS got my new application that very day, two days after 9/11. They denied me flat. They gave me a six pages document of why they rejected me.

Cristina: How come you got the answer back so fast?

Carmit: There is a processing time but you can pay to expedite the process. If I remember correctly you can pay $1,000 and they review your case in two weeks. My sponsor had the money so… After they rejected me my sponsor’s attitude was “Sorry, kid” He realized it was more work than he was willing to put it. He didn’t care whether I would end up in the gutter, or in jail, or back in Israel.

Cristina: So what did you do?

Carmit: Luckily I had kept the card of a congressman I met once so I called him. It was the year and a half from Hell after that. I almost went crazy. I really did.

The congressman got in touch with another congressman and they sort of appealed my case. In the end it all worked out… but meanwhile I had to leave my manager and I had to walk dogs for a living. It was terrible. I did cocktail waitressing too. Anything I could to survive. Finally the appeal went through. But I’d had been cut from everything I had been doing. I had been auditioning for commercials but couldn’t anymore. And once you’re out of the game, you’re out. I tried to convince the agent to take me back, but the management changed at that company.

When my green card finally came through, it was a hell of a bureaucracy, of getting the papers done. I had a choice of either staying two years in New York, or moving to Los Angeles and waiting three weeks. So I moved to Los Angeles and got my working permit after three weeks. This time it was easier for me because by now I had friends in Los Angeles, unlike my first day in New York. It was a miracle. I couldn’t believe it. It’s still not final and I’m working on it, but I have a temporary green card. After a couple of months I had to apply again. It’s not over yet. But I think I’ll always have fear of this. It was that year and a half of hanging on haywire, of not knowing what will happen to you. Plus I wasted a year and a half of my life. Granted, it takes some people thirty years and I’m probably very lucky. But as a woman, and an actress… you’re only hot if you’re eighteen. So the longer I wait, the further I get from being hot. But I’m not worried about that anymore. It’s more an issue of getting it done. Things are going well here now, I have an agent, and I’m getting work.

Cristina: When we talked once a while ago, you told me you wished there were “Immigrants Anonymous” groups you could go to.

Carmit: My God, yes.

Cristina: What did you mean by that? To talk about what?

Carmit: If you read “Hamlet”, in the whole monologue that starts “To be or not to be”, he talks about reasons to live or not to live and for the reasons not to he talks about one he calls “insolence of office”. Which to me, translated, are bureaucracy and the incompetence of government workers. From small things like waiting for two hours to get the answer that you came to the wrong booth. The wrong stall. The wrong person. Or that you don’t have a certain application and you need to come back and wait another three hours. To me going crazy not knowing if I’m going to get this green card or not.

I said the “Immigrants Anonymous” thing as a joke, but really, nobody understands what you’re going through. Nobody really knows what it’s like. Americans are born with a social security number. And granted, it was my choice to come here. It was my choice to fight this battle. I could have gone back to Israel and had a good life but I wouldn’t have been happy. So of course it was my choice to stay here and fight. But on the other hand, people think “Well, it’s your choice” and that’s that but they don’t really understand what we’re going through. I’d like to see what they would think if they wanted to go and live somewhere else and had to fight so hard for it.

I know how lucky I am to be here. I went to Tijuana the other day and I saw how people live there. People are shoveling cement, building these terrible buildings, and everybody’s broke there and begging. It was really sad. And then I came back here. It really makes you appreciate what you have. But when you go through all that struggle you don’t really think about that. You think “I need to survive” and “What can I do to make it?”

And then, of course, people take advantage. Take the whole marriage thing – marrying for the green card. There is a lot of anxiety and turmoil that you are going through. I remember once reaching the epitome of it: I thought once that Immigration called for some reason. I don’t know why. I picked up the phone at my place and the other person hung up. I was after a couple of weeks of working really hard with this congressman and trying to get the papers right. For some reason I thought “That’s it. I can’t take it anymore”. I remember the moment very clearly: I had just gotten out of the shower, with my hair wet and a towel wrapped around me, and I just lost it. I became hysterical and started thinking “That’s it! I’ll never make it! They’ll kick me in the butt and out of here”. I was going crazy. There was my career, and I had started to get somewhere with it, and the green card thing cut everything off. I’m back to -3. I was at 0, now I was at -3, just to get my green card, and I had to start all over again, then get back to where I was and then get forward. I was very unhappy. And at the same time, 9/11 happened so of course my chances were diminished. Everything together made me a complete mess. I was the most unhappy I’d been.

11. The move from coast to coast. The City of Angels.

Cristina: How did you end up staying in Los Angeles?

Carmit: I had to move here to get my papers done and told myself that I might as well stay here. When I got denied I started working on my appeal. I had to get as many letters as possible from film-makers, from people who know people who know people. So I came to Los Angeles for a week, to meet some friends and acquaintances of that first sponsor. I had an amazing week. I had a ton of meetings, and I wanted to see if there was anything worth staying for.

12. The education problem and
“To Thine Own Self Be True”.

Carmit: I always regretted never going to Yale or doing an undergraduate program. If I could have, I definitely would have gone to Yale. I really regret not having done it.

Cristina: Why?

Carmit: Because a college degree in something would have given me a better background in acting. It would have given me a bigger space. You learn so much more if you go to college. It’s more serious.

At Yale, for instance, acting is taken so much more seriously. Meryl Streep came out of Yale. I know Yale isn't perfect, but as a student you do play after play after play, like there is no tomorrow. It's the only way to really learn acting. The only way bar none.

I think it was stupid or shortsighted of me to think “Oh my God, I spent time in the army, came out of it at 21, then I traveled until I was 22. If I go to college I’ll come out at 26 and old.”

But the main reason why I didn’t go was money. $30,000 a year. My parents didn’t have that. I couldn’t get a scholarship because I didn’t go to college in Israel. If you want a scholarship, anyway, you’d better stay in Israel. They don’t give you money to go somewhere abroad. It was just impossible. I checked out scholarships and there was nothing available for my situation. So Stella Adler it was. But I remember that when I auditioned for my first play there was someone in the room who was from NYU, graduate, 4 years - and I got the part. It was a small moment of victory because I always feel terrible, that it’s going to hinder my career.

Cristina: Did you have the same experience on the West Coast?

Carmit: I think in Los Angeles people want you to come from college. They want people who are serious, who take acting seriously. There are thousands of good looking women. But if you went to college – even Julliard, and I don’t think that’s the best school – it’s still something “posh” to have on your resume. They look at you differently.

 Read more: pg.5

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