Olivia Whelan-O'Farrell
Olivia Whelan-O'Farrell has been cast as the supporting role in This Side Up
As Olivia persues her passion for acting, she continues her degree studies at NYU.
Olivia shares her story of how she has chosen a degree that allows her to explore both acting and business.
“I grew up in Northern California in an Irish-American family. I am a rising Junior in Gallatin, studying the beneficial aspects of acting and performance in marketing, sales, and startups. I've loved acting from a very young age, but my parents always encouraged me to pursue fields that offered more stable career paths. I spent my Freshman and Sophomore years in the Liberal Studies Program - mostly because I didn't know what I wanted to study. I began taking acting courses in Open Arts Curriculum at Tisch and it gave me so much clarity. If I could have, I would have transferred to Tisch right then and there, but my parents were not as excited about that idea... To make them happy I planned on studying marketing, but it felt wrong to spend so much time and money on something I wasn't super passionate about. Not wanting to let go of acting, I found great acting classes outside of school, but they were often expensive. I got a job working for a startup in soho on their marketing team to fund my acting pursuits. It became increasingly challenging to juggle school and a 30+ hour work week while also attending any acting classes or auditions I could get my hands on. One day I discussed my internal battle with my boss and within seconds she turned one of my sales pitches into a script and told me to perform it. Suddenly it all clicked: acting and business went hand in hand. The biggest moguls of our time, like Elon Musk for example, all use their performance like personas to sell their products. This past semester I transferred to Gallatin to fuse together a degree that allowed me to explore both acting and business. I started applying the fearlessness that I was observing from these successful CEO's into my auditions. My newfound confidence started paying off and I started to finally get the roles I was auditioning for. This Side Up is an indie feature film I'm currently working on and I couldn't be more excited. “
-Olivia Whelan-O'Farrell
Olivia studied Acting for the Camera, Open Arts, NYU, with instructor Kathleen Baggott in Spring 2020.
This Side up
This Side Up - Writer/Director - David Lanning - Producers - Gibson Reedy and David Lanning - Main Actors: Theo Newton, Shelah Larson, Olivia O’Farrell, Auguste DeRose-Jones - Cinematographer Greg Abraham - Award winning Editor Chris Layhe - Award winning camera operator James Codeglia