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Pursuing your dreams
Thursday, September 12th, 2002 by GetawayBC.com
Sometimes it takes another person to encourage you to pursue your dreams. That’s what happened to Andrea Stringfellow, a 2001 graduate of Houston Secondary School who thought she might work with special needs children one day. Deep down, though, she had another dream.
“People asked me in high school if I had ever considered the modelling thing, and I said, nah, that’s a little girl dream. Sure, I had done the little red plastic high heels and all that when I was small, but I had never considered it as something I could really do,” she says.
But one day a photographer asked her the same question – had she considered being a model?
So, more out of curiosity than anything else, Andrea looked up some agents on the Internet. She found an agency in Prince George and checked it out with her mother. To her amazement the agent, Carolyn, immediately said she was interested in taking Andrea on.
Apparently she has “the look.”
“I don’t know what ‘the look’ is,” Andrea says. “You can’t really describe it. It changes all the time.”
Whatever it is, she has what modelling agencies are after. It has landed her an international contract. She has already made her way down countless runways in B.C., has acted in two movies, and on May 22 she is leaving for a modelling job in New York, where other doors are expected to open for her.
Her first job was a fashion show in Prince George in the fall of 2000.
“I was so nervous I thought for sure I was going to trip and fall off the runway,” she remembers, chuckling.
She has a professional modelling certificate, which she earned after about two months of daily classes in self-confidence, etiquette, personal hygiene, and, of course, runway walking.
What’s a typical day like for a model?
“Well, each day is different,” Andrea says. “It’s really not as glamorous as people think. On-location shoots mean you get up early and the days are very long. There’s a lot of time in hair and makeup and there’s a lot of time just waiting around while they set up. My shortest day was about six hours, and I’ve worked lots of 14 hour days.”
While she waits, she reads and works on courses she’s taking. She’s studying business management.
The New York contract is a big thing. She’s there as one of a group of about half a dozen from the Prince George agency. Unlike some of the others, however, Andrea already has work booked there. She’ll be a fitting model for designers, and will probably model the finished products, says Andrea’s mother, Susan Stringfellow, who gave her daughter a foot up by driving her to Prince George many weekends so Andrea could pursue her modelling career.
While in New York Andrea expects to be doing castings or auditions for other jobs.
“If she does well she could be staying down there,” says her mother.
Other agents have expressed interest in Andrea as well. One is from Barcelona, and that “is still up in the air,” Susan says, but it could mean a contract for a job in Spain. Also, there’s an agency in Vancouver interested in Andrea for movie parts, says her mother.
She adds that Andrea has completed a three-day acting workshop with executive producer Jordan Randell, the former head casting director for Star Search America and the person responsible for the careers of LeAnn Rimes, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
Andrea landed a non-speaking part in a movie in Vancouver early in her career.
That led to a bigger part in the movie Pestilence, shot in Prince George earlier this year. Andrea was there for more than a month and finished her part in April.
Andrea, now 18, began her modelling and acting career relatively late. Many models begin at 13 or 14 or even younger.
She says there are common misconceptions about being a model.
“What most people don’t understand is that modelling is a job. People think you are what they see, but that’s not who I am in everyday life. It’s separate. Modelling, acting, they’re really not that different.”
She talks about how she shows up in the morning in her jeans or sweat pants, and how, after hair and makeup, she is transformed into someone else’s perception of what she needs to look like to sell a product or play a part. “That’s not me,” she stresses.
Another misconception about models is that most of them have eating disorders, she says.
“Sure, I have met models with eating disorders – it’s definitely there. But that doesn’t mean it affects everyone. Carolyn (my agent) is really good about having us keep a healthy lifestyle.”
The other models she works with are like family to her. They function as a support group to handle the various stresses of the job. They travel to conventions together, and will be in New York as a group.
It’s been about a year and a half since Andrea first stepped onto a runway, but she still gets excited every time she gets a call for work.
“The first time I was asked for an autograph it felt so strange. I thought, why are they asking me?”
She’s realistic about her job and knows that one day she’ll be too old to do what she’s enjoying right now.
“I also want to work with special needs children, and maybe I will still do that one day,” she says. “But for now I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”
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