Meet Founder of the Lovie Diaries, Natasha Stone!
Where/how did the Love Diaries originate?
The Lovie Diaries originated at the beginning of this year. Last year I was accepted to study acting at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (which was a dream come true!) but I couldn’t afford all of the costs that came along with leaving work and starting full time study. I’ve always had to hustle for money so I tried to find a journal to brainstorm all of the ways I could try and make some extra money and that’s when I thought – wow wouldn’t an actor diary be useful right now? And with that I thought actually we may have something here! I didn’t tell anyone at first because I didn’t want anyone to put me off of the idea, so I painstakingly designed every single page of the diary in secret before getting our first copy printed in the early part of this year. Since then we’ve launched our website, released new products and shipped hundreds of diaries to creatives across the world. We listen to what our community need and build our journals from there, its been the most incredible journey and the support we’ve had from everyone along the way has been incredible. We love our Lovies!
What's your dream role and why ?
At first I thought it was to play Anna in Closer on stage. Luckily, we had the pleasure of doing that a few years ago and so I then had to think, what next? My dream has always been to be a stage actor (Killer Queen in WWRY is a strong favourite too!) but since starting this business, I’ve also LOVED doing this and so my focus is torn slightly on what I want to do next!
What's your FAVORITE part about being a part of the theatre industry?
My favourite part has always been the community surrounding theatre. You step into this alternate reality where everyone just ‘gets you’ and its such a strong sense of belonging, like you have a lifetime membership to a secret club. I also feel like the support from this community has been incredible during covid, the amount of creatives supporting each other on Instagram has really had a positive impact on our community. I also think that there is nothing like the buzz you get of stepping on stage in front of a live audience (I’ve really missed that during lockdown!) is just completely unrivalled!
Who is your hero?
Dame Judi Dench has always been my hero, I’m so inspired by her (she was the reason I wanted to study at Central!). We had the absolute pleasure of speaking to her this year when we sent her one of our actor diaries and she was just so gracious, they say you shouldn’t meet your heroes but she surpassed all of my expectations #Hero
What is your favourite product you've created?
Oh my god that’s like choosing between your children!! I have two favourites:
Drama School Audition Life – For me, I wanted to level the playing field with drama school auditions. In the UK, its very hard for working class actors to get access to information/prep for auditions because its financially so expensive and so we wanted to include everything we wished we’d known when we were auditioning to help give more people the opportunity to audition successfully for the top schools.
Dance Student Life – its bright pink and I am LIVING for it! haha
What would you say is the HARDEST part about being an actor and living the "Actor Life"?
The hardest part is the constant hustle. You always have to be bringing in the finances to support the ‘Actor Life’ and that can be really tricky when balancing auditions and trying to be creative, but if you can find a good system then I find that the hustle pushes you to fight stronger and work harder. Also the rejection is incredibly hard, especially if you’re a young actor trying to make it work – I’ve found that thinking of myself as a business instead of a person when auditioning helps me to switch off the personal element and take away the hurt when rejection happens.
