When you think of the film industry, the two images that probably come to mind are star celebrities like The Rock and starving creatives who are looking for their big break.  Sarah is right in the middle of these two, and she’s helping us understand that there’s more to the acting world than those two extremes!

Sarah came from an artistic background; her mother was an art teacher and her father played 4 instruments.  She got started with violin lessons at 5 years old, and kept playing violin through high school. Along with music, Sarah has been working in service jobs since high school through a combination of babysitting, bartending, sales, real estate, event planning, and waitressing. This came from her parents’ deep belief in hard work, which undoubtedly played a large role in her success today.  Her first piece of acting was musical theater back in middle school, when she performed in “The Addams Family Meets the Men In Black,” and that was when she realized “Oh, I really like this!”  She continued to do shows throughout middle school, high school, did community theater, and in her Junior year, her high school got the rights to Les Misérables as it was leaving Broadway.  From there, she got scouted to do a special production of Les Misérables on Broadway before it closed.  This was the big boost Sarah needed to realize that acting could potentially be more than just a hobby.

In the acting world, I’d always thought that there would be one “thing” that happened that would start a snowball of offers, but that actually isn’t the case for Sarah.  Even when she got interviewed on The Ellen Show because of a funny infomercial she made with “My Shiney Hiney,” it didn’t turn into recruiters running down her inbox 24/7.  The real value came from having an “excuse” to network again with that new shiny badge on her reel (pun intended).  This is one of the core things Sarah is trying to educate her audience on: there was no one “thing” that made Sarah’s career; instead each opportunity was a stepping stone that built on the next.  Now she has a whole slew of past roles that range from hosting HQ Trivia to her appearance on The Ellen Show, which you can check out on her website here.

When I asked Sarah about how social media fits into her plan for acting, her response was: “You never know where something might lead,” which is such a perfect way to go about it!  Her social media has gone through a total transformation, since just a few years ago it was purely personal.  That changed when she was hosting a show that was getting millions of views, but they refused to tag her. After talking with a friend who was a rising influencer, she learned that no one would realize she’s an actor based on her social media presence, so she started integrating behind-the-scenes and #setlife content.  From there, she got into posting her own professionally done skits, essentially branding herself as a comedian.  That branding ended up being far from how she identifies herself, so Sarah got burnt out and ended up taking a break from social media around when the pandemic started.  When she came back on, Sarah really came into her own with the help of a coach, posting about mental health, sobriety, auditioning in a post-pandemic world, and more about the day-to-day.

What about why: what’s Sarah’s core mission that drives all of this?  Storytelling.  She loves to help people tell their stories and tell her own story, which can happen in all sorts of ways, like through social media on a content creation platform, hosting a show, or being a character in a movie.  If you’d like to see even more of the stories Sarah has to tell, check her out on TikTok @sarahpribis and Instagram with the same handle: @sarahpribis.


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