DAM: Today we’re sitting down with Jordanian/Palestinian Australian Actor and Writer, Mina Asfour.
MA: Acting and Writing are the main bread and butter of my life at the moment. I also do singing and music but those are more of a passion.
DAM: Mina, where would you say your inspiration began in terms of Acting?
MA: I was a very quiet child. I remember in kindergarten one of my teachers told me ‘silent boys are good boys’. I don’t know why that stuck with me but I was a selective mute for part of my childhood until the ages of like eight or nine and then I just became the loudest human alive.
“I was a selective mute for part of my childhood until the ages of like eight or nine and then I just became the loudest human alive.”
I used to love singing and I had a decent voice. Growing up, I took singing lessons and I really thought I wanted to be a singer – then puberty hit and it just changed my voice so I didn’t know how to use it for a while and I thought ‘maybe that’s it’. That’s when I really turned to Acting. Growing up as a child, I genuinely thought that the actors lived inside the TV. I thought that every single time I pressed play, these people would just come alive in front of the camera for me and perform. The only time that I questioned my perception was when I was clicking through the channels and saw the same actors in two different movies or TV shows and wondered – how are they going back and forth? Not understanding that it was recorded.
DAM: That’s very endearing! So it was Acting after that?
MA: Once I really delved into acting and what it was about that really drew me in and I knew basically that this is what I wanted to do. By then I had turned around thirteen, fourteen. I think almost every child actor has this delusional idea that in two years of acting you would be famous and living life.
DAM: We can definitely relate to that. What inspired you to get into Acting?
MA: My family was very poor at the beginning of our lives here in Australia. One of our many ways of entertainment was watching the channels on TV (ABC,SBS,7,9,10). Sometimes we would go to video Easy and rent movies.
“One of our many ways of entertainment was watching the channels on TV (ABC,SBS,7,9,10). Sometimes we would go to video Easy and rent movies.”
I remember it was like five DVD’s for ten dollars every single week – that was the bargain. We would get the five DVD’s and we would watch it on repeat. My dad made a rule that we couldn’t rent the same movie every week so we watched it over and over again, cinema was the golden ticket for me. I remember with Video Easy and Blockbuster, you could only rent the newer movies for one day to three days and they were more expensive. I thought a smart way of thinking was removing the title pages and swapping the films out and thinking that I was beating the system but then the store managers would unlock it and wonder why it wasn’t the same DVD.
I used to watch a lot of Disney, like traditional Disney, a lot of Barbie movies too. They were my jam like – Barbies, Rapunzel Barbie’s Nutcracker, Barbie is Princeton, Papa Bobby’s mermaid. Yeah, there’s like hundreds, they had really bad CGI, but it’s good.
DAM: Would you say those times sort of shaped who you were?
MA: Yeah I feel like when you’re young and don’t know how the industry works you can fall into a lot of scams and that’s what happened . I swear every year there’s like 5 new companies like, ‘do you want to be a Disney star?’ ‘Come to these open call auditions at this random hotel and pay a certain amount of money’. I used to go to all of those thinking that’s how people make it in the film industry and become a star. My mom however didn’t want to go through any of that, especially having to pay for it. I still wanted to act so I signed with an Extra’s agency and I thought 1) you do extra work, 2) you do one extra job, 3) you do a featured extra job, 4) you can get like one line or two, 5) you can get a big part in a film. That’s how I thought. Growing up I made a lot of mistakes like that. Sometimes I wish I had my current self tell my child version not to do any of that and do acting classes instead. Slowly but surely, I learned what works and what doesn’t work for me.
DAM: Then, in terms of your upbringing with Acting stuff, how were your parents towards it?
MA: They thought it was a phase. They thought it was silly and constantly said ‘this is okay for now but what do you wanna do after high school?’ God bless little Mina, I was very sure about Acting and said ‘no, this is what I’m doing and I know what I’m doing and I’m not gonna let you guys sway me.’ The first year out of high school was crickets. Nothing. I remember my dad pressuring me and asking me ‘What are you doing? Maybe go to university and get a degree in something, anything, just do something’.
“The first year out of high school was crickets. Nothing. I remember my dad pressuring me and asking me ‘What are you doing? Maybe go to university and get a degree in something, anything, just do something’.“
I understood his pressure just because he’s the eldest son in his family and there’s a lot of pressure around him making sure that I have a future. There’s also that whole Ethnic comparison thing with my ‘Childs doing this and yadda yadda yadda’. Even to this day whenever my parents talk to anyone overseas they tell them that I’m studying at Uni. Whenever I used to bring up NIDA or WAPPA they would get really excited because to them it was like Uni but I’ve never done well in institutions. I truly believe that people have talent and it can be put in different ways on the human body and you can’t decide where it lands. If something works, I’m not gonna mess with it. That’s why instead of Uni I took and still take a lot of classes – just like short courses, understanding my body more and how it works.
DAM: Have your parents become accepting of it now?
MA: They didn’t really think much until they saw the final product. Once they saw me in an Ad they would congratulate me and tell me that they were proud of me but then after that they would ask me what happens next. I don’t think they understand a lot of things such as why I don’t get paid for auditions. I have to tell them to think of it like a regular job interview. We don’t have the word for ‘audition’ in Arabic so the only way they can make sense of it – is if it were like a competition, whoever wins the competition gets the job.
DAM: That makes sense. What’s your experience been like in the Australian Film Industry?
MA: It’s always a rat race and I didn’t understand why I had to work so hard to get so little, while other people seemed to work so little and get so much.
“I didn’t understand why I had to work so hard to get so little, while other people seemed to work so little and get so much.”
I would be in Acting classes, learn all my lines, do the job and the teacher would tell me that it was solid without giving me any notes. Other people would get notes and I noticed that everyone else in the class seemed to be working and I’m the only one that’s not working. I did not completely understand it. So okay, I get headshots. Okay, then you need to work a little bit and do some stuff and do some short films to get some self tapes and then a showreel. Okay, now you’re going to apply to agents. Okay, you get an agent call, now what? Okay, the first six months you’re going to predominantly get commercials. Okay, now you need to make connections with the producers. Okay, I’m going to all these Classroom Workshops. You keep doing that for a while and then what? I was so confused, like thinking to myself – why was I working my arse off and getting nothing in return, but at the same time I should be grateful for all of it. I don’t like that. It’s so funny the moment I stopped trying, the moment I stopped giving an actual shit, was when I finally started getting work.
“…the moment I stopped trying, was when I finally started getting work.”
I understand that in Australian media there is less work for me so when work comes for me then I need to be on top of my game and if I don’t get the role then it’s nothing to do with my worth as an actor.
DAM: How do you feel then for your own future, in terms of that? Do you kind of get worried or do you just try to push through it and hope that something will happen?
MA: My past agent always used to tell me that ‘the world could be on fire and you would still be here packing away the dishes’, like you’re so unmoved by things happening around you. That’s not true, I obviously do know what’s happening around me but I just refuse to wake up when I’m in my forties or fifties and be like, ‘fuck, I wish I did this. If only I did that’.
“I just refuse to wake up when I’m in my forties or fifties and be like, ‘I wish I did this. If only I did that’.
I refuse. I refuse. I refuse for that to happen to me. I know what my future is, I’m not gonna question it and I’m just going to keep pushing for it. I think that’s what’s killing artists so much is that they make their art their life and for me, I’m a human first and Acting is something that I do. I know I do it well and I’m going to have fun with it either way. Also a lot of people have a very bad misconception of just hustling now and – ‘once you get this acting job, you can relax’. It’s like, no babe, this is the job. If you don’t like the hustle, leave now, because it’s a constant hustle even when you get the job. Even if you become the next Margot Robbie you still have to do press interviews, there’s a hustle there.
DAM: How have you found that balance within the hustle and life? Because it is so much like that – especially in the film industry and the people in it.
MA: Do the things that you enjoy. No matter what happens in your life you’re going to deal with stress. I would rather personally stress about things that I like to stress about , like getting a self tape done or making sure to learn my lines, rather than stress about working somewhere I don’t like.
“No matter what happens in your life you’re going to deal with stress. I would rather personally stress about things that I like to stress about, than stress about working somewhere I don’t like.”
Also knowing that what I do is a job and not my entire life. Yes, I can be passionate about it but after an eight hour shift, it’s time to wrap it up. If you treat it like a sole passion then you’re going to feel very drained.
Early on I had the misconception of thinking all my hard work will pay off but now I understand that there’s no guarantee for that so do it because you enjoy it. Nowadays I think ‘I’m here because I want to get headshots done’, ‘I’m here because I want to film this tape’, not because all this stuff will get me somewhere. I always tell myself I’m not getting this job. I’m not getting anything, it’s a reverse psychology. It’s more so about enjoying the moments and choosing the things you like to stress about.
DAM: I think that’s a great way to end. Thank you Mina for taking the time.
MA: Thanks for having me.
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Find more on Mina here:
Imdb: https://m.imdb.com/name/nm10160923/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
IG: https://www.instagram.com/mina_asfour/
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Photos by NOAH Creative
Diversity Australia Magazine 