Katherine Norland did her first play in elementary school. Growing up she thought she would become a preacher as she studied in Bible school, however, the universe had other plans for her!
Katherine has been acting in Hollywood for more than 20 years. Her experience revolves around indie films which include more than 150 projects, films, plays, commercials, industrials and pretty much everything!
She is also an encouragement coach, and has written 3 books of quirky, motivational poetry with a punch! She has recently also produced a feature film called “Cannibal Corpse Killers” which is streaming on dozens of channels. Katherine has directed lots of short films but is now going to direct her first feature film soon!
For the last 3 years, she has been a series regular on one of the most popular YouTube shows on Dhar Mann’s channel… it is so popular that his video content has been viewed more than 20 BILLION times!
Here’s some of our conversation with Katherine, check out the complete interview in the video above.
So… you went to Bible school and then you moved to Los Angeles to become an actor, how did that happen?
I didn’t really think about becoming an actor I did a couple of plays in grade school and then um I did a “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and I played “Puck”. And I think I tried out for a play or two in high school and I never got a part, so I didn’t really consider that as a career move right?
So yeah, I was going to um Bible college and I was doing a church service every Sunday for the inmates at the local county jail. It was part of it that I went in and did church services and just during my time of I don’t know…prayer, I just felt like God was telling me to move to Los Angeles and become an actor.
And I thought that’s really bizarre that cannot be the voice of God, that’s got to be the other guy you know… I always thought of Los Angeles as this place of debauchery and I thought nothing good could happen there, right? I mean at least that’s kind of what was instilled in me by like parents and people around me. When I told them I was moving to Los Angeles they were worried that I would like get hooked on drugs.
How did things turn out to be when you reach Los Angeles? Did you feel like the calling was real?
Just after I got into town, I had my first audition and had a lot of opportunities for a lot of small independent films. I probably had more than 800 auditions um and I was in so many projects that I kept track for a while, and then I quit keeping track um… but I used to like… track every single person I worked with, every single project I had these massive lists and folders but once you have kids everything changes.
You don’t have time to go meticulous fracking and so I just kind of take things as they come now. But yeah, there was a lot of things that I did and its sad to say a lot of projects never got finished. I would film things and they would never get edited or they would never get distribution. So, um it’s yeah like on IMDb I think it shows I have like 68 credits or something like that but that’s a small portion.
Do you consider the Dhar Mann Videos your biggest project or is it something else?
Uh…depends on what you mean by biggest, I mean it’s the longest-running thing. As far as popularity I was on a tv show called “Malcolm in the Middle” that’s bigger in the sense of budget and it went on for 10 seasons. But as far as like the longest project I’ve been on then yes Dar Mann would be the longest of a series I’ve been on. I’ve had lead roles in feature films and things like that but in smaller budget things.
Dhar Mann Videos has been going on for the last 3 years, you were the very cast members, right?
Well, I believe they started in maybe, September 2018 and I joined the cast in October of 2018. Ricky was the first one she’s actually got me the audition, yeah um there were a few they did probably maybe between six or ten videos I think they did before I joined the cast I’m not sure I would have to go back and look but yeah…I’ve been there pretty early on, some of the early on people aren’t still with them but a lot of them still are.
The videos are life changers…so does that kind of you know change your attitude towards going to the studio at Dhar Manns? Does it magically give you the energy to go on the sets and create a positive impact?
Well, it really ties into I feel like it’s just right on track with what my purpose has always been. So I’ve always been trying to put out positive things into the world before I even started with Dhar Mann. Back in 2008, I wrote my first book “Poetic Prescriptions for Pesky Problems” all positive messages and back another second book before I started with Dhar Mann “Poetic Prescriptions for Eternal Youth” and putting my advice content videos out on my own channel.
I think I started doing it even before I got into Dhar Mann and I found myself wanting to do more self-help, wanting to put more messages out there, to do more speaking, books and when the Dhar Mann thing came around it was right at the time where I was going to quit acting.
It wasn’t fulfilling me anymore and I didn’t feel like the roles I was playing were putting positive messages into the world they were either neutral or they were bad messages and so I didn’t want to act in films that didn’t help people, that wasn’t uplifting it just felt incongruent.
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