Elizabeth Berkley in "Lucky Christmas"
Elizabeth Berkley talked to Entertainment Heartbeat about her new holiday film, Lucky Christmas concerning a single mother who decides to be happy despite the world she has to face.
Looking back on her own career, it would appear that Berkley is far from her character (Holly), the luckless woman laboring at three jobs that the film showcases.
We wondered if Berkley could relate to the kind of life that Holly experiences. “…Everyone has different struggles, and you never know; I can relate to someone who continues to take themselves and their life to another level. Someone might look at my situation and say, ‘oh, it’s not like that,’ but maybe I’m deciding for different goals. So I know what it is to struggle, I know what it is to work hard, I think it’s the dancer in me that has a very strong work ethic, to take each problem to another level, and I’m very grateful for the abundance and wonderful things but I’ve worked very hard and never had anything handed to me.”
An actress should be able to play any character despite the contrast, but Berkley believes that her own arduous journey can give a more believable life to Holly than just posturing expressions to dialog.
“It’s not like I worked right out of the gate and moved to California and had famous parents who helped me get through the door, it’s been all hard work. I know what it’s like to have a clear-cut goal and a vision and to do the hard work to get there, and it’s not always easy – and you have to go through highs and lows and have to be passionate on what you do, and in Holly’s case she’s really passionate about what she does, she knows she has a gift for it, she knows she can make people happy with it, so when you don’t get to use your gift as often as you want that can sometimes be a painful thing.”
One of Berkley‘s own passions is helping young women raise their self-esteem (Ask-Elizabeth.com), so we asked if she had issues with Hollywood’s attitude of contrasting beauty with intellect while having to validate her own considerable intelligence and academic accomplishment.
“I’ve never felt the need to overcompensate and prove. I grew up around women (Berkley’s mother and grandmother) who were not afraid to stand on their intelligence and strength and not apologize for it, which is huge. So I have these examples, there was this certain fearlessness, and what kind of comes with that one aspect is not worrying so much about what people do think or don’t think…I’m in an industry that plays on people’s (confidence) and when you deal with critics or something your insecurities can rise in ways you can’t believe. I’m not saying that I’m exempt from hoping or needing or worrying or wanting for people to know who I really am, but I think it was more when I was younger, because I think when you get older you really realize how much time is wasted trying to please other people or make them guess who you are when there’s a way to kind of turn down the volume on that. One of the things I help the girls with is to find out in a time where so many things are around us telling us who we are and who we should be, the opportunity where we come together is who we are, like what do we value, what do we really care about.”