Harriet, tell me about your life & career.
I grew up on a farm, it was a very muddy, free-style existence – we always had animals wondering around. When I was nineteen I fell in love and moved to London to be with my boyfriend. We broke up in my early twentie’s and I ran away to Italy to study my dream of performing Shakespeare in Italian. I got a place at an Italian drama school having memorised monologues and poems in Italian, though I didn’t actually end up going to that school. Instead by pure luck, I found Michael Margotta; a truly incredible teacher. I was there for over three years, and I was supposed to come home after that, but I fell in love with Italy and was very happy. I got a lot of work and did a lot of TV and films out there. I learnt Italian through reading scripts. I read endless scripts and Italian health magazines – because they were fun to read. I’ll never forget that after probably two years, I watched my first film all the way through in Italian, and I understood it all. I cried at the end of it because I couldn’t believe that I understood another language without needing subtitles. Sounds odd I know, but it was the first time I really understood the power of my mind.
Then I came back for love. I had kept in touch with my teen boyfriend who I had left years earlier and I came back to him. I practiced yoga all the time I was over in Italy, but it was very much self-practice. When I was nineteen I also wanted to go to India, to train as a yoga teacher. Of course, my father didn’t want me to go. Italy after that was the safer option – acting – following my other passion, so I just took my yoga mat with me and did the acting. I came back and had my babies and I was still auditioning constantly. It was then that I thought, I really want to be a yoga teacher. I thought “finally, I feel ready to do this”, because it was a huge course; it lasted three years, and was very intense – the highest accreditation you can get in yoga. And I did it. I worked on set and on my studies throughout my pregnancy and from when my baby was just a couple of months old. I’d be on-set by day and teaching yoga in the early mornings. When I look back now, I just can’t believe I did it – all the notes, all the classes, all the exams. I didn’t sleep – I just went for it. I Just didn’t stop. I couldn’t.
Then last year, obviously COVID struck, and I like so many others lost all my work in one day. I panicked, but gradually rebuilt myself back up with my yoga and also with my acting. Just before COVID, we’d done a film that luckily went round the film festivals during 2020 and I won best actress in three of the festivals. So that was just the biggest pick me up. It was just lovely that when I wasn’t able to work and do the acting, it was still close to me. I’m about to begin another project now and both yoga and acting continue to be a huge part of my life.
In March 2021 I opened the online doors to my yoga and meditation self-care space, The Intuitive Soul Sanctuary (www.harrietmg.com). I have built it with my community, for my community – for everybody. I don’t just want it to be yoga, I want to encourage everyone to rise to their potential through movement and mindfulness. I want it to be abundant and full of many different classes and workshops that people wouldn’t normally try. I want them to feel like they can just dive in and explore. I know that yoga can put a lot of people off – not everyone wants to do it or they feel they can’t do it. So I really want to create a safe space for people who wouldn’t normally consider yoga and mindfulness.
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Just before COVID, we’d done a film that luckily went round the film festivals during 2020, and I won best actress in three of the festivals. So that was just the biggest pick me up ever.
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What film festivals did you win your acting awards for.
I won best actress at the Florence awards, semi finalist at the Venice awards and The Outstanding Achievement Award for best supporting actress at the Indie film festival in LA. I was also nominated for Best Actress in Toronto for my performance in ‘Exit.’
Tell me about yoga. How did you get into that?
Funnily enough, the other day I found the notes that I’d written following the first time I experienced it – really experienced a course of weekly classes. I dabbled in it when I was a teenager, but it was only when I moved to London that I got hooked. That was when I wrote off to the British Wheel of Yoga – who I eventually did my training with – telling them that I really wanted to teach. But the timing just wasn’t right and I probably wouldn’t have had the maturity to really go through with such an intense training that I experienced in recent years. It’s funny, even ten years ago, I probably wouldn’t have had quite the life experience to offer that I do now, and I’m sure I will have evolved even more deeply in another ten years.
Why do you think yoga is important?
Number one is mental health; in the sense of giving yourself space to dedicate regular time to yourself. Self-care is important and yoga affords you this space away from the minds chatter. Yoga has the added benefit of training both your mind and body because it is a discipline. In the beginning, maybe you’re moving and making shapes you’ve never done before. When you learn mindfulness, you’re training your mind to allow the thoughts to not feel quite so overwhelming. I don’t mean to say it’s a way to train the mind so that you’re thoughtless – far from that. I think it absolutely allows you to become the witness of the many zillions of thoughts – which is something like sixty to eighty thousand a day – of which only a very small percentage have been proven to be positive. So if you can imagine all those thoughts, and only a few are positive, without the support of mindfulness to help you take yourself out of that swirl for a minute, it can drive you to distraction. I certainly notice that even when I teach, the effect that teaching has on me long after a session is indescribable and I’m not even on the absorbing end, but the giving end, yet I still feel the impact of that profound space. Even teaching on zoom. It’s being able pause life’s wheel and to take that deep breath and long exhale, which is something many of us so desperately need to do.
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I think [mindfulness] absolutely allows you to become the witness of the many zillions of thoughts – which is something like sixty to eighty thousand a day – of which only a very small percentage have been proven to be positive.
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Learning and retaining what we learn is important for so many of us, and in so many areas of life and learning. My question to you is, regarding your acting, how do you learn and remember long scripts? Do you have any tools you use to help you or is this natural to you?
That’s such an interesting question you ask, because for everyone it’s very different. Certainly for me, recently I had to learn a script that was seventeen pages in both English and Italian. It was very helpful actually because if I forgot the word in English I could remember it in Italian; and it helped me do the English. But I’ve never had to do anything so difficult before. My personal technique is that I record myself doing it – going through the lines – both characters. Initially, I might record all the side notes, so that in my head I know the non-verbal, and then I will go back and record it without the extras – just with the spoken lines. Then I will record it with just the other person’s lines. I would say I am very much an audio person. I visualise more where the words are on the page than what the words actually are. If I visualise where the words go then I’ll remember the word or the line. I just listen to that audio over and over again when I’m doing dishes or cleaning, so it becomes natural. Now and again I just test myself, and I also write it down so I’ve got the visual again – so it’s continual – but I’d say I’ve got it down from years of doing it, I can do it quite quickly.
What inspires you?
Certainly with yoga what inspires me is helping other people and their reactions to it. And I don’t mean that in a kind way where it feels like “oh my god, yeah it was amazing”. No – it’s more like, oh my god, I helped someone deal with something today. Or I get messages like “you really helped me during this time in COVID – I wouldn’t have been able to cope without your meditation”. That sings to my heart and makes me feel very deeply, and I get quite emotional because I feel like, all the hard work that I pour into the background that no one sees – all the recordings and the downloads, the mistakes that you have to redo – all of that – plus the late nights, my family that need me, the choosing of the work sometimes over my children, because I want to do the work well. In that moment, it feels like someone’s just poured ten thousand pounds of love into my emotional bank account.
With the acting it is the same, I guess. Acting is very much conveying a message. I just love conveying human emotion and relationships and trying to work things out. And I’ve always adored stepping into other people’s lives. I think that’s why I love it so much – I very much visualise other people’s lives all the time, and I think that’s part of it as well. To reveal the essence of somebody through a story is a great privilege too.
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I get messages like “you really helped me during this time in COVID – I wouldn’t have been able to cope without your meditation”. That sings to my heart and makes me feel very deeply.
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What life advice would you pass on to your sixteen-year-old self?
You know, all the key-words – be brave, trust yourself. Really strongly just keep believing in what lights you up. And just follow that without looking back – because that’s kind of what I did. See your street and walk down it. See your road, see your path, see your mountain and climb it. However long it takes. Just go your own way and just trust every step. It might not be the straight way to the top – it might be the zigzag or the long way round, and it’s going to get dark sometimes, and it’s not going to feel so warm sometimes, and you’re not going to feel so good sometimes. You’re going to get tired, and you’re going to want to stop and you’re going to want to lie down. But all of that is just part of the process, and then you get back up and you just keep going down your path.
What advice would you give to your older self?
Just trust that whatever you did was right – no regrets. No regrets.
What life or business advice would you pass on to others?
To definitely just close your eyes, and really listen to what it is that you couldn’t live without, in the sense of, what’s your passion. Could you live without it? If you couldn’t, then keep going towards that. If you can take it or leave it or don’t feel passionate about it, maybe it’s not worth expending your energy on. Maybe there’s something else.
Finally, in other conversations, you’d said that you feel like you’ve become a better person over the years. In what way do you mean?
What you ask is so interesting, because going through my twenties, I really did feel like I was a bad person. But it wasn’t until years later in my thirties that I realised, it’s not that I was a bad person, but I must clarify, it’s not that I suddenly realised that I was a good person. It’s that I accepted and began to honour the dark side of me; the yin and the yang – both sides of me. That acceptance has made me ‘a better and kinder person’ to myself. Yes – I have a dark side and yes, I have a bright side and being a better person for me just giving myself a break about that duality.
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I think it’s ok to express emotions, and to be angry, and to be… not a perfect person. To have that other side of you – it’s just so lush even acknowledge that and let the good side acknowledge the bad side saying – “I know, I hear you, I’m with you”
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I resonate with what you’re saying. It’s important to let go of feeling guilty all the time. When we realise and accept that we’re going to make mistakes – probably tomorrow… maybe even in ten minutes – it can feel liberating to accept our dark side. I think our dark side can protect us.
I think you’re right. And I think it’s ok to express emotions, and to be angry, and to be… not a perfect person. To have that other side of you – it’s just so lush even acknowledge that and let the good side acknowledge the bad side saying – “I know, I hear you, I’m with you”. This is a lot of the work that I do with students. A lot of inner work. You know when you get things that come up from childhood, it’s very much acknowledging that “I’m here. I’m with you. I see you”. It’s kind of freeing.
Harriet MacMasters-Green was photographed by LAPORTRA in front of our light-grey backdrop. If you would like a professional portrait that tells the story of your career – press the button below.
