Aspiring child star has ties to Bath County
From a very early age Reese Durham knew she wanted to be an actress and has already started her journey in Hollywood with a few commercials, a public service announcement and two short films.
Her mom, Kelly Ranvier Durham, who is a Bath County native and a former Miss Bath County Queen, said she and her family decided to move to California so that her daughter could get the best training possible.
“Reese has known since she was about six that she wanted to be an actress, Kelly said. But our main training available in Kentucky has been for theatre work. She wants to do tv and movies and we learned quickly that if you want to do television and movies, you MUST train in Los Angeles, or you just aren’t taken very seriously. We made the part-time move in September and have been living both here in Sherman Oaks and in Louisville since then,” Kelly said.
“Well, I had always wanted to be on tv, much like most kids, but I have always been very passionate about how all aspects of how the shows worked. I would always carefully watch the characters reactions to things, which has really helped me since I got out here to LA. Additionally, I have always loved putting on shows for people and entertaining them with what I could do,” Reese said.
Reese spends her days in California taking acting classes, filming scenes and attending casting workshops.
Through the years she participated in plays and musicals to prepare for her future as an actress.
“I participated in many plays and they were one of the reasons I really knew I wanted to do acting! They were so much fun! Although doing plays and musicals helped me with acting, in some aspects, it has worked against me in LA, because theatre acting is more over the top than tv acting. Acting in tv and movies requires that you be “real” with a just a few unrealistic aspects, of course. As a result, I did have to work on toning down the portrayal of the character, in order that I make the cut,” Reese explained.
While it’s an exciting time for 12-year old Reese, times can get quite hectic for her parents.
“Being the mom of an aspiring child actress is both super exciting and super stressful! Now that we made the decision to “go for it” things have settled down a bit, but the period of time leading up to that decision was grueling! My husband, Darryl, and I were both raised with very traditional beliefs about schooling and careers. To break away from “the norm”; have our family live separately on two different coasts; move Reese from public school to online schooling; and modify my career plans to be Reese’s manager, were very difficult decisions for us. Fortunately, since making those tough decisions a higher power has clearly been steering the ship for us, because all has turned out wonderfully!
Between her schooling, auditions, maintaining social media sites, acting classes, singing classes, voiceover classes and casting director workshops, Reese has very little spare time. However, in the spare time she does have, she spends time with her girlfriends, is learning to play the keyboard, and is obsessed with writing short stories!
Since she was a toddler, she has been performing and competing. She loves cheerleading, gymnastics, dance, pageants, modeling, singing, participating in local theatre and writing and performing in her own productions.
Obviously, over the last year, she had to give up a few of those extracurricular activities to have a strong focus on acting. Luckily, she got her dad’s singing voice, so the two of them have been serenading me since Reese could talk! Her hunger for reading since she was tiny has certainly served her well, Kelly said.
Reese Durahm has ties to Bath County, her grandparents are Gene and Barbara Ranvier and her great-grandparents are Arnold and Eula Miller.
