Jenna Fischer might have shot to fame as Pam Beesly in The Office, but the actress’ true debut came years earlier, in the shape of a sex education video.
The star, 43, reminisced about her tough journey into acting in a new essay for the New York Times earlier this week.
She recounted enrolling in theater and dance classes during her childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, and, despite never landing a lead role in any of her school plays, moving to Los Angeles after college to pursue her acting dreams.
Humble beginnings: Jenna Fischer reminisced about her tough journey into acting in a new essay earlier this week, revealing her first paid gig was for a sex education video
Jenna, then a new theater grad, had ‘no fancy connections’ and, by her own admission, ‘no idea how the business worked’.
Her first move was to purchase a pager, which she thought would be essential to her success.
Within six months, the budding actress found herself penniless, with a blown-up car engine, and a depressed cat.
‘Nothing had happened for me,’ she wrote. ‘Broke and depressed, I faced reality and looked for a day job, eventually becoming a receptionist.’
The actress, who at the time ‘felt like a failure’, came close to quitting and contemplated that possibility constantly. But she was ‘too embarrassed’ to go back to her hometown and remained in Los Angeles, where, one day, her pager went off.
‘A number I didn’t recognize was flashing on the screen,’ Jenna recalled. ‘Finally, after all the struggle, the years of dreaming, the scene study classes, the movement classes, the voice and speech work, my efforts were about to pay off. I had landed my first real acting job.’
Her work paid off: The actress, 43, eventually shot to fame as Pam Beesly in The Office (pictured next to John Krasinski as Jim Halpert)
Past: Jenna recounted enrolling in theater and dance classes during her childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, and moving to Los Angeles after college to pursue her acting dreams
The role ended up being for an educational video about safe sex, shot for mental health patients in an apartment bathroom.
Jenna did her own make-up and wore her own clothes during the two-hour shoot, which saw her playing a girl who gets schooled about using protection by her sister while getting ready for a date.
‘Wow, you’re spending a lot of time getting ready. You must really like this guy. Are you bringing protection?’ the sister said according to Jenna’s recollection.
Jenna then answered: ‘Protection? Protection from what?’
The sister, as Jenna remembers it, told her: ‘If you plan to become sexually active, you’ll need protection from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.’
She then opened a drawer and showed Jenna several methods of birth control, including an IUD, and explained how each of them worked.
At the end of the video, Jenna got another line, telling her fictional sister: ‘Thanks, Sis! I’m glad I know how to protect myself.’
While Jenna only made $100 from the video, which she said was ‘fine’ and ‘a good tape for [her] reel’, booking her first paid acting job gave her the strength to continue chasing her dreams despite her struggles.
‘I’ll never forget “Protection? Protection from what?”‘ she wrote. ‘It’s not beautiful; two questions, four words. But it was important to me; it gave me the courage to keep going, to stay in Los Angeles and chase my dream.’
The actress eventually got her first agent and, hopping from one milestone to the next, landed her role as Pam eight years after her sex ed debut.