Xochitl Gomez learned about the film business as a child
Xochitl Gomez has recalled what she learned about the movie business as a child.
Xochitl Gomez learned about the movie business when she was a child.
The 20-year-old actress is the daughter of a set decorator for feature films, and Xochitl believes that those experiences have shaped her understanding of the film business.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Xochitl explained: "I loved being in the prop houses because I got to always be on the Warner Bros. lot or be at Omega. There’s all these different prop houses, and I knew everybody who worked there.
"I’ll never forget, there was this one incident because set decorators have to tag the items that they want. And I was seven and I was super into the bright-coloured stickers and I accidentally took them all off and I got in trouble. That was possibly the only time I’ve ever gotten in trouble in that environment.
"I was just like, 'Oh, this is serious. This is a real job. This is a real thing.' And it really put in perspective what all of the moving pieces are."
Xochitl voices the part of Gabby, Sebastian's older sister and one of the Cat's newest clients, in The Cat in the Hat, the new animated movie.
And the actress learned a lot from voicing a character, explaining that it "taught [her] a lot about [her] voice and inflection".
Xochitl reflected: "I was just like, 'OK, I need to be super prepared.' I need to come up with all the kinds of beats and pauses and little breaths and things that I can do before and after, because I didn’t know what I was getting into.
"When I heard that I was going to be in the session with Bill [Hader] and be next to the pro, the legend of voiceover, I was like, 'I got to be super, super mega prepared.'
"I think doing voiceover has really taught me a lot about my voice and inflection, and that has carried a lot through filmmaking. I’m here doing this movie [Bad Influence] and there’s a lot of screaming and yelling, but also really important things that need to be said and a lot of paragraphs, and it taught me how important it is to fluctuate how you say things and how you pause and where you take a breath because all of that matters."
Xochitl found voicing a character to be surprisingly tough.
She said: "For me, I kind of raised my voice just a little bit, just a little excited. But also, especially at the beginning, she’s very sad and a little depressed over the fact that she’s had to move from everything that she’s known because her mom has a new job.
"So I had to really drag all that out and be very dramatic because I don’t do any of that. In my personal life, you’d never catch me doing any of that. So I had to really tap in and try new things that I’ve honestly never done before."
