Making it in the movies takes grit and determination. Julie Lucido started a little later in life than most.

Editor’s note: UR Here Theater will present “What the Constitution Means to Me” – directed by Julie Lucido – at 2 p.m. on Nov. 9 at 2nd Space Theater. 

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By Doug Hoagland

Julie Lucido might never be a Hollywood star, but she’ll always have Satan – or at least the music video commercial where she tells the devil to f-off.

She does it dressed as a Puritan as she prepares to burn a can of water at the stake. (Think Salem witch trials, minus the human victims.) The water is Liquid Death, a brand with the tagline: “Murder your thirst.”

The video has gotten more than 1 million views on TikTok. And why not? It’s campy and memorable, anchored by the over-the-top performance of Lucido, a veteran stage performer in Fresno.

At 51 – with a family and a business in Fresno – she’s now chasing television, film and commercial work in Hollywood, where she lives part time. Ambitious. Realistic. A risk taker. She’s all that. “I’m still hungry, and I want to see how far I can go,” Lucido says. “Not every job is great, but it’s fun.”

At a stage of life when many people choose routine over the unknown, Lucido threw herself into uncertainty. She’s living every professional actor’s hard reality: the failed auditions, the never-ending classes, the director who likes your work until he doesn’t.

It’s like she’s starting over, says her mentor and friend Dan Pessano, managing director of Good Company Players. “It takes a lot of chutzpah – a lot of guts,” he says.

Lucido has achieved enough success to reinforce a different gut feeling: “I know this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.” Her successes, so far, have come in independent productions (and that one video commercial) that show up at smaller film festivals or online.

So, she commutes to Los Angeles, tracks her successes and failures on a spreadsheet and remains hopeful.“You have to have a bit of optimism to do this. I keep saying to myself: ‘Keep doing great work and it’s going to pay off at some point.’ ”

‘Gotta be tough’

Lucido grew up watching performers. Her mother was a choreographer, actress and dance teacher who didn’t sugarcoat the performing world. Lucido was on the receiving end of that wisdom when she was 12 and bitterly disappointed about not getting cast in a Bakersfield production of “Annie.” As she sobbed, her mother said matter-of-factly: “Well, if you’re going to cry, you better not do this because you gotta be tough.”

Lucido’s next audition went better. The family had moved to Fresno, and then 14-year-old Lucido was cast in a GCP production of “Evita.” Sixteen-year-old Audra McDonald rotated with another actress in the starring role. “She seemed like an adult,” Lucido says of the six-time Tony winner from Fresno.

Age brought Lucido her own share of big roles on stages throughout the Valley. GCP’s Pessano says Lucido is a “very smart actress. She does a tremendous amount of preparation, and it shows.” Pessano adds that Lucido also is an accomplished director and choreographer, demonstrating both skills while helming GCP’s 2017 production of “Man of La Mancha.”

She cast top-notch performers, found guitarists who could bring live music to the show’s prison setting (a fresh approach) and introduced a sense of movement – not dance but a fluidity – that benefited the production. “It was quite special,” Pessano says.

Couch surfing

In 2019, Lucido began working with a life coach to map out her future as a performer. Then – and now – she had many obligations. A husband. Two daughters. A marketing business. Part-time educational director for Children’s Musical Theaterworks in Fresno. Board president of UR Here Theater, showcasing political and progressive plays in staged readings.

As Lucido considered how to introduce Hollywood into her mix, the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the world. Serendipitously, Alison Allwine, a friend and actor from Fresno who was living and working in Hollywood, came to shelter with the Lucidos.

Allwine encouraged Lucido. “Come crash on my couch and just see what happens.” With that invitation in hand, Lucido got busy during the Covid lockdown. She took Zoom workshops to train for acting in front of a camera. “It’s scaling down. If you’re performing at Roger Rocka’s, you have to fill the room and reach the back wall. But when you’re working on camera, the director wants what’s in your eyes and soul.”

In 2021, Lucido began driving the 99 and landing on Allwine’s couch while looking for work. She got her first job acting in a master’s thesis project for a graduate student at Chapman University. The 17-minute film – titled “Leo’s Potatoes” – is a dark comedy since screened at several film festivals.

Lucido plays Tabitha, who has an ex-boyfriend named Leo. She’s in danger of losing her RV; he’s a hoarder. She wants him to sell some of his stuff on EBay and give her the money. He won’t. Drama ensues. In the end, she steals his prized action figure: Macho Man Randy Savage.

“I had a great time with the script and the crew, and my co-star [Michael J. Sielaff] was so giving and generous,” Lucido says. “It was a great first film to be a part of, and it really inspired me to want to be on [a movie] set more.”

Tabitha was a lead role; in many of Lucido’s other jobs, she’s a supporting character who appears briefly. In “The Patrolman,” a 15-minute horror film, she appears for less than a minute. The film’s director hired her for a voice over off camera, then hired her for a small on camera role and then fired her from the voice over. “They say you haven’t made it in L.A. until you’ve been fired,” Lucido laughs. She adds: “That’s the kind of skin you have to have because people get fired all the time.”

Rejection is baked into that world. The director who hired her to play the profane Puritan in the Liquid Death commercial had rejected her for another job the year before. The director remembered that; Lucido didn’t. “I’m really good at throwing stuff away. You have to be.”

The Red Carpet

In 2023, Lucido got a place to live in West Hollywood, and she’s there several days each week for auditions or jobs. She doesn’t romanticize that life. “If you want to do this for a living, you have to do the job, which is auditioning. The job is to get up every morning and look for work every single day. It’s a gypsy life. Do your best and let it go because you’re not in control.”

And even if you find work, you might not make much money, Lucido says. In 2024, she shot a commercial with a radio spot pickup, two feature films and a short film. She also worked background in a feature film and an online program and shot a TV pilot. “I had a good year of bookings by some standards,” Lucido says, and she only made $3,366. Her 2024 expenses totaled $14,208, which included (not a total list) paying taxes, union dues, her agent and manager and her acting school.

Lucido readily acknowledges her financial position is different than many in Hollywood. “Having worked and saved, I’m lucky enough to have the funding I need to invest in myself and my career.” Many younger actors face the future on “a wing and a prayer” while working three non-acting jobs to pay for rent, food and investments in their careers like acting classes, Lucido says.

Meanwhile, she has a buddy in a young actor – Sam Linkowski, who’s from Fresno and now lives in Los Angeles. Linkowski, 27, met Lucido when he was 11 and she choreographed a show he was in at GCP. Today, Linkowski has a side business giving voice lessons in the Los Angeles area, and Lucido used her marketing skills to help him expand and get more clients.

Linkowski and Lucido are mutual cheerleaders in their acting careers. “When she’s down, I pick her up, and when I’m down, she picks me up,” Linkowski says. “ Funny thing, she’s 20 years older than I am, and she’s sometimes barreling ahead faster than I am.”

Family-wise, Lucido says, her Fresno/West Hollywood arrangement works because her daughters are both in high school. “They can feed themselves and do their homework. They’re more independent. I couldn’t have done this five or 10 years ago.”

It matters, too, that her husband of 22 years, Rich Lucido, is on board. “We enjoy supporting her because we know it’s such a large part of her passion.” The support that begins at their home radiates out to work colleagues and friends in the performing world. “There is no dream in a vacuum,” Rich Lucido says.

He says it was “fantastic” to see his wife on a big screen at the 2023 Marina Del Rey Film Festival. The film was “Mid-Life Crisis: The New Hire,” a 17-minute comedy. Lucido starred as a harried human resources director dealing with assertive Gen Z employees who challenge workplace norms best left in the last century. She also co-produced the film.

It’s packed with Fresno-spawned actors: Allwine (who co-wrote the script, co-directed and co-produced) Bryan Beckstrand, Imani Branch, Jacquie Broach, Kindle Cowger, Teresa Hoopes, Jonathon Hogan, Kyle Lowe (who co-directed and served as associate producer), Josh Plowman, Lalaina Rabetsimba and Brandon Weis.

They shot the film for less than $750 in the Fresno office of Marketing Plus, Lucido’s company. You could call it a friends fest because as Lucido says: “We all grew up together in Fresno theater.”

Another of her films – “Sleepwalkers” – played this October at the Screamfest Horror Film Festival at Hollywood’s historic TLC Chinese Theater (aka Grauman’s Chinese Theater). Lucido walked the red carpet in a red velvet dress, and then settled back in the dark to watch the 17-minute film. “I have to say it was thrilling to be in a packed house – at a historic movie theater where I had never been – and hear the audience react to my character in real time,” Lucido says.

Only hours after the screening, she caught a red-eye flight to Atlanta for the International Fresh Produce Association Global Show, where she showed off the products of her Marketing Plus clients. Lucido – president and chief executive officer of Marketing Plus – was in Atlanta for nine days and then got home in time to see her younger daughter perform in color guard at a high school band competition.

“I’m astonished at how she spins so many plates,” says Allwine, now living in New York. “I love it that she’s not losing her autonomy or her dreams, but how she does it I’ll never know.”

‘Door to opportunity’

Lucido says she’s worked more in Hollywood than she imagined was possible when she first committed to a TV and film career. And, her progress is now marked by membership in the powerful performers union SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television Artists).

Lucido became eligible to join the union for saying one line in the TV pilot she shot last summer. The good news: union membership can lead to work on network and cable shows. The bad news: union actors can’t do non-union work. So good-bye to the non-union work that’s given Lucido her start.

“We’ll see what the next year brings. But I’m definitely now in a more competitive bracket,” she says. For now, though, the routine remains the same.

The Sunday night drive to West Hollywood. The audition tapes. The acting classes. The meager pay. But also the feeling – the hope – of being on the verge of something bigger than Lucido can imagine. Or maybe she can.

“You have to be like an Olympian,” Lucido says. “You have to continue to improve because the goal is to be ready when that door to opportunity opens. I want to be great at this so I have to really focus and give it my 100%.”

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