Once Upon a Time | Helen Regan

Words by Helen Regan 

Photography via Unsplash 

Once upon a time there was a little girl with long, curly, golden hair, and an interestingly 80’s fringe which for some peculiar reason she would revisit in her early 30s. This little girl, like most little girls at that time, was told she could be anything she wanted to be – as long as that “anything” was a princess, a mother to a plastic doll, or a mermaid that could sing brilliantly and had a treasure trove of fantastic, mesmerising trinkets, who was outspoken and determined, but would give up her voice for a man. She chose the latter. I chose the latter. Which is hilarious really because I was, and still am, a shit swimmer. But I didn’t care, splashing about in the wave machine at the Woodford Leisure Centre, waiting for a rich kid with floppy hair to come along and change my life for me while I sat silently by his side. So I learnt I could be anything, as long as I had a man and kept my mouth shut.

In my teens I was told once again, “Helen, you can be anything you want to be…but you can’t choose drama and textiles for your GCSE’s because we can’t have anyone doing two creative subjects, how on earth would they ever get a job?!” So I learnt I could be anything, apart from creative. I chose drama, and my mum taught me how to use her sewing machine and bleach my jeans.

Just a couple of years later I was leaving school, and heard the old mantra “You can be anything you want to be”, followed by “but do you really think acting is a proper career? You could be a doctor, or a lawyer…” So I learnt that I could be anything, but not an actor. I immediately enrolled on an acting course at college, and off I went with my pink hair and a thorough distaste for authority.

I even went on to drama school, worked my arse off for 40 hours a week, warm ups, learning lines, rehearsals, intense performance weeks, lectures, essays, a shit-hot dissertation, immense hangovers and a teensy bit of dabbling in recreational drug use. I walked out of there with a 2:1 in Acting and a 1st in answering the question “Is that a proper degree?” So I learnt that I could be anything, but I might not be taken seriously.

When I left uni I sunk into a council flat on a scheme in Manchester and didn’t come up for air for almost a year. When I did arise, I had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and a £5,000 compensation cheque because the council were knocking my flat down. So, I bought a one-way ticket to Australia and spent two and a half years discovering that ginger people can get a tan, the majority of koalas have chlamydia (fact), and that when you’re living in the back of a van nobody has any expectations of you. Nobody tells you that you can be anything you want to be, because they figure that right at that moment you are who and what and where you want to be. And I was. It was bliss.

It’s ten years since I put on my cap and gown and received my acting degree. I’ve not worked a single day as an actor. Not had a single acting job, paid or unpaid. And here’s the “Oh fuck, I’m such a disappointment” bit – I’ve not even tried. I’ve thrown stacks of headshots in the bin, shredded scripts, I’ve shied away from telling people I have an acting degree because I’m embarrassed that I’ve done nothing with it. So do I still really think that acting is a proper career? Truthfully, it doesn’t even matter, because for 5 years I got to act. I got to explore who the hell I wanted to be. And who I didn’t. I was rich in the 1800s, I was poor in the 1960s, I was male, female, straight, gay, in the army, thoroughly psychotic, a mother, a witch, an activist, unfortunately never a mermaid and I was too fat to ever be a princess…but I got to try things on for size. And then I got to fuck off to Australia and reflect on what society truly meant when it was telling me I could be anything I wanted to be.

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Once upon a time there was a woman in her 30s, with long, curly, golden hair who was told she could be anything she wanted to be, within acceptable social parameters. And she said fuck that. I’m a fat, disabled, vegan, lesbian with a mental illness, who has an acting degree she’s never done anything with, who can’t swim properly and has a questionable fringe, and I’m done with expectation.