Giovannie Espiritu On The Set of Kindred

The film and TV actress talks about "pay it forward" filmmaking and the zen of life-long learning.

In the short film Kindred, Giovannie Espiritu plays a medical intern who's suffering from lack of sleep and horrifying nightmares. This is nothing new for her since she previously played med student Ludlow on NBC's long-running series E.R.

If Espiritu looks familiar, it may also be due to guest spots on Bones and Gilmore Girls. Although it would seem she's been acting forever, Espiritu began her acting career relatively recently. "I started taking acting classes because I came to the conclusion that there just isn't enough time in one's life to do everything that I want to do, and that's what I love about acting: being able to experience more than just one life and changing the way that people think at the same time. I also think that acting, when done rightly, makes people more compassionate because you are forced to see things from someone else's shoes."

Now Espiritu wants to help others get their start in filmmaking. Along the way, she's shattering misconceptions about those "in the business" who have achieved some level of notoriety. Giovannie is nothing if not warm and approachable. "I want to live each day without regret, knowing that I did my best and did what I could to make my little corner of the world a little bit better than it was before," she says of her efforts to help other aspiring filmmakers. To that end, she's recently formed her own online community, filmfriendfinder.com, where other up-and-coming filmmakers can communicate and learn from each other.

Learning, it seems, is her lifelong goal. Although she's traveled around the world and even spent a year in the Phillippines teaching street children, Espiritu still considers herself a work in progress. "I want to be fearless. I have a list of things that I want to do during my lifetime, some of them I've done: cage dancing, mechanical bull riding, learning to play the guitar, learning martial arts, composing songs..." Between scenes on the set of Kindred, in fact, Giovannie, was still learning new things, taking skateboarding lessons in the parking lot from co-star Ana Feliciano.

It is this philosophy that drives her to help others move forward in filmmaking and in life, which may be why, when asked what character she would like to play most, she responded "I want to be the girl that changes the world one person at a time."