Melissa Stomber, 11, of West Windsor has been in Los Angeles for most of the summer, acting in her first screen role. She has been training at Arts YoUniversity with classes in jazz, voice, musical theater, ballet, and acting. A former student at St. Paul’s School in Princeton, she will attend Grover Middle School next month.##M:[more]##
She and her mother, Kathy, joined a website for actors and submitted her headshots and resume. As a result they were invited to Los Angeles to audition for a role in “Sara Rose,” a senior thesis film produced by a student attending the New York Film Academy. They received a phone call a few weeks later asking if Melissa would take the lead role of Sara with filming beginning on July 19.
“It’s a dark film about a mother and child driving in a bad part of town, when the car breaks down. The mother is attacked and murdered in front of Sara. A prostitute sees the murder and comes to Sara’s rescue, taking her back to the hotel where she lives. It continues with all the problems she has to go through for the next five years of her life.” The movie will premier Thursday, December 10, in Burbank either at Universal or Warner Brothers Studios, and will be entered in film festivals in 2010.
“Since it is TV pilot season in July, Melissa and I decided to come out a bit early and see if there was any interest in her,” says Kathy. “She had an audition for a national TV commercial, and also had a call back for that. There was a conflict with times, so she was unable to go to the call back and lost the commercial. Melissa was chosen by a photographer to be on a website for producers and directors. She had to turn down a job by a San Francisco photographer due to the long commute from LA.”
Kathy and Melissa plan to be back in California again for next year’s pilot season — if not before. “She has resumes out there for several projects that will be cast in the next several months,” says Kathy. “It’s been hard on her being away from family and friends for the past month, working very late hours, but she has been a trouper and has loved every minute of it.”
When the family moved from Franklin Township to West Windsor in 2008 they bought the home of West Windsor councilman Charlie Morgan. Kathy’s husband, Jim, is a real estate developer in New York City. Their other children are Robert, 25, an assistant fire instructor for the State of Florida, who lives in Orlando; and Laura, 23, a senior at California University Fullerton, who lives in Dana Point, and works for Quick Silver in the Roxy division. “No one in our family has any stage experience at all, and to my knowledge, no one has ever taken any classes,” says Kathy.
