How the Industry labelled me GAY and I think that is crazy

Laura Ann Tull
11 min readDec 29, 2018

My life is over. I do not have a future I can see anymore. But I am sick of the people who did this to me acting like it is my fault. It is like our current President pointing fingers at everyone else but not owning up to his own mistakes.

In 2007 I went to an audition at Chapman University. I did not get cast at first. It was a student film at the graduate level. However often those can lead to a career as they are entered into festivals and are often, at least here in California, well done. The director Nicole Zwiren told me that I was her second choice, but should anything happen she would give me a call.

A week before the shoot, Nicole calls me and tells me she needs me to do the role, as the original actress bailed. She also tells me the script had changed. She sends me the new script. I have a week to prepare. We meet the night before and spend about an hour rehearsing it, but I do not meet my co-star until the day of shooting. We shot the short in 8 hours in a bathroom at Chapman University. I was cast as a Gay professor. However I was not gay.

In the process of rehearsing I met Nicole’s sister. She was a bit off. It was after I shot this film I started getting weird calls. The person sounded nice but off. It was a woman. I was afraid this person might hurt them self for some reason so I talked to them. But the conversations got creepy. I ended the conversations. I eventually changed my phone number and even phone company, but for more reasons than this strange woman.

Eventually the film was shown at the University and I believe I went to see it. I was also given a copy and it was eventually put on line. The video is not on Nicole Zwiren’s regular channel. It is on one called #prettynice68

After this project I was asked to audition for a film directed by Danny Damah. It was a horror film and I played the Mother of the Lead. It was shot on a red but was never finished. Daniel lives in Africa now.

Nicole invited me to see a film at the Bodhi Tree. It was about Shamanism. I found it interesting. I later ran into her a few times. Once at the Skybar. I believe the night I met a doctor who later sexually harassed me. Once in Venice and the screening of a Documentary at Beyond Baroque. I think it was about or on mental illness. I ran into her again at the Awareness Festival when I was volunteering. By this time I was kind of upset. I told her people think I am gay, her response: everyone knows you are not. But then I found that Nicole had the short posted on a site for Documentaries. It made it look like it was a reality TV show idea.

I am a very nice person. I am not gay. I just have been hurt allot. I also am into acting. I did not know that I would be labelled things I am not to prevent me having a life or a career.

I ran into my costar too. I ran into her at a few casting workshops. Every time I felt like she was sticking a knife in my back. She told me some things about her personal life. She seemed to be seeking legal help. But I went inactive in 2002. I did help her with some photo shop work. Nothing added up either. She seemed to be in some kind of bad situation and yet she was studying acting at the best schools, traveled Europe. She was taking horse riding lessons.

Breeding is nothing without heart. Money is nothing without compassion. I am not sick. Maybe to old to have an acting career. I am reaching to point of no return with having a family or kids. I wanted to escape a father who abused me and stay where I was healthy and where I belonged.

Having hung out with Nicole I know she is Jewish with Buddhist tendencies. Now looking back it kind of creeps me out. I have been stalked online. I have been emotionally hurting. I have discovered the pain of how shallow some people can be. I felt like I was supposed to date men who annoyed me or were not my type, or that I was supposed to date men who were invalid and weak. I know saying that may make me look bad. but seriously, I am so tired of being treated like I can not decide what I want.

To be hones though it does not matter. I do not have an STD and I am not in a closet. I have been sickly and I look old. I have had the best years of my life taken by this cruelty. And it is cruelty. It is men deciding that if someone wants me it does not matter what I find attractive. And what is sad is that there were a few men I missed because people thought I was gay.

If it was not me being gay it was also men trying to make it look like I was with them. Pathetic jerks. I have reached a point where I have accepted I will be alone and this sick madness will end. I will not be getting a career. I will not be known. I will disappear into nothing. I will be dead. But I need people to understand what they did was wrong.

I was never gay. I was never into marriage. I never wanted to control or be controlled. I was not loose either. I was just a woman who wanted to improve myself. I wanted to learn and grow. But I love to learn about people by acting. I love to step into other people’s shoes. I love to create stories. But someone did not want me making it. they did not want me to be happy.

On the east coast I was a very smart girl and respected for it, but not completely as I was never able to do the things I really loved. Here for a time I felt respected. I felt like I had a future and was at peace. I did not need my family to interfere. I did not need this to happen where I am labelled something I am not. I needed to be allowed to build a home in a place I was not in pain.

You see I have bad knees and a slip disc in my back. I also am starting to have joint pain, probably due to my autoimmune disease. I am sick of insane people not understanding I had talents to offer and I had things I want to do. I get driven out of town because of fake people who judge what an actor is by sex appeal. Or assume because I do not like to date any guy who acts interested I am gay.

I do not want to be a housewife with a man who does not let me be intelligent and do thing that are more important than cleaning his crap and getting him a beer or doing his kids homework. Ironically as a kid, I did my own homework. My parents only yelled and screamed at me or tried to make me feel inferior. That is what this is about ironically. People trying to push me down and not letting me just be my best.

I wanted a kid. I wanted love. I wanted a best friend though and men do not think about that. I will not have a best friend. I am so sick of who ever it is who thought taking me off set they could fill my life with people and I would find a home or a community. I am not interested in being in a group of people ALONE.

I grew up alone with parents who made me feel isolated. My “friends” were not chosen by me. I also spent my summers with my grandparents or where ever my father was working, typically Florida. So there are no close friends from my past. I needed to be allowed to build a life here and to be left alone.

I think it was insane that people would mentally abuse me over and over trying to drive me out. I think it is immature and weak and wrong. Los Angeles why do you drive out women with an education. Why? Why did you need me to go? Why do you need me to die, because that is what is wrong with this. You are killing me. How many other women have you done this too? How many bodies?

I think is it crazy to try to make me look like a stalker or an abuser to confirm the gas lighting as valid. I was not crazy in 2012. I was sick. I remember hearing a cop say someone needs to grow up now. I did grow up. I am my person. I achieved things in Washington my father would never admit I did, because I am a woman. I am not supposed to be important. My father has often lately said “who do I think I am.” I am a woman who passed the California Bar. I am a woman who should have found love and a life, but I could not do that with my parents in my life.

My parents never really wanted me to marry. They are stuck in a world where I am supposed to be their for them and not have a life. to them me being alone is fine because having someone else means I do not need them.

I have lost people from my life i thought might be friends. I wonder when I am gone what will they say or even care. But the truth is in this life in this country which is supposed to be a land where anyone can achieve anything, we have become a land of false royals and false kings. Our current President is showing the world that. He thinks he is in his office by a God that is poisoning everything that is good about America.

I am not against religion or people believing in a GOD. But I know that for me, I felt safer for a time and do without the dogma. I do not need a therapist because I therapist is not going to change who I am. I am so sick of the hypocrisy. I am an actor and people saying that I am not, you are saying I have nothing special to offer with my art. And you might as well be telling me that I you want me to feel bad for the rest of my life about who I AM. SO guess what California. I am staying. this is where I belong. And no one has the right to say I do not. And if someone out there with power thinks they have the right to say I will never be an actor and my career is over, then I will be over. I will be.

Who ever you are who says my acting career is over you are a sick evil murderer. I am not gay but I will NEVER ever love a man who is not a story teller and an actor. I will never ever be married to a man just because he is an actor either. STOP TRYING TO SET ME UP WITH MEN AND LET ME LIVE MY LIFE. I made a better life for myself when bastards here did not interfere. And being judged without a trial and being treated like trash on rumors makes the people in the industry LOOK LIKE IGNORANT idiots who enjoy bullying and enjoy causing PAIN.

I can not even say I find someone attractive, especially if an actor for fear of being called a stalker or called crazy. I know no one will ever want me who my mind thinks is smart enough for me. this has caused me so much pain i did not deserve simply because of some elitist 1% jerks.

I wanted a simple life. I was not after a house in Beverly Hills or things. I had things I felt were important to achieve. I am not here to be a traditional lawyer. I am not here to be a doctor. I can not cure cancer. I was not given that as a gift. I should have been allowed to decide my future. As to income, you can not make me make money when I hate not being creative. Acting may not cure cancer but if i do have cancer again than I am not capable of curing myself. This is my life and if I were dying did you think to ask me how I would want to spend my time. My life is not to plan it around my parents.

My vagina is mine too. And who I loved was my affair. You can not make me want women. You can not make me love a guy who needs a woman to take care of their kids. I needed to feel safe and the only time I felt safe was when I was on sets and when I was doing acting and free to chose my work and my future.

We are going to make you Laura Ann Tull do what we want because we are your parents and our idea of love is making sure you have no friends who actually think like you do or you can talk to. We are going to make sure all you have is us. That is insane.

We are the JEWS and the CHRISTIANS of HOLLYWOOD or the GOP and we are going to make you go to church or move to the O.C. and be a wife to some guy you have to marry or end up on the streets. I had scripts I was working on but my troll convinced me to stop. How about all of you let me be an individual and be myself. I am not WEIRD. Though if I am, really loving that the future of America is your idea of not weird- cocaine users who molest women in their sleep.

I wish I had love. But you can not make me desperate for men I feel I can not have a conversation with and are not smart enough for me. I am educated no matter what my parents say. I am not a southern girl. I am a YANK. I am a girl that cared about the ENVIRONMENT. But I want to work to create characters and that is what I am made to be. I do not want to travel and I do not want to go anywhere until I can walk into the SAG AFTRA BUILDING WITH MY HEAD UP AGAIN because I do not deserve to be spit on and banned.

By the way SAG AFTRA I told my father when I had cancer my debt was my own. I told my father I would not care about making money if I could not be an actor and could not work on sets. You made sure no one would want to hire me by putting me in a 3 day hold and making everyone think I am CRAZY and that i am a criminal. I am not. I do not have an STD and I am the victim of a crime and not a criminal. Your membership knew I would not want to fight to live if you took acting away from me. So what does that make you? Good people? Superior? A bunch of egomaniacs who pretend to care about the poeple while you really only care about your big houses and cars and tricking the “fans” into thinking you are “winners.” You are not good people for what you did to me. I did not deserve it. I will not leave and I will not go on. I will not to comedy and if I do not get hired as an actor I will die. You want my acting career to be over. My autoimmune disease is no excuse. I never attacked anyone. An actor can wrestle with a security guard over a microphone and still be allowed in the building. What did I do? that is just it. I did not do anything criminal. An assault is criminal.

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Laura Ann Tull

Sag Aftra Actress Poet Vegan Atheist Buddhist Cancer & Autoimmune disease. Filmmaker Editor PHI BETA KAPPA artistichope.com womenlovepeace.com lauraanntull.com