Inspirational Women In Hollywood: How K. Rocco Shields of Genius Produced Is Helping To Shake Up The Entertainment Industry
Divorce yourself from ego in this industry. I learned that the hard way with my first PA gig. Nothing is guaranteed. Get as much experience as you can, even in the most menial of things. It is all about being tenacious.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
I grew up with a single mom in Los Angeles, and I spent a lot of time under the care of my grandmother. She had one of those old 80s camcorders — well, they were brand new at the time — and my favorite game was to make her record me. We called it “Make a Movie”. Now when she’d ask if I wanted to be a movie star when I grew up, I would cry and say no, I want to make the movies! And I still have the video to prove it! I just wanted to play with my dolls and have her film it as I manipulated the elements, so to speak. I’ve never had any intention of ever being in front of a camera. In fact, I didn’t really speak a lot until I was about ten years old, which anybody who knows me now, would have a hard time believing! My other inspiration and motivation growing up was my aunt, who was a Hollywood film producer. She produced a bunch of those “Creature Features” in the 80s like Tremors and Short Circuit, among others. I always saw her as a very strong woman: she chose to focus on her career and carry her own weight in such a male-dominated field back then.