Soft & Strong: ASH ARCHAMBEAU

Actress and cancer survivor.

Passion’s the game. 

Ash Archambeau is alive and not wasting time adding titles to her name.

I, Ashley (Ash) Archambeau do swear to tell you the truth, the partial truth, and nothing but the creative truth.

I am a farmer’s daughter (really, my beautiful mom grew up on a farm in Ohio) and I’ve had a life-long love affair with creativity- singing, dancing, writing, directing, and acting my face off since being knee high to a grasshopper- and it has led me down a very joyful path.

Being a tough cookie I spit myself out so to speak and at age 12 beat the crap out of Ewings Sarcoma, a type of childhood bone cancer. After undergoing chemotherapy and radiation I partied like a fourteen year old rock star in the guise of a Make-A-Wish kid at the 2002 Tony Awards–sitting front row center and dancing the night away at Rockefeller Center with B’way who’s who, naturally.

Reinforced with the love of my family and a tube of red lipstick, I matriculated and earned a degree in Musical Theatre & Directing from Point Park University. Quite suddenly midway through university I had to take a top secret mission to become an international woman of mystery (posing as a student studying abroad in jolly ole’ London). Being an adventurous vagabond had its advantages- like learning invaluable lessons about my craft, myself, and the beautiful world at large.

Just to be spicey-dicey I shot out my graduation cannon onto the steps of an agent in the City of Angels.  Greater L.A. became my home and my adventure really started. I performed in stand up, burlesque, commerical acting, short films, directed theatre, originated a new role in a stage play, booked a lead in a flash in the pan Indie Film, became obsessed with famer’s markets and yoga, fell in and out and now passionately IN love, met tons of people that taught me about this strange and powerful industry called Film & TV…you get the idea… I was busy creating opportunities while loading up on SPF. Daily. Multiple times daily.

I wake up every day thanking my lucky stars to be living the dream, and well, just breathing is pretty flipping cool.  Looking into the near and distant future, I see a lot of living with passion and compassion. My crystal ball has it on good record there will be inspiring pursuits involving the following: acting, singing, dancing, directing, laughing, producing, writing, owning a restaurant/farm to feed the homeless, advocating for cancer research/universal health care, and being a philanthropic do-gooder for social and environmental causes (all in a seemingly brilliant attempt to save this gorgeous earth and the living things on it.)

Now it’s still about creating opportunity, working harder than ever, smiling openly at strangers, surrounding myself with good people, and still applying sun lotion liberally. So if you see me, smile, darn ya smile back.