Barbara Howlin, above left, Becca Murray, and Liz Beebe became friends through UMW Theatre, headed to LA, and found work in film and TV.
The three best friends wanted the chance to act – even if it meant taking day jobs to pay the rent. Where better to find work, they figured, than Los Angeles?
Barbara Howlin ’03 led the way. She’d planned to go to New York, until she fell in love with LA during a visit there. Becca Murray ’04 and Liz Beebe ’04 joined her a year later, eager for a built-in support system so far from home. Since then, the friends have been doing what they love in the actors’ Mecca.
Howlin works at Anthony Meindl’s Actors Workshop. Murray works for one of the most-listened-to public radio stations in the country. Beebe works in advertising and television production. All are jobs that allow the women the flexibility to pursue their passions.
Beebe’s job helped give her “a foot in the entertainment industry.” Since arriving in LA, she has performed in commercials – including one for dating website Match. com − short films, and webisodes. She’s worked in theatre and is part of Satin Dollz Pin Up Dancers, a song-and-dance company. The troupe, formed in 2006, performs songs from the 1930s through the 1950s at parties, playhouses, and clubs.
Murray has appeared in independent features, short films, webisodes, and commercials. Howlin has worked in film and theatre. She appeared on an episode of I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant and as the noisy neighbor on the TV movie Worst Case Scenario. She also played a role in the indie film Birds of a Feather.
After growing up in New Hampshire and attending boarding school in Maine, Beebe looked for a college in the South. Howlin and Murray, both from Northern Virginia, longed to find a small-town, liberal arts college. Mary Washington did not disappoint.
 Howlin in the movie Birds of a Feather. |
 Murray in the comedy All Bets Are Off. |
 Beebe in an ad for Match.com. |
“We really got a lot of real-life experience and knowledge some people don’t,” Howlin said of college life for the three theatre majors. “Gregg [Stull] went out of his way to give us that.”
Soon after Beebe arrived in LA, she used her undergraduate experience to help cast a commercial. “I could see people having no idea what they were doing,” she said. “We were exposed to a lot of auditions. I remember thinking, ‘Thank goodness I went to college where I did.’ ”
Murray said she arrived in LA with respect for all jobs in the theatre, which she learned in Klein. “Because it’s a general theatre degree, you have to learn about every aspect of it. You don’t get to just be an actor the whole time. It’s just as much stage management as acting. It teaches you not to be a diva, which is huge in LA. A lot of us have encountered actors who have that mentality. We appreciate that we are not that way. A lot of that came from Gregg. He would not let us act that way.”
The three women lived together for years, but now it’s just Howlin and Murray. Beebe lives with her husband − less than a mile away from her best friends.
Their goals are the same as when they left Mary Washington.
“I just want to keep finding new challenges,” Howlin said, speaking for all of them. LA is a “huge small town… you never know what’s going to come your way.”