Lauren Zabel
Contributing Writer
(Read Lauren’s collected posts)
Lauren Zabel grew up in Southern California, the daughter of two screenwriters who took her to the Emmys, helped her punch up a class essay or two and even cast her in TV shows. Her Hollywood stardom included a riveting turn as the little Wisconsin girl whose cow Lily was pregnant with an alien hybrid child.
To avoid that kind of acting fame turning her head, she went north to the University of California, Santa Barbara to study film and media, avoiding the advice of those same parents who begged her to get an education that would lead to an honest job. While in college she worked as a “stress peer counselor” and even helped run an annual film festival dedicated to bringing peace and understanding to the Middle East, forever proving her powerful optimism. Even living a block from the beach, she still managed to graduate on time with honors.
Lauren now lives in San Francisco and works for an educational non-profit called BlueStar PR, where she oversees a high school fellowship that culminates in an annual film festival. It also involves leading teenagers on overseas trips to make documentaries on practically no budget, thus strengthening her knowledge and understanding of the cruel realities of the independent film market.
Outside of work, she and her older brother started an entrepreneurial family business, My Personal Font — where customers can have their own idiosyncratic and often illegible handwriting made into a font so they can share its complexities with the world without getting hand cramps.
She unabashedly will see almost any rom-com with an enthusiasm that is clearly the triumph of hope over experience. But she believes in love and comedy and the idea that one is better served with the other. She is willing to suffer the pain of a bad film so that you won’t have to.