About

Hi and Welcome to YourYoungActor.com!

I am Debbie, and I am the mother of two children, one of whom is a young actor in the Los Angeles area. We lived in the Southeast until my daughter was almost 7. She had an agent in Charleston, SC, first and then one in Atlanta, which was a very long drive from Charleston.

We visited New York and Los Angeles to talk with talent agents, managers, and casting directors. Though we also really wanted to work with talent manager Shirley Grant in New York, at the coaxing of Craig Wargo, with Talent Management Associates, we decided to come to Los Angeles to launch Brooke’s show business career.

My daughter and I first moved to Los Angeles alone. We drove all the way from South Carolina to Los Angeles with some friends, enjoying the sights along the way. We stopped to see the Grand Canyon and visited Las Vegas. Her father and brother joined us here 17 months later where we’ve all been living ever since.

We’ve learned so much during this journey into acting, and there are so many things I wish I’d known sooner. I want to share our experiences with others so that they can learn from our mistakes and our successes.

Sincerely,

Debbie Sikkema

http://wwww.youryoungactor.com

DDMS Ventures, LLC

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Share and Enjoy:

Debbie Sikkema | October 29, 2008 10:34 am

12 Comments

By Rosemary Rhinehardt, March 10, 2009 @ 4:06 pm

Pretty cool “blog”. I barely know what that means. I hope this will be profitable for you!
Love!
By Shaine, June 11, 2009 @ 9:38 am

Great blog Deb.

Shaine
By Brandie, August 20, 2009 @ 1:41 pm

Could you share some info with regards to “pay to work” projects?
By deborah, January 6, 2010 @ 2:39 pm

Hi Deb, this is a great website but I’m on the other end of the young actors career. My daughter had an agent etc a few years back but didn’t get any work. She is now 15 and no longer interested in acting. I was wondering if you or someone else may know how to close a coogan account. We originally got the account at Downey savings like 4 years ago and my daughter has never got a paycheck for any of her work. Now US Bank owns the bank and has started charging a monthly fee. They said they need a ‘court order’ to close the account. It was no problem when there was no monthly fee, but now, with the fee, that account is actually in the red with neg balance. Any advise you could give me would be great… I can’t find the info on how to close one of these accounts anywhere. I wouldn’t even know how to get a ‘court order’ to close it.
thanks so much in advance for any advice or help with this.
~Deborah
By Susanne from facts about ferrets, January 13, 2010 @ 12:35 pm

nice site! I used to be a young actor and my mother probably could have used a wonderful resource such as this
By Burton Haynes, January 21, 2010 @ 2:13 am

Great website! Love the content you have on here. Please keep up the good work and I will be sure to visit quite often. Thanks much!
By Download, January 28, 2010 @ 3:41 am

I like your post, the fact that your site is a little bit different makes it so interesting, I get fed up of seeing the same old boring recycled stuff all of the time.
By Richard from MonaVie Scam, February 12, 2010 @ 11:26 pm

I’ve noticed a lot of great information on this site. I know my life will love it as she was into acting as a child.
By Debbie Sikkema, February 17, 2010 @ 8:29 am

Hi Deborah,
I am quite concerned about what you told me about your daughter’s Coogan account. By law, no fees can be charged on a Coogan account. US Bank is not allowed to take fees out of a Coogan account as I understand it. If they don’t have Coogan accounts, they should have notified you as such rather than converting it. We had a similar problem when our daughter’s account was moved from Jackson Savings and Loan to Union Bank. I had to work closely with them on this problem to get it worked out. Was your daughter in SAG or AFTRA? I am assuming that she is no longer in a union. I am going to do a little investigation on this myself. That is just wrong in every way! How many dollars in fees have they taken? I will also reply to you by email. –Debbie
By Abie Jones, February 17, 2010 @ 12:17 pm

Hello. This is kind of an “unconventional” question , but have other visitors asked you how get the menu bar to look like you’ve got it? I also have a blog and am really looking to alter around the theme, however am scared to death to mess with it for fear of the search engines punishing me. I am very new to all of this …so i am just not positive exactly how to try to to it all yet. I’ll just keep working on it one day at a time Thanks for any help you can offer here