You probably don’t know who Celeste Gay is. That isn’t at all what she planned.
An aspiring actress, Gay isn’t chasing fame, but she also isn’t running from it. So far she has gotten the biggest exposure not onscreen but by being herself — and sharing a resonant tale, filled with pain and regret, of how she quit her job a few years ago and moved to Atlanta to break into movies and TV.
Gay envisioned herself working on screens both big and small, bolstered by the buzz of the city that’s been dubbed “Black Hollywood.” Instead, she found herself in her car on a dreary day during her lunch break last month, emotionally sharing her tale on YouTube to her 42 subscribers. She titled it “57 and Broke.”
“It has been really tough for me because of some decisions that I have made that I regret making,” she said in the video, clearing her throat. “I always talk about Atlanta and I feel like when I left my corporate job making a good salary and decided to chase a dream, thinking everything would fall into place, things would be in order, my life blew up.”
At the end of her rope, Gay recorded the emotional video to be transparent about her situation and the mistakes she’s made. She quickly found out she’s not alone. Her clip earned her more than half a million views and an outpouring of support, and she now has more than 21,000 subscribers on YouTube. (CNN)