657 You Are Enough with Carrie-Anne Moss

“I AM ENOUGH. I DESERVE SUCCESS.” You have to fight for what you want if you want to accomplish anything. Otherwise it wouldn’t be an achievement, it would just be the way life is. Unfortunately, the struggle we have to go through to achieve our dreams can be overwhelming. It can be discouraging, and often times people give up just before they hit that pivotal point in life. One thing you can do to push through is remind yourself that you are enough. You can succeed. It’s going to take time, dedication, and a lot of failures. As long as you keep learning, and stay strong, you can achieve anything. To go further into this, I wanted to bring back a clip from a previous episode with Carrie-Anne Moss. You may remember her as Trinity from The Matrix. What you may not know is how much she struggled moving to LA as a young actress. On this episode of 5 Minute Friday, she talks about what a challenge it was to move to Hollywood and believe in her own value. She has no money, no green card, and literally nothing but the dream of being an actress. Learn about how just being her was enough to succeed, and how you can apply her mindset into your life, on Episode 657. What it was like for Carrie to move to LA (1:10) Carrie’s deal with her manager (2:13) How she thinks about her acting career (3:00) What she did to get through the hard times (4:52) Plus much more... Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:09Lewis Howes?

  We've got an incredible interview today and it's with Carrie Anne Moss, someone that I recently got connected to through a buddy of mine, Eric Handler. Now, most of you might know who Carrie Anne is as the character Trinity in The Matrix, which was a cult classic instantly and inspired and moved so many people who watched that movie. And she had an incredible role and did an amazing job. But Carrie Anne is much more than that. She is a mother, a wife, an actress, and a yogi who came to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. Now, over the last 20 years, her work in the entertainment industry includes roles in The Matrix and Memento and many other films and TV shows. Now, success as an actress

• 0:54Lewis Howes?

  has brought her fulfillment, but for Carrie Anne, it was marriage and motherhood where she found her deepest sense of purpose and her greatest joy.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  I moved here knowing absolutely nobody. I had one person that I knew. I had no money. I had no green card. I just had a dream. And I wasn't super savvy. I mean, I was, I have a great deal of naivety at the same time.

• 1:26Lewis Howes?

  That helps.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  In a, yeah, total. I don't know how. I, I lived for Oprah back then because she was my three o'clock, you know? I knew, I knew I had something that I could do at three o'clock because I didn't have auditions, I didn't have friends, I didn't have anything here that first year of living in LA.

• 1:42Lewis Howes?

  Where did you live?

• 1:43Speaker 01

  I lived right around the corner on Melrose. My manager, I met my, I met my manager, who's from Vancouver. She and I have been together for 24 years. She still lives there.

• 1:53Lewis Howes?

  So she, so she was in Vancouver, she said to go to LA?

• 1:55Speaker 01

  I met her, I, I was walking by her office, bringing a guy that I knew to meet a modeling agent. And she saw me and she said, "You, come in." And I, we ended up talking and she said, "What do you want to do?" I said, "I'm, I'm going to LA to be an actress." And she said... I'll help you. I was like, okay. She became my manager and her ex-husband lived here. And part of their, you know, he, they had a child and I lived, I rented a room and I paid her the $500 was part of his, like, his support or whatever. And he was, he's a comedian and a talk show host and he's amazing. He was always traveling and so I lived in this one room in his apartment in, off Melrose, Sweets are in Melrose.

• 2:40Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  And I didn't have enough money to go for a coffee and I'm not exaggerating.

• 2:44Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Okay, not even in the least. And I just knew that.

• 2:49Lewis Howes?

  Did she start sending you out on auditions or what happened?

• 2:52Speaker 01

  She connected me with an agent and I met an agent and I started auditioning and I started to work.

• 2:57Lewis Howes?

  Acting classes and?

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Started to do acting classes. So one of the things that I have always applied in my acting career and I'm actually thinking a lot about it lately as a woman, is I would always think when I'd get a job or something that I was part of the wheel, right? Like you have your wheel with the spokes coming out of the wheel like on a bicycle.

• 3:17Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  And that my value as an actor was no more important than the craft service, than the sound guy, than the camera operator, the producer, the writer, all of us, it takes all of us. We all have these equal pieces that create the function of this wheel. And so it's always been very important to me to understand that because sometimes as an actor, you, you get treated so well, can be, not always, very, you know, probably pretty rarely for most people, but I've had that experience where I've been treated so well. People bring you a coffee and what do you need? And, oh, can you get me that for my trailer? And, you know, those kinds of things that are pretty.

• 3:57Lewis Howes?

  The sound guy doesn't get that treatment.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:59Lewis Howes?

  Necessarily.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  But I want, I always want to remember that, that. Part of the whole.

• 4:05Lewis Howes?

  If the sound guy isn't doing his job, then you're gonna suffer. The wheel's gonna suffer.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Well, and it's just holding that we're all creating this. We're all part of this creative process together. We're all making, like if you look at The Matrix, it was this, it was this coming together of all of these people that all had such big heart and expertise and passion and drive to create this product.

• 4:30Lewis Howes?

  Unbelievable.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  And I love being a part of that. I'm a team player. I love to be on a team. I'm not alone. I don't want to do it on my own. I love collaborating. It turns me on to collaborate with people. Like, I need that. I'm not an island unto myself. I need that interaction with other people. So as an actress, I think, and then, you know, and then some basic things like with, as an actress, often you're unemployed. So I remember feeling and I, feeling like I needed to know that I was enough, regardless of whether I had a job or not. So I worked hard at that.

• 5:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  That was an ongoing.

• 5:09Lewis Howes?

  Cause it might be a year or two, you don't have something, right?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Can be. I mean, I, if you were to look at, I have every journal I've ever written in since I was 10 years old. I have journals and journals and journals from that apartment on Melrose and Swedes are saying, I am enough.

• 5:21Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  I am enough. I am enough. I deserve success.