Don't let being from a small island stop you from pursuing your dreams was the advice from a Bermudian who just happens to be the leading actress in a new historical documentary about Bermuda.

Lana (Lisa) Young plays five different roles in Bermudian filmmaker Lucinda Spurling's new documentary 'The Lion & The Mouse', which premieres at Bermuda International Film Festival (BIFF) next week.

Ms Young is currently living in Los Angeles, California. She is making a name for herself in the United States by appearing in television commercials, movies, plays and has even been a voice in a computer game.

She said she wanted kids in Bermuda to know they had opportunities beyond the boundaries of the Island.

"They don't have to feel like they are abandoning the Island," Ms Young recently told The Royal Gazette in a telephone interview. "They can always bring what they have learned back. I will always feel connected to Bermuda.

"Hopefully, one day I will be able to bring all of my experiences back to the Island, because I care about it so much."

She first heard about auditions for 'The Lion & The Mouse', when her mother, Margaret Young, sent her the Bermuda Musical & Dramatic Society (BMDS) newsletter. There was a notice of an audition call for the film.

Ms Young auditioned and got the role, not of one person in the film, but five.

"It was very exciting," she said. "The biggest challenge was all the accents. We were working every day all day. Some days I had to go from one woman who spoke with a Virginian accent to another who spoke with a British accent, to another one with a Mid-Atlantic accent.

"I had to keep track of each woman's inner story. In the first scene I play Mistress Rolfe whose husband, John, goes on to marry Pocahontas.

"How does anyone know what it feels like to be shipwrecked on an island?"

And she said it was especially difficult to look fearful when the filming took place on Tucker's Town Beach.

"I was in a place I loved, surrounded by beauty and I had to be fearful of what I saw," she said. "My character was also pregnant. I did a lot of research on my characters, and also on people who had been shipwrecked. I tried to connect with their truths. I internalised it and hopefully it will shine through in the film."

Ms Young said she enjoyed working with Ms Spurling.

"She allowed me to do a lot of my own work," she said. "She really trusted us as actors. We got to play around and be involved in the process rather than just being directed. I liked that I got to evolve as a woman throughout the docudrama.

"At the end I come out as a corporate woman. She is a far stretch from the first woman who was shipwrecked on the Island."

Ms Young said she has been a fan of the stage since dancing with the Jackson School of Dance as a child.

"It is something I always felt a need to do. I did it all through school. When I came back from university a friend encouraged me to get involved with local theatre."

While working during the day for Lines Overseas Management, she would perform with the Jubulani Theatre company in the evening.

"Those were some of my first paid gigs," she said. "It felt good to do what I loved to do and get paid for it also. That kept me busy for awhile."

In 1998 she moved to Boston, Massachusetts where she lived for five years. While there, a company called Historical Perspectives noticed her acting talent while she was performing in a play.

"I wasn't going to Boston to act, but that is where I discovered that I was a contender on a larger scale than just Bermuda," she said.

"Historical Perspectives organised one-woman plays that went around to different schools in the area. The plays were about the lives of women in history.

"It was an amazing opportunity. I did Gabriela Mistral, a Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize in 1945. She died in 1957. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature. A lot of people haven't heard of her.

"And a lot of the kids in these schools were Latino or Hispanic. They were so excited to be learning about someone they could relate to. That was very satisfying and gave me a lot of confidence."

Not long after joining Historical Perspectives she won a part in her first movie, 'Killer Flood', with Bruce Boxleitner, Joe Lando and others.

Ms Young played a hospital administrator in the movie. In one scene she had to evacuate an entire hospital.

"I was thrilled at that and had no idea what I was doing," she said. "Film was very different from theatre.

"Theatre is for a live audience. That energy needs to be big and needs to be present 110 percent of the time. You don't have the opportunity to forget a line or freeze. Film is very naturalistic. It is small. I am a very expressive person so I had to be careful with my face and not be very expressive with my eyes and mouth. I really enjoyed it. I liked the fact that I could talk in a normal voice. With film you can take your time as you would in real life. That is the part I enjoyed."

Her mother, Margaret came up to visit, and won herself a walk-on part when she went to view Ms Young on a shoot.

After being in 'Killer Flood' Ms Young became very optimistic about her prospects as a full-time actress. She decided to study acting at the Arts Educational School London in Chiswik, London, England.

The acting school offered a one year master's degree. Ms Young was one of twenty students chosen out of 800 who auditioned.

"My mother was very supportive of my decision to go back to school to study acting," said Ms Young. "I wanted to go to performing arts school when I first when to school. But she thought I wouldn't be able to do anything on a performing arts degree.

"She strongly encouraged me to get a different degree and get a job like everyone else did. So that is what I did. So I think she felt slightly guilty, seeing the path I was on. So she was very supportive."

She had a part in a new movie, 'The Evolution of Ethan Baskin', but unfortunately the movie was suddenly cancelled indefinitely.

"It was a feature film and I was excited about it, but that is okay because there will be others," she said. "I just shot a commercial for Cricket Wireless a couple of weeks ago. That should be airing all over the country. I did a Kashi commercial before that. I also did a Chinette commercial and a Cox Cable Commercial." She also hosted a show called 'Your L.A.' on NBC.

"They go around the city and report on interesting things around the city," she said.

"My advice to young Bermudians considering acting as a career would be 'just believe'."