'Emily in Paris' actor Ashley Park's career advice: 'You're allowed to dream big'

Ashley Park has agelong kept it positive.

The award-winning "Emily successful Paris" histrion grew up successful Ann Arbor, Michigan, ever a performer ― dance, a-cappella, philharmonic theater. She credits her parents with planting the effect of positivity successful her head.

"My ma and dada person taught maine by illustration however to find a metallic lining successful everything," she tells CNBC Make It. "What is the lesson? How did this marque maine grow? What did I learn? How did a rejection oregon disappointment go a blessing that made maine stronger?"

It's an cognition she's taken with her adjacent arsenic she's entered a tract successful which rejection tin beryllium a regular routine. Park started her vocation successful theater, garnering acclaim off-Broadway and receiving a Tony Award information for her crook arsenic Gretchen Wieners connected Broadway's "Mean Girls" successful 2018.

She received a Critics' Choice Award information for her show arsenic Mindy Chen connected "Emily successful Paris" successful 2021, too.

Most recently, she partnered with Northwestern Mutual for its Great Realization campaign centered astir helping radical execute their beingness and fiscal goals. Here are 4 lessons she's learned connected the way to achieving her ain vocation goals.

Park says she ne'er thought she'd person the opportunities she's gotten.

"I entered the manufacture with the knowing that determination wasn't a spot oregon way for maine onscreen and onstage successful the mode determination visibly was for my achromatic peers," she says. "But I did truthful happily due to the fact that I loved being an histrion and performer and artist."

Staying affirmative and continuing to propulsion guardant yet earned her opportunities to enactment with entertainers similar Jake Gyllenhaal and Tina Fey.

"You're allowed to imagination big," she adds.

Last year, Asians and Pacific Islanders got 11% of wide surface clip connected streaming services, 2.7% of the surface clip connected cablegram and 3.2% of the surface clip connected broadcast television, according to media information and analytics institution Nielsen.

That's an summation crossed the committee from 2020. It besides inactive mostly lags down the country's colonisation figures: Asians and Pacific Islanders made up astir 6.4% of the U.S. colonisation past year, Nielsen adds.

Early on, Park says she thought she had to minimize who she was to get a relation — oregon adjacent unreal to beryllium idiosyncratic else.

"I utilized to spell [into auditions] and beryllium like, 'OK, I person to instrumentality them into reasoning I'm this character,'" she says. "Or I person to bamboozle them into reasoning I'm a achromatic person."

Eventually, she started to recognize that the radical who'd hired her were the ones who wanted her circumstantial skillset, not idiosyncratic else's. Her advice: Bring your afloat aforesaid to immoderate signifier of occupation interview, and amusement however you personally link with the quality of the role.

If it's the close fit, they'll privation to prosecute you, she says.

Park says her parents and vocation experiences some taught her to champion the radical astir her, adjacent erstwhile their occurrence came astatine her expense.

During her archetypal twelvemonth successful New York, she became a finalist for 2 antithetic theatre roles — and recovered herself up against friends some times.

"And past successful the aforesaid day, I learned that some of those parts went to my 2 friends," she says.

Instead of the heartbreak that might've travel from her 2 losses, what she says she remembers is feeling "genuinely blessed for them." That made a immense quality successful her day-to-day happiness, particularly successful a vocation typically filled with changeless rejection.

Studies backmost the benefits of Park's mindset: Researchers astatine the Harvard Medical School person found that fostering bully relationships tin amended some people's wellness and happiness.

"If I surrounded myself with bully radical and was perpetually celebrating their successes," Park says, "then I was conscionable perpetually celebrating."

In her sophomore twelvemonth successful precocious school, Park was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a crab that attacks portion of the humor cells and tin rapidly spread. She was hospitalized for 8 months and has since been successful remission.

"Once you get to the different broadside of that mountain, each different upland that comes your way, you conscionable person this innate religion that, like, I volition spot the different broadside of it," she says.

The cognition makes processing hard moments successful her vocation and idiosyncratic beingness easier, Park adds: Regardless of the hurdle, she ever knows things volition yet get better.

She besides notes that immoderate of her toughest losses person been instantly followed by large wins.

"Most of the time, erstwhile I've gotten a imagination job, it's been close connected the heels of oregon astatine the aforesaid clip of being rejected from different happening that I truly thought was going to beryllium the game-changer for me," Park says.

Check out:

Ryan Reynolds reveals the No. 1 accomplishment that's helped him succeed: 'It truly changed my life'

'Nope' prima Keke Palmer connected handling rejection and staying consistent: 'I effort not to person an ego'

How 'Veep' and 'Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' histrion Reid Scott built a palmy originative career

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