Andrea Nelson Meigs ’94
Dream maker
Andrea Nelson Meigs ’94 knew early on that she wanted a career in the entertainment industry —but not in front of the camera, where she had been since the age of five.
“One day, while waiting by the phone for my agent to call about an audition, I realized that I just didn’t have control of my career. So I said that when I grew up I would work in entertainment, but from more of a decision making capacity — I didn’t know exactly what capacity that would be. I just knew that being in front of the camera you really are at the mercy of everybody else.”
As a motion picture talent agent at the legendary Creative Artists Agency (CAA), Meigs, not only controls her own career, but those of such high-profile clients as singer/ actress Beyoncé Knowles, and actresses Christina Applegate and Ellen Burstyn. The scope of her job ranges from reading scripts, meeting with producers and clients, and attending screenings, to “helping to realize the dreams of my clients.”
Meigs left a promising position at the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office in March 1995 for a minimum-wage position in CAA’s mailroom, having been encouraged to apply for the job by Erika Keller Johnson ’92, who worked for the agency at the time. Though risky — there was no guarantee of promotion — Meigs saw the mailroom/agent trainee position as a chance to jump-start her career. “The D.A.’s office told me if I didn’t like the job at CAA I could always come back. CAA was the most powerful entertainment company in Hollywood, and I thought ‘how can I pass up that opportunity — I am going to have to pay my dues now and hopefully I’ll make it.’”
Meigs spent four-and-a-half years picking up mail, setting up coffee for meetings, and shadowing senior agents before being promoted to agent in 2000. She credits two sources of inspiration during that time.
“When you look around in the entertainment business you see that everyone has to start somewhere. Everybody who has ‘made it’ as an agent or a high-ranking studio executive had to ‘pay their dues.’ While on one hand I felt I paid mine — I went to college, law school, and had work experience — in the entertainment business, it’s almost like you’re starting all over again. So I just tried to remind myself that even the president of the company started in the mailroom, and if this is what I want to do, I have to do that.
“The other thing that inspired me is that I am the first in the history of my family to ever have gotten a law degree,” continues Meigs, whose parents were educators. “When I looked at some of the clients we represent, people like Will Smith, Oprah Winfrey, Sidney Poitier, I felt like this would be a way of being able to be a ‘first’ here as well, in the sense that there weren’t any other African American motion picture talent agents here.”
According to Meigs, a goal-oriented personality, strong diplomatic skills, and an innate ability to multitask all play a crucial role in her day-to-day job. But she says it’s an “A-type” personality that helps keep her at the top of a high-paced, highenergy, high-pressure industry. “We joke around here about being A-types — really aggressive, very persistent. When you think about it, those traits can be either negative or positive. From a negative standpoint, people that are aggressive or persistent can be total nags, but those very same qualities make a good agent.
“If you pick up the phone and call a producer or director and say, ‘what about so and so,’ and they say, ‘no,’ and you just take that, you’re not going to make it in this business. You have to persevere and find a way to turn that ‘no, I don’t think he or she is right’ to ‘okay, I’d be willing to meet them or audition them.’”
Meigs says she relishes the role she gets to play in her clients’ careers; she helped Christina Applegate realize a dream of performing on Broadway with a starring turn in “Sweet Charity,” and Beyoncé Knowles land a lead role in the upcoming screen version of “Dreamgirls.”
“It is literally the most rewarding thing when you hear clients say, ‘this is a dream come true,’ and you helped make it happen. It is incredibly gratifying,” says Meigs. She adds that she never finds her work monotonous. “You’re on a high the whole time — you’re always talking to a new person, you’re always reading a new project, you never know exactly what your day is going to entail.”
Married to an entertainment lawyer, John V. Meigs, Jr., Meigs took a leave of absence from CAA last year after their daughter was born. “I found that as much as I was excited about being at home and bringing this new person into my life, I also missed my job,” says Meigs. “I realized that I love being a mother, and I love being a wife, and I love being a working woman.”