Criminal Minds

I’m feeling kind of bad I picked on Kirsten Vangsness’s clothes the other day, so I thought now I’ll write about her accomplishments. I had never heard of Kirsten before she appeared on Criminal Minds. She appeared in small parts on the shows LAX and Phil of the Future, and acted in the movies, A-List and Sometimes Santa’s Gotta Get Whacked (that sounds bad!). Her first love, though, seems to be theater. Kirsten is a member of Theatre of NOTE in LA and continues to perform there. She received the LA Drama Critics Circle Natalie Shafer Award for Best Emerging Comedic Actress in 2005. She produced the play “The Learned Ladies” by Moliére for the Theatre of NOTE. And recently she starred in a play called, “Fat Pig.”

In the play, Kirsten plays Helen, an overweight woman, who is happy with her appearance. Scott Wolf plays Tom, a shallow pretty boy.

Tom Sullivan discovers over the course of a quippy chat that Helen also tips the scale in the personality department. The twentysomething Tom ventures a cautious request to see Helen sometime… Tom appears to be blind to Helen’s weight. He wants to test his mettle and probe for a deeper connection with someone. He may also, given his boyish Michael J. Fox irresistibility, subconsciously believe that even a brief affair with a hunk would be a net gain for Helen. However, foreseeing the ridicule a relationship with her will heap upon him from friends and co-workers, he quickly closets their get-togethers.
Without a friend of her own, Helen can’t let her hair down and show the mix of euphoria and dread that accompany suddenly becoming the object of desire of a truly cute guy.
If Tom tosses Helen overboard, she likely will not make it back to the healthy spot she had reached in her life. Instead, she could sink under the weight of a rejection she had allowed herself to believe the world had moved beyond.

The play has received favorable reviews, and its run was extended at the Geffen Playhouse in LA, where the West Coast Premier was.
And of course, she plays Penelope Garcia on Criminal Minds, a role which has put her more into the spotlight.

MY advice–follow that bliss….read “The Power of Now”…show up….know that we all feel like we don’t know what were doing sometimes and we don’t think we should be allowed to be an actor/ a writer/ a plumber/ fill in here what your dream is but we have a right. you have the right to be who you are and follow your path. http://www.maestro.ws/arts/la/kristenvangsness.html

In this, Kirsten seems just like her character, Penelope Garcia. In the show, she feels free to be smart and crazy. She is herself. This makes her such a valuable member of the team.