A young girl with long dark hair and bangs framing her round, fair-skinned face leaps across the room with the ferocity of a tiger. She makes eye contact with the camera lens and performs a high kick in slow motion, her arms forming an X shape with the palms of her hands flattened. This is the demo reel of an aspiring actress showing her taekwondo chops to set her apart in the competitive world she has chosen as her career. This is Alexandria Bader’s approach to the world of acting.

After years of being told she should be an actress because she has a charismatic personality, 16-year-old Bader finally convinced her mother to let her take acting classes.

Three years ago she auditioned for Dallas’ Young Actors Studio. “At the time, I didn’t realize what a big deal it was,” Bader said. “Linda sat me down and said ‘I have eight spots and about 200 kids getting callbacks’ and I went ‘what?’”

She laughs as she recalls her naïve start at DYAS when she had only a few years of childhood theatre experience under her belt.

“I walked into the audition wearing heels and thought I looked cute but that was the wrong thing to be wearing… Linda had me take them off immediately,” she said.

Bader recently decided to use Alexandria Lior as her professional name. Lior means “light” and Bader said she wants to be a light in this world.

The Young Actors Studio is a nonprofit arts organization founded in 1986 by Linda Seto, a television writer, director and producer. Seto began her career directing and producing a 33-episode TV series titled “Kidsview” which won the National Action for Children’s Television Award of Excellence. Years later she decided to open the studio because she saw a great need for a TV and film-oriented acting school in Dallas.

The studio provides aspiring actors and actresses with the training necessary to be prepared for Hollywood. They gain experience in film, TV and improv acting as well as voiceover, commercial and behind the camera work. They’re then able to show off their skills at live performances with studio audiences.

The Dallas Young Actors Studio is located in the corner of a corporate office park in Farmers Branch, Texas.

It’s a Saturday afternoon and classes are in full session. Inside the building parents sit in a small, ordinary waiting room. It could be any kind of office, except that the white walls are lined with TV and film posters as well as photographs of young actors and actresses. The office is bustling with ringing phones and mothers of the actors helping out with paperwork. Alexandria’s mother, Kim Bader, is sitting behind the desk helping out with sign-ins.

Kim Bader said she’s trying very hard not to be a stage mother. “It will be the downfall of your child’s career if you act like that,” she said.

Before dedicating most of her time to acting, Alexandria was a third-degree black belt committed to competing in taekwondo. Traveling from coast-to-coast, she won more than 10 state championships. Now she incorporates her martial arts skills into her acting, which she and her mother believe will set her apart in that world.

“Nowadays there are so many movies with fighting and action scenes, and Alexandria could really do that for a role,” Kim Bader said.

Noah Ringer, a martial arts student from Dallas, was cast as the starring role of Aang in the film “The Last Airbender” without any acting experience.

“Out of all the places Paramount Studios could have chosen to send him for acting boot camp, they chose our studio to train him,” Seto said.

The Young Actors Studio has produced several other successes including Molly Quinn, who stars in the ABC TV series “Castle;” Kaitlyn Dever, who plays one of Tim Allen’s daughters on another ABC TV series “Last Man Standing,” and Kenton Duty who played Young Jacob on “Lost” and Gunther on the Disney Channel Original Series “Shake it Up.” Many of the actors, including these successes, don’t have agents when they start at the studio, but get the opportunity to perform for casting directors and agents during the second semester.

“We try to bring that world into them as they’re training,” Seto said. “The ones that are most experienced or most marketable will get picked up first.”

Unfortunately, such success stories have given rise to a host of fly-by-night operations that promise parents they can turn kids into stars.

“Everyone wants to believe their child can be the next famous singer or actor,” Seto said. “Most of these people are has-beens who may have worked in the industry or the very peripheral industry and are no longer working.”

The Young Actors Studio has no hidden agenda. It is Seto’s worry that many aspiring actors won’t even make it to her studio because they have been burned in the past.

“As a nonprofit, the studio doesn’t have a big money sponsor,” Kim Bader said. “The monthly fees are very low for what Linda is doing. She can take a limited budget and make amazing things happen.”

If Alexandria Bader gets picked up it will most likely mean moving out to Los Angeles, a possibility she and her mother have considered.

“Since Alexandria does school online, the move wouldn’t be difficult in that respect,” Kim Bader said. “The family arrangement would be a little more difficult for us.”

Kim Bader has a 13-year-old son and a husband who travels frequently.

“If Alex were to book a job there, I would go with her; she’s a minor still. Basically, we would do what we needed to do to make it work.” Kim Bader said, admits she’s still learning the ins and outs of the business.

“We’re a package deal, but Linda teaches us the etiquette to prosper in this industry. She tells us all the time, ‘Don’t make it about yourself! This is not your show!’ It’s a balancing act between being there to support your child and not losing sight of who it is about,” Kim Bader said.

“I’m her job!” Alexandria Bader said laughing. And a full time job it is.

Alexandria Bader spends up to 15 hours each week taking acting classes, which eventually led to her family’s decision to homeschool her. It was not a decision taken lightly, but her parents realized it was the most logical choice after finding an online program that would allow her to keep up with her studies on a schedule that worked for her.

“After deciding to homeschool, we talked to Linda about how to get her into the studio more often to take advantage of the extra time,” Kim Bader said.

Alexandria Bader spends every Saturday at the studio from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. She said classes go in whatever direction Seto decides to take them that day.

“It’s really fun cause she’ll just throw us out there and it really helps with character building and maturing in acting,” she said.

Down the narrow hallway at the Young Actors Studio a group of five teens practice in a small room with black drapes covering each wall and the iconic Hollywood sign suspended above. They’re performing a dramatic dialogue they have been working on for weeks with their teacher Xai Homechan. At the end of the dialogue a parent stands up clapping and exclaims, “That was so much better!” Homechan then announces that the group is switching gears and ushers them into the room next door. This space appears to be a mini movie set.

There is a kitchen with a door that leads into a living room scene complete with couches, lamps and a stairwell. Bright lights shine down on the set and it seems like someone could roll out a camera at any minute and scream “Action!” Instead, Seto does. First, she speaks to the group of about 15 kids and teens to give them instructions for a skit about a homeless man.

“I like the stories about heroes…think about Sandra Bullock in ‘The Blindside.’ I want you to pretend you’re not in suburban America and dive into a life of having nothing,” Seto said.

Seto whispers to Homechan and he nods as he pulls a blanket around himself and limps onto the stage. Seto then calls young student Natasha Merlene up and instructs her to befriend the homeless man. Once Seto said “action” Merlene rushes through the set’s doorway and dives into character as a young girl who meets a homeless man on the street. As the scene progresses Merlene grows attached to the man and realizes how fortunate she is to have a home. A deep relationship builds between the two characters as she meets him under the bridge every day
after school.

It’s an improvisational exercise that changes based on Seto’s shifting guidelines as she pulls different students out of the audience to gear the story in a new direction. Alexandria Bader is called to enter as a friend of Merlene’s and performs in a subtle, soft-spoken fashion. She is unsure of whether to help the homeless man until Merlene convinces her of the just cause.

It’s when a small young girl named Peyton Diamond enters the scene that the dynamic changes drastically. Told to play the granddaughter of the now dying homeless man, she becomes deeply emotional as her grandfather grows sicker by the day.

No one will help her save him, and when he finally dies she curls up in a ball on the stage and cries. Stillness looms over the room during her convincing performance. When Seto shouts “cut!” Diamond and Merlene hurry off the set and grab tissues to dry their tears.

“The power is not in the words,” Seto said. “In film acting it’s the relationships and the moments of silence or tenderness we as actors share with he audience.”

“I like that for a little bit in time you can be someone else… because you feel completely immersed in your character,” Alexandria Bader said. “The realism in it is scary, but it’s what we live for. It’s like a rush.”

She said that in an industry that has become so sexualized, she wants to be a role model who parents are okay with their kids looking up to.

“I want her to reach her goals but without compromise,” Kim Bader said as tears fill her eyes. “I love that whatever notoriety or celebrity she gets, whenever she talks about it it’s always paired with ‘what can I do for people?’”

Believing in her daughter, however, doesn’t mean Kim Bader is unaware of the extreme competition in this market.

“I tell Alex all the time, once you put yourself out there you’re going to be open to a lot of judgment and you’re gonna need to learn to let it roll off you,” she said. “It’s all a learning experience.”

At the Young Actors Studio, Seto strives to prepare students for life at large no matter what they end up doing.

“The way we formatted the studio is like a mini-junior college of the arts,” she said. “It helps them to grow in so many facets.”

Seto’s first goal is to help her students learn about themselves as people and give them confidence.

“Just being able to perform is a great quality no matter what you’re doing in life.” Seto said. “The confidence to communicate and the skills gained from improv help them to think quickly on their feet. I have kids who went on to start their own businesses and I can look back and say that even though they aren’t actors, they are successes because of the life skills they learned at our studio.”