Brainsofminerva.com is a career and lifestyle resource for the enterprising LA actor. From finding volunteer opportunities that ignite your creativity to making your mate feel like a star when you’re home a total of ten waking hours a week, brainsofminerva.com offers you the tools to nurture your ambition with style, smarts, and an eye to the greater good. The Brains of Brains, Sarah Sido and Claire Winters, bring over a decade (though we can’t say exactly how much over a decade) of work in theater, film, and television in Los Angeles and New York to their content and selection of accomplished guests. While the Brains can’t get you an agent or get your family to stop asking why you don’t just “get on a soap opera,” they can tell you how they found their agents, what it’s like to work on a soap, how to get through to the unemployment office (really!) and why Thursday is the most inspiring day of the week (you’ll just have to read the post). They’re your big sisters in the business clearing a path while they continue to hack at the forest.

Sarah Sido Grew up on a mountain top in Vermont performing in a   children’s theater company and dreaming of being a city kid in NY,   before heading off to Interlochen Arts Academy. After spending time   at The British American Drama Academy and Oberlin College, an   internship with Manhattan Theatre Club finally brought her to New   York, where she performed in play after play, from Shakespeare in   the basement of a coffee shop to Bloody Poetry Off Broadway, at the Classic Stage Company, and toured the country performing and teaching with the National Shakespeare Company. Upon her move to LA, she appeared in The Master and Margarita, an award winning production by Zoo District. Since then she has worked with many of the best companies in town, including: Push to Talk, International City Theater, and The Evidence Room.

Her voiceover career began by accident when she did a mass mailing without properly doing her homework first and sent a headshot to a voiceover agent, thinking he worked in the on-camera department. He must have been having a slow day, as he called to tell her of her mistake. He happened to like her voice however, and suggested she make a demo, which she promptly did. When she got back in touch with him, this time with the proper materials and some bookings under her belt, he told her his roster was full. But it didn’t matter! Sarah found other representation and is grateful to him anyway for sparking her interest in the field.

Sarah continues to work extensively in voiceover. In animation, she worked on Team America: World Police, Barnyard and the pilot, Sugarless, among others. She has provided voices for some of the most popular games, including Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots. Her commercial clients include: McDonald’s, Volkswagon, Alta Dena, Blockbuster and Toyota.

On camera, notable TV credits include, Without a Trace, Sleeper Cell, and Justice. She has starred in many commercials, short films and the feature, Lollilove, directed by Jenna Fischer.

Sarah on IMDB

Claire Winters Claire first collaborated with Sarah Sido many moons   ago when, as seniors at The Interlochen Arts Academy, she cast her   as Wendla in her all-female production of Frank Wedekin’s Spring   Awakening. And they said it couldn’t be done. Ha!

Nights spent lying awake recounting the memory of staging German   Expressionism on her dorm roof made college pale by comparison.   So after a brief stop at Sarah Lawrence College she headed to New York to study with Michael Howard and cut her teeth in countless plays, student films, and indies. She realized, though, that she needed conservatory training to further her creative goals and was accepted into the MFA Program at American Conservatory Theater.

Upon graduation she headed back to New York where she appeared in several plays and worked in regional theaters including The George Street Playhouse, The Guthrie Lab, ACT, and Shakespeare Sedona. Her film and television credits include leading roles in the features Filmic Achievement and Slings and Arrows, Guiding Light and As the World Turns, and a supporting turn in the Golden Globe-winning HBO mini series Empire Falls. She also continues to develop her own work, including the solo show Shakespeare’s Difficult Women, which was performed at Manhattan Theater Source and developed in a residency at Artward Bound. She has won grants from The Lotta Crabtree Trusts, Fractured Atlas and Robert Rauschenberg’s Change, Inc.

Claire also finds much joy in her teaching practice. In New York she taught several on-camera acting courses in the Young Actors Program at The Lee Strasberg Institute and led workshops in creating original dance and theater work at The Field.

Last year Claire moved to LA to expand her opportunities in film and television. She teaches acting and digital filmmaking to teens throughout LA and has written on teen actor training for Intercut Magazine. She is currently acting in and directing a multi-media project she’ll unveil on the Interwebs in the fall.

Claire on IMDB

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Photo of Sarah by Dana Patrick
Photo of Claire by Mark Bennington