Julie Carmen Finds Dramatic Arts Can Offer Good Therapeutic Effect

Julie Carmen began dancing when she was in second grade, started doing plays Off Broadway at age 14 and won the Venice Film Festival’s best supporting actress award for her first film, John Cassavetes’ “Gloria,” when she was 18.

“Since then I have steered my career away from the larger, splashier roles,” says the actress, who has appeared in such films as “The Milagro Beanfield War” and “Fright Night II” and the HBO series “Dream On.”

“I am one of the few people who still believes that we can do our best work through independent filmmaking.”

And Carmen has received some of the best notices of her career for the independent erotic film noir “Kiss Me a Killer.”

“That was shot for under $1 million in 18 days,” Carmen says. “When the script was sent to me, I said, ‘We can really do something with this, but it’s going to take every ounce of my personal energy to really push this through.”’

Carmen seems to have personal energy to spare. While acting on the New York stage and going to college, she became a licensed drama therapist and worked with ex-cons for three years. She also graduated from a four-year training program in psychoanalysis.

“I did 14 movies and had a child during those four years,” Carmen says, laughing.

The actress, who underwent psychoanalysis for eight years, teaches drama therapy at Santa Monica College. “I don’t do drama therapy now because I figure one day when I get fed up with Hollywood and want to walk away from it, then I will either direct theater or work in drama therapy.”

In her spare moments, Carmen is a spokeswoman for Caesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers. “I believe the farm workers are kind of an organization without power who are being sprayed on,” she says. “It’s horrible.”