When thinking about acting, the first thing that comes to mind is Hollywood and the famous actors on the silver screen.

But some people tend to overlook the actors that take on the smaller roles. Cal High’s AP Literature, novel and work experience teacher Ginger Clark is one of those actors.

Although Clark loves her role in the classroom and is the English department’s longest tenured teacher with 30 years at Cal, her first love was really acting.

Clark was drawn to theater from the young age of seven, when her parents put her in a local theater production. Clark was part of many plays there with a group of children, some of them being bigger and more professional productions with her community.

These productions taught Clark the basics of acting and how to work with large crowds. She continued her acting career into high school, and she kept working at a local theater.

Clark had many roles in her high school theater productions, which sparked a big passion for acting.

“I acted, but I also was a prop master at times,” Clark said. “I also did set design and costume design.”

Clark said that acting hinders confidence at time because people are quick to judge appearance.

“It takes a toll on your self-esteem, “ Clark said, “Your hair color is the wrong color, you’re too tall, you’re too short, you’re too fat, you’re too skinny, you’re too whatever, you know, and it’s hard.”

For three summer breaks, she attended Stagedoor Manor, a theater camp in upstate New York, which famous actor Natalie Portman attended in later years.

One of Clark’s former students, senior Liv Alvey, also attended this camp the past two summers and said it was as great place to learn about the craft of acting.

As well as attending the theater camp in New York. Clark studied at the Royal National Theater of London, where she worked with Judi Dench. Clark was only a theater major there for a short period of time.

Clark originally thought she could use her theater major to teach high school theater, but she later discovered her passion was in English.

“I realized that there are more opportunities in English, and I love English, so it was a better fit for me,” Clark said.

Later, while pursuing a masters degree in English at Cal State East Bay, Clark had the opportunity to be in a Robin Williams film. She could have played the role of a tall brunette in a sequence where Williams was dreaming about tall brunettes.

But she found herself in a tough predicament. The call time for the casting was at the same time as her master’s class. Clark’s teacher had told students that if they missed one class, their grade would drop 10%.

“I felt like Robert Frost, you know, standing at the pathway of two paths in the woods, and it was like the metaphor, that was huge for me,” Clark said.

This was one of the toughest decisions Clark had to make regarding her acting career, but she ultimately decided to attend her class.

Once arriving at her class that night, Clark told her class where she was supposed to be. To her dismay, Clark’s teacher said she would have been fine with her attending. Her teacher, in fact, insisted she still go, but it was too late. Clark had chosen teaching.

Even when Clark was teaching, she was simultaneously acting. She played a role in two of Cal’s staff plays in 1996 and 2002, working with several other current staff members, including U.S. history and iQuest teacher Michelle Curach-Turner.

In the 1996 teacher play “Odd Couple”, Clark played one of the protagonists, Felix.

“I think she played the part perfectly,” Curach-Turner said. “She put her whole self into the character.”

For some of Clark’s students, it isn’t much of a surprise their teacher acts since she’s known for her vibrant personality.

“She’s just like a really lively and really expressive teacher,” Olivia Cavanas, a current senior in Clark’s AP Literature class, said.

Clark had positive impacts on many of her students and continues to impact them now.

“Ms. Clark was always super great to me,” former student Aaron Hsi, a sophomore at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, said. “She was one of the few teachers who was genuinely interested in my life and my own personal interests.”

Clark also makes lasting impressions and friendships with her colleagues at Cal.

“[She’s] like a highly animated cartoon character,” English teacher Ted Levey said with a laugh. “[She’s] very organized, very inspirational, and has a great heart for kids.”

Clark’s passion about acting continues to be strong since acting impacted her life in many different ways.

“Acting is one of those careers that you can enter at any point in your life,” Clark said.

Clark said she would never switch back from education to acting, but she thought of the idea of doing it as something on the side.

Recently, Clark has submitted an audition to an organization she found on Facebook. The organization was looking for high school and middle school teachers specifically. Clark is still waiting to hear back about the audition.

“I think in acting, too, it’s all about growth. They don’t look at anything as failure,” Clark said. “Actors are always looking to grow in their craft, and if you look at acting as that, and I think you look at teaching as that, I think you can see a lot of similarities, which is probably why I enjoy both.”