Danielle Nicolette Najarian has acted on stage since she was in grade school in Bergen County. She continued to pursue her craft when her family came to Jackson and when she moved to California to make her way in the entertainment industry.
Najarian, who recently moved back to New Jersey, served as a host during the 2018 Garden State Film Festival in Asbury Park in March.
Looking back over a career that has spanned more than a decade, Najarian said it was not until she was a student at Jackson Memorial High School that her talents blossomed.
“At first I did not really want to be in the spotlight, it was not something I wanted at all, but after many bouts of stage fright, I started to see how I was impacting people’s lives in a positive way and that is when I started to embrace it and I just pushed past the stage fright and I have been doing it ever since,” she said.
Najarian, who is the daughter of Nicole and Scott Najarian, said there was one teacher in particular at Jackson Memorial who encouraged her, Laura Terranova.
“Not a lot of other people encouraged me at that time, but (Terranova) encouraged me to continue to go after what my heart wanted and as afraid as I was or as difficult as it may have been, it was here in Jackson where I was really inspired to continue as an actress,” she said.
Later, when Najarian left for California, all she packed was a bag or two and all she purchased was a one-way ticket.
“I did not even tell my family … I just took a one-way ticket and told them at the last minute before I left that I was going out there. I had never visited California, I did not have any family there, no connections whatsoever, I did not know anyone,” she said.
Najarian said that when she arrived in California she had no idea where to begin in what felt like a foreign land, but she eventually found work as an extra on “All of Us,” a television show produced by Will Smith. The work she did on the show allowed her to join the actors union. “All of Us” was broadcast between the fall of 2003 and the spring of 2007.
Following that experience and after auditioning for Smith and Alfonso Ribeiro, Najarian landed a role in “Private Practice,” which was a spinoff of “Grey’s Anatomy” and ran from September 2007 through January 2013 on ABC.
“Again, I was just kind of working in the background, but after only a month or two, the (producers) asked me to commit to the show and to give them my schedule. I could not go on any more auditions and I did it just as a background extra, but the next thing I knew they ended up writing me into the show and they promoted me from being in the background to being a recurring actress on the show,” she said.
Najarian played the receptionist at a private medical practice.
“They gave me lines, I was in a couple of episodes and they became my second family out there,” she said, adding that she worked on “Private Practice” for about five years. “They really encouraged me, uplifted me, strengthened me and prepared me even more in the industry.”
She said when “Private Practice” was canceled she returned home to Jackson to be with her family.
“I was not even pursuing acting when I came back. I had to get a job, I was working in corporate America and then somehow the industry found me again,” Najarian said.
Najarian said she was invited to be a host at the 2018 Garden State Film Festival in Asbury Park. She hosted a film block and a screenplay competition. She also appeared in a film that was screened at the festival.
“I was in a film called ‘The Gift’ and it premiered at the House of Independents in Asbury Park,” she said.
She said it was surreal returning to Asbury Park, a city she avoided when she was commuting from Jackson to Monmouth University in West Long Branch.
“My film was screening at around the same time I was doing the screenplay competition reading being the narrator, so I had to run from the Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel, where the screenplay reading was, to the House of Independents (on Cookman Avenue), but there was a moment when I had people texting me and telling me they were watching my film … and as I was walking I just took a moment,” Najarian said.
She said she wanted to take a moment to appreciate Asbury Park’s transformation to a destination for the arts and to realize how beautiful the moment was, and to enjoy that moment in her life because “it is about enjoying the journey.”
Najarian said she did not become an actress to achieve fame and “that is why I studied psychology (at Monmouth University), but that is a whole other story. I want to heal people, that is my heart. I want to touch people’s lives with my work. It is not about them knowing my face or seeing me on stage or giving me accolades or anything like that.”
Najarian is currently producing a short film titled “Casting Chloe”. She is also working on a romantic comedy titled “Dutch” as the lead actress and has a Sci-Fi /Action Adventure television pilot titled, “ABSYNTHIA” that is currently in post production, that will begin being pitched to major networks once it is complete.
