I am an American actress from Northern California. My mom is Dutch American, and my dad is Irish/English/Dutch American descendant. I have been in the movie industry for over 25 years. I started acting at a young age. I competed and won many speech contests. I loved reciting and acting out multiple dramatic monologues. My passion started when I was winning every year and when I noticed at the end of my monologue the reaction on people’s faces. Their joy or their tears showed to me I did my job, and I did it well. As years passed, I started modeling at the age of 18. I felt I wanted to model and act, but the modeling business came so fast for me. I had a photoshoot in LA with an LA agency. Within a few months of work in LA, the owner of an NY modeling agency, Exquisite Model Management, saw a picture of me in an LA magazine. They tracked me down to come work as a model in NYC. Exquisite was successfully run by amazing young bookers and entrepreneurs Billy Rozenvig & Victoria Talbot-Pressly. The agency took me in, and before I knew it, I was on go-sees, auditions, and working daily on sets. Within just a few months of working in NYC, two different modeling agencies out of the country, one in Milan, Italy and another in Taiwan, China, wanted me to come live and work there. My booker, Victoria, alerted me to their requests, and she told me I was ready to go and either area would increase my career and work opportunities even more. The Italian agency, Flash Models, sent airline tickets first before the other agency in Taiwan sent their tickets for me to come. So, my booker and the Director of the Agency, Victoria Talbot-Pressly, said I was going to Italy in just a few days. That is where I went next, to Italy. I was there in Italy for months, and within the first week, I was working on a television show that I was contracted to for 4-6 weeks. That was when I became even more interested in the film industry. I was still modeling for many other products and clothing lines as well. After working in Europe, I moved back to NYC, working more as a model. My booker, Victoria, took me under her wing and had me interviewing and working with some of the biggest names in the industry, from Revlon to Christian Dior to many others. Some of my dearest longtime friends in life came from living in NYC. My booker, Victoria, and top NYC models and colleagues, Biljana Kristic and Kim Crowe. All of them are still dear friends of mine and are still very successful entrepreneurs in life.
One of my favorite jobs when I was modeling was when I was hired to be a spokesperson for a computer company. I was computer-animated for the product. They had flown me to the Netherlands for a broadcasting convention. The company asked if I had ever been there since I was Dutch, and I said no. So, the company flew me out two weeks before I had to work and paid for me to tour the country. I was so excited. I saw many areas and met a ton of people. When I worked for the company at the convention, I got to interact with other computer characters at the convention. Microsoft invited me to act with their character as well via a green screen in front of thousands of people as I was dressed as my cartoon character. We brought so much attention to our product as well as Microsoft. We were the talk of the whole convention.
I met my husband, Michael O’Brien, at a local gym in the Bay Area. I had just come back from being booked in the Netherlands for almost five weeks and had bought some property a few months prior to my trip to base myself out of Northern California. I was taking a break from being so busy in life from flying 100,000 miles a year of job bookings. I took a break from modeling and acting. I was still with my good friend and love, Michael O’Brien, and we married in 2001. We have now been married for 23 years this August and have three children: Faith, 20, and Hope and Christian, almost 19. As I was living back in the SF Bay Area, raising my family. I was still being contacted multiple times to be on set even while I was pregnant and even through the years of raising my three kids. My husband was always supportive in having me get back into my industry full force and what I loved to do. I started back in the film industry with a few small films, “Burn Country,” “The Etruscan Smile” then working with Dwayne Johnson, The Rock in “San Andreas,” and then to a Transformer movie, “Bumblebee,” and multiple other movies and television shows and commercials since. Some of my recent movies are “Nash Bridges” with Don Johnson, “Venom” 1 & 2,”The Matrix Resurrections”4, “Us”, and “Always Be My Maybe.” To acting in a few “Ballers” episodes, again working with The Rock, Dwayne Johnson to 3 seasons of the top-rated Netflix show, “13 Reasons Why” as a police officer. All have been such wonderful experiences. However, one of the first movies in the USA that I was in and that really sparked my passion for films was in 1996, the movie “Jack” with Robin Williams. It was one of my favorite movies to be in. Robin was an amazing actor and such a sweet, real person on and off the set. I was excited to learn his birthday was July 21 and mine is on July 22, years apart, but we thought and laughed about how it was fun to have birthdays in the summer, but we never celebrated when we were in school with friends.
One morning, he saw me by myself just reading in between set changes, and he said, “Gail, can you help me get some of these kids and adults on set? Let’s play a game while we wait for the set change.” I looked at Robin and thought… Is he talking to me? He was a superstar and asked me to help him get people in a circle to play a game. That day changed my outlook on so many aspects of life and the industry. My mom and dad had always said to me that big actors and little actors are the same. They all have two eyes, a nose and a mouth. It’s only you who thinks someone else is better or bigger than someone else because you are putting them on a pedestal. That was when it hit me. Why did I get so nervous? Or so excited? He was a human being, as we all are, and I walked around with Robin, rallying other actors and people on set to play a game together. It’s truly our judgment that puts others higher in our own minds. From then, I looked at the industry differently and not from a nervous little girl, but as a person with a real heart and through eyes with a different outlook. Robin wanted to include people. Main actors to extras to extra people on set and bring them together. When I learned of his death in 2014, my heart sank. His death reminded me of the fun times on set and how I will miss him on or off the set for years to come. Even today marks a pivotal moment when I’m on set. Whatever job I have on set, I do it with all my heart and talk to everyone on set whatever job they have extra or main part, director etc. Everybody is somebody when shooting a film. We all need to work together and need each other to get the final product. I do feel when I am hired to work in a movie, they know me throughout the years and are confident in my work. I work with passion, love and fun in all that I do with everyone on set. Another movie, Mad City, in 1997, I was working with John Travolta and Dustin Hoffman. Great crew on set. I was a news reporter who got to be right with Dustin and John in some scenes. Working, I feel very blessed to be in the Bay Area shooting. We shot the film in San Jose. I had a fun time working with them. I also was flown to LA to shoot multiple endings of the movie. That turned out to be a wonderful learning experience of working with so many talented people and learning the business even faster and at a young age.
Even through all these years of working on sets, the Bay Area is a tight knit movie industry group. I have worked with so many of the same set people I worked with in 1996 all the way to nowadays on set in 2023. It’s like one big family reunion when I see them. Hugs, high fives and love of friendships through the years, we are still connected.
Some commercials that I’ve done in the last few years. Two Kaiser Permanente commercials with Stephen Curry and one Kaiser Permanente commercial with Klay Thompson. I also did an iPhone 11 commercial with Gordon Ramsey.
Some companies I’ve been a Product Specialist with over the years are Land Rover, BMW, Mehindra-Genze, Lexus, and Harley Davidson.
I am currently representing Mercedes-Benz as a Product Specialist with MBUSA over the last four years and Waymo as a field market manager for their autonomous rideshare nationwide, in addition to working on movies that come into the Bay Area and throughout California.
If you want to learn more, follow Gail Gamble on the links below.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gailgambleobrien/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7903320/
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