"I had interviewed for it last year. I went out to L.A. and met with 12 people that were in the Hollywood press. It was kind of intimidating but they were nice and then I actually ended up not being chosen that year," she admits.
"But then they called me out of the blue this year and asked if I wanted to do it and I was honored to be chosen. I'm really excited about it."
Growing up with a musician dad and an actor mom, Rainey always dreamed of moving to New York to study acting. At nineteen years old she took the leap from Montana to Manhattan where she began taking voice lessons and attending the Maggie Flanigan Studio.
Rainey is currently writing her own music and awaiting the release of her first feature film, "Mighty Fine", this coming summer.
Chosen as this week's Actor2Watch, Rainey will be featured in a series of articles, fun facts and social media tweets through this week for subscribers of Girl2Watch.com.
A2W: When did you get started performing?
RQ: I started taking dance when I was 2 years old, my mom put me in ballet and I continued taking dance throughout college. My favorite is jazz and modern. I did competitions and everything so I guess that's really when I had my primary performing experience. My dad sings and plays guitar so I started singing when I was real young. I grew up basically visiting my mom on set and I was always really interested in acting too, so the performing arts was something I was exposed to early and something I've been really interested in.
A2W: What was your dance school like in Montana?
RQ: It was just a regular little dance studio but we lived 45 minutes away from town so it was kind of an ordeal to go, but we made it happen.
A2W: Growing up did you know that your mom was famous?
RQ: I mean, I knew she was an actor and she was famous but we were, especially when I was real young, we were living in Montana where obviously there's no paparazzi around or anything and the most I would experience her fame would be at school when people would say 'I just saw your mom in "Michael" or something… I guess if I would visit her on set there would be more attention over her then. When we moved to North Carolina it was more of a big deal, but we were kind of kept away from all that for the most part.
A2W: When did you start writing your own music?
RQ: Before I actually started writing, I would think of some ideas and melodies in my head but I never really knew how to go about turning the ideas into a song. Then when I moved to New York when I was 19 I started taking voice lessons from Cari Cole. She encouraged me to write down the lyrics and I would come up with melody ideas and she would help me turn everything into songs.
A2W: How do you prepare for an audition? What's your process?
RQ: The way that Maggie sort of taught us to prepare for any scene in her class was to just learn the scene so that you just know the lines. Like her phrase would be I could call you in the middle of the night and say 'say the next line verbatim.' To be very familiar with the scene but primarily without like putting any inflections or line readings or anything and then living through the scene moment by moment with your partner so that it's fresh every time.
