Local actress in feature film

You’ve probably seen her at HEB or Brookshires, maybe buying groceries or filling up her car’s gas tank. Cinda Donovan is a pretty, blond, blue-eyed actress and has one of the lead roles in the just released movie “Nana’s Secret Recipe.” The movie has been having premieres around the state.

“It’s on the festival circuit, Austin, this weekend Dallas, soon Colorado. I have to go out and be at premieres,” Donovan said. The movie was filmed last year in the state.

“Women in their 50s and 60s lose money in a Ponzi scheme and have to get their money back.” The ladies decide to sell pot laced cookies and brownies to cancer patients, hence the secret recipe name in the title.

“The drug cartel comes in, there’s a shoot’em up, though we win in the end. It’s a great funny story with middle-aged women the stars of the story.”

One scene in the movie was kind of hard, because she had to cry on cue. “It was about 9 p.m. at night and I was supposed to cry in front of my ex’s house, with the other women. Thinking about dead puppies or kids.” In other words the scene was just not working for her. She was in a car.

“The director opened the passenger door and said, “You are nothing, you have got nothing” (and other words demeaning her) slammed the car door and said “Roll tape” and it just came out.”

Another scene she related was filming at Matagorda Bay with the women strolling together in bathing suits, but it was in December and forty degrees, using her method acting talent to not shiver. Acting is not new to her.

“It started in 6th grade in the play “Twelfth Night.

“My then boyfriend slammed down on a table and broke it. The other actors were startled (by the noise and broken table), but I just went with it. People laughed and I always remembered that and to try to get that feeling back,” Donovan said.

A Houston girl originally, she has been acting since 1997 in live theatre, moved to the North East where she appeared in commercials, industrial and short films and the Boston Globe Lottery commercial. In the north, acting means membership in a union if you wanted to work.

When she moved here in 2014 with her best girlfriend, one big difference in the South is she needed to hire an agent, as there is no union to get you a job. The current film is her first feature film and it is a job gotten on her own, but she still had to get the okay from her agent.

“I play a sassy comedian, it just fit me. The director said it fit my personality that it was hard to do, after a Texas-wide casting search. All of us just fit our parts,” she said. “It took a lot of time to say a line and not embellish it. That’s hard.”

So how local is Cinda Donovan? She won runner up for Best Actor in 2017 in the Wimberley View’s “Best of” contest while with the Wimberley Players. She is also a radio producer at KWVH 94.1. And loves it in Wimberley.

“I just love the community and it makes me a happy person. I’m glad I landed in Wimberley.”