“I would have liked to lounge around longer,” she reveals.
Chantal Janzen’s success seems almost unstoppable. Musicals, presenting jobs, pajama parties, a successful series (which was recently renewed for a second season) and a very happy family life – Chantal is doing well. In her own column in &C she now looks back on the early period of her career. Are there things she would have done differently in retrospect?
Make a career
Chantal remembers well that a number of her friends were pushed enormously to achieve as much as possible. But luckily her parents were very different. “The fact that we were pursuing a career was not important to my parents in the past. They especially wanted us to do something that made us happy, that we were good at and that we could hopefully make a living from.” And afterwards she is extremely grateful to them for that. “I never had the ambition to earn a lot of money anyway. If you wanted the latter, then you really shouldn’t work in the theater.”
Flying start
She may not have had the ambition to make a career in the traditional sense, but Chantal did want to move up in the musical profession. Yet it all happened faster than she would have liked in retrospect. “I would have liked to have been in the ensemble longer, instead of being a replacement for the lead role during my internship,” she says.
And we can understand that, because such a flying start also has a downside. Chantal: “Immediately that stress and responsibility, immediately being anxious about whether your voice will still work, not going out much, not getting sick, doing interviews even though you have not yet been trained in that. I found that very stressful at first. I would have liked to lounge around longer, be free more often and go out more often.”
Working full-time
Yet Chantal must admit that from the beginning she had the ambition to grow in her profession. And that wouldn’t actually have been possible if she hadn’t gone for it so fully. “I loved working, and it really didn’t occur to me to work part-time. That was simply not possible. To be honest, if I had it to do over again, I think I would have worked a little less between the ages of 25 and 35. Then I would have found a nice plan for four days, or even part-time,” says Chantal.
The actress and presenter now works part-time, and she really likes that. Because ultimately, according to her, there is only one thing we all want most: “Enjoy. Full-time.” Amen!
Source: Grazia, &C | Image: NL Image
