There was no intense formal training on her part aside from a few acting and improv classes and she barely knew her way around town but she soon settled in an apartment with a few others, worked part-time jobs, and tried to make her newfound dream come true. After mainly working for free, with friends around town, and in student films, Director Jake Scott took a chance on the girl who had barely any films under her belt and cast her in Welcome to the Riley’s, featuring James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo.
Though she was an unknown at the time, he stated that he wanted to have someone who the public didn’t know for the part of the misunderstood Mallory and further explained and defended some of her methods while talking to reporters who later inquired about them, stating “I cast her right and it’s really my first experience of working with somebody that young who was so determined to do justice to the girl she was playing. And she did a lot of work in New Orleans where I put her in contact with a stripper, even though you don’t really see her stripping in the film – I didn’t want to show that. I felt that the audience didn’t need to be looking at strippers, it would have felt like a cheap shot to me and there’s too many films with strippers in where the filmmaker exploits that and I felt that actually this film was about the exact opposite of exploitation. But nonetheless she felt that it was very necessary to put herself in that position and actually go to a club and strip and learn how to work a man in the VIP room, you know, all that stuff. And she did, she ate badly, chain smoked, didn’t sleep, stayed out of the sun and made herself generally really ill for this role and it all came across.” She managed to impress him with the dedication she gave and from there, some more roles starting coming her way.
Not exactly a familiar face, her career had never really turned out exactly the way she wanted it to. She got roles, but they were never the breakthrough roles that she was waiting for, and so when the auditions for Z for Zachariah came around she wasn’t even on the list of girls to be considered for the part but her manager booked her an audition and she failed at it the first time around. She was late due to traffic as well as an almost collision which meant she had to run out of her taxi and to the audition room. Needless to say, she appeared in a frenzy when she busted through those doors. In a weird turn of events, it was a refreshing take on what they thought was a very boxed in role even if she may not have looked the part they envisioned at first. The audition was filled with girls who played that same toughness but Kaitlin offered a new take on it. It wasn’t that great of an audition, but they found her refreshing enough to ask her to come in once again and that’s when they really saw what she could do and she was bumped up near the top of the list before eventually getting the role.
Suddenly her star credibility was starting to grow. She is not an A-lister by any means, and she isn’t exactly as “media trained” as her crew would like, whether she’s saying the first thing that comes to mind while doing an interview, choosing to comment on something negative rather than ignore it, or doing things that make the rumor mill and tabloids swirl. Regardless, she is actually having fun with everything at the moment without focusing too much on the consequences of her actions. She just has a bigger platform for her interesting personality and she has no problem showing that off.
