IN THE MIX BY MIC DIAZ: CHAT WITH MIC
For most of her professional life, Priscilla Villena De La Peña built her career caring for others. After decades working as a nurse in hospitals and nursing facilities, acting was not necessarily where she expected her journey to take her. But as she entered a new season of life, De La Peña discovered that a completely different passion was waiting for her.
I sat down with Priscilla for Chat With Mic in Los Angeles, where she shared her unexpected transition from nursing to acting. After years devoted to her profession and raising her family, becoming an empty nester gave her an opportunity to explore something for herself. What began as stepping outside her comfort zone eventually opened the door to a new creative chapter.
That opportunity led her to the independent project Nurse the Dead, where De La Peña found herself in front of the camera as an actress. Interestingly, the project’s hospital setting gave her a connection to a world she already knew well. But instead of caring for patients as she had throughout her nursing career, she was now learning how to inhabit a character, work with a cast and crew, and experience storytelling from an entirely different perspective.
The transition required courage. Starting something unfamiliar later in life can mean becoming a beginner again after spending decades developing expertise in another profession. For De La Peña, acting meant learning a new craft, becoming comfortable in front of the camera and allowing herself to pursue something simply because it brought her excitement and fulfillment.
Her story also challenges the idea that our lives must follow one predetermined path. A career can provide purpose for decades without being the final definition of who we are. De La Peña’s years in nursing remain an important part of her identity, but acting has given her another way to express herself and discover abilities she may not have known she possessed.
There is also something meaningful about pursuing a dream after raising a family. For many parents, personal ambitions can be placed aside while careers, children and responsibilities take priority. Becoming an empty nester gave De La Peña the space to ask a different question: What do I want to do now?
Her decision to act has also become an example for her children and for others who may believe they have waited too long to try something new. Reinvention does not have to mean abandoning everything that came before. Sometimes it simply means giving yourself permission to explore another side of who you are.
For De La Peña, the journey from nurse to actress is less about changing careers than discovering another passion. After spending much of her life taking care of others, she is allowing herself the opportunity to pursue something of her own—and proving that there is no expiration date on beginning a new chapter.