Caitlin FitzGerald ’02: Hall Fellow
Caitlin FitzGerald ’02 is an old hand at performing on stage and for the camera, but when the actor and filmmaker was invited to speak at Concord Academy as the 2024 Hall Fellow, she felt intimidated. “Because I am in the business of feelings, I tend to forensically examine my own,” she said at CA on April 19. The sensation she identified was familiar from high school: imposter syndrome. A consummate storyteller, FitzGerald transformed her insight into a captivating narrative about her career and sage advice about the importance of hard work, stepping into discomfort, and following what you love.
FitzGerald is known for her roles in the television series Masters of Sex, Sweetbitter, Inventing Anna, and Succession, among other performances. She also co-wrote and starred in the narrative feature Like the Water and directed two short films, The Girl with the Jacket and Mrs. Drake, for which she was awarded best director at the Milwaukee Short Film Festival and which was nominated for best film at the NBCUniversal Short Cuts Festival.
When she came to CA in 10th grade from Camden, Maine, FitzGerald said, she felt “out of my league.” On top of intellectual insecurity, she struggled to be cool in a decade when apathy was on trend. “Good or bad, my feelings were always at a 10,” she said.
Theater became her refuge. “Blessedly, there was a place here where big feelings were encouraged—nay, celebrated,” FitzGerald said. “A place where anyone could belong and where I felt like I was truly good at something, or even if I wasn’t, I loved it enough that it didn’t matter.”
She found her footing academically too. Again and again, she said, she has been grateful for discovering her capacity “to work hard, harder than I knew I could, harder than I thought I was capable of.”
FitzGerald had always dreamed of moving to New York to become an actor. She attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, then studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. When she returned to New York, she struggled to find roles and began working in restaurants, “humbled and strengthened” by the experience, she said.
Her early career had many ups and downs. Just as she landed a big break—the lead in Romeo and Juliet—at a small stage company in California, FitzGerald’s agent dropped her. She waitressed again, played twins on Law & Order: SVU, and got a movie role as Meryl Streep’s daughter. Still, she was living audition to audition. Then indie director Ed Burns recruited her for a low-budget, improvisational film. FitzGerald says the experience was life-changing: she learned “no one was the gatekeeper of my artistry but me.”
She began turning toward friends’ creative projects and thinking about what she could make. The shift in perspective made a difference. Auditions seemed less dire. She booked one TV show that led to the next.
Acting continues to teach and challenge her, and she defines success as an internal feeling of accomplishment. Each time FitzGerald thinks she can’t do something, she said, “I walk through the crucible of my fear, and I am changed and enlarged.” Pain, discomfort, anger, and despair, she added, “often mean you’re exactly where you should be.”
“You cannot be an imposter in your own life,” FitzGerald said. “Everything that happens to you belongs to you. It’s part of your own artistry and storytelling and story.”
For six decades, Concord Academy has awarded the Hall Fellow Endowed Lectureship to distinguished individuals who exemplify CA’s mission and values.
