This time in 2014, Gemma Brooke Allen’s biggest claim to fame was her part in a Toyota Highlander commercial. She was in two shots and had no lines outside of a laugh. Seven years later, she’s the star of a new Netflix movie: Mixtape. 

Allen is only 13 years old, but she’s already had her fair share of disappointment. For the past five years, she told VoyageLA, she’s booked and filmed a TV pilot every year, but the projects didn’t always pan out. “It’s a very difficult thing because a very small percentage of TV shows are actually picked up to series, so there is a lot of disappointment,” she said. But that hard work started paying off earlier this year, when she won the part of a young Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Netflix’s action flick Kate. Only a few months later, the premiere of Mixtape marks Allen’s very first starring role.

Hollywood isn’t an easy town, especially for a young person. “There is so much disappointment and you work so hard doing hundreds of auditions to get that one job,” Allen recalled. But just as her character Beverly Moody learns in Mixtape, Allen’s persistence paid off. “[Y]ou absolutely must believe in yourself and have some confidence in yourself and your talent,” she said. Whether that means tracking down the last Kinks song on your parents’ mixtape or heading to one more audition, persistence makes all the difference in the end.