Name:  Barbara Lee Niven
Birthplace:  Portland, Oregon
Birthday:  February 26  (Pisces)
Citizenship:  Dual citizenship U.S.A./Canada
Height:  5'5
Hair:  Blonde
Eyes:  Blue

Barbara Niven
Actress – Motivational Speaker

Barbara Niven is definitely living her dreams!   She’s one of Hollywood’s busiest actresses, shooting eighteen films and several TV guest star roles in the past three years alone.  She’s also on the National Board of Directors for the Screen Actors Guild.

She is living proof that anyone can make his or her dreams come true, at any age, and is a popular motivational speaker.  She says, “Every moment you can choose to move toward your dream or away from it.”  Her motto?  “Don’t settle for less than wonderful in your life – and don’t give up five minutes before the miracle!”

Barbara has created the breakthrough ACT as if! system, which uses acting techniques to help you put the Law of Attraction to work for you in both your personal and professional life. She notes that many of us spend time and money on DVDs like The Secret, but hit the wall in frustration when, after countless affirmations and visualizations, our lives don’t change. “There’s a missing link between imagining the life we want and living it,” she points out. “That’s where my ACT as If! system comes in.  It helps you kick start your belief system so you can act as if it's already happening...until it is!”

She is proof that this works.  She didn’t start an acting career until she was almost thirty years old, putting her own dreams on hold while she became a wife and mother in Portland, Oregon.  One day she received something in the mail from her upcoming high school reunion that asked, “Have you achieved what you thought you would in your life so far?”  She says it hit her like a ton of bricks that she was only living everybody else’s idea of who she should be.  She decided she didn’t want to wind up wondering what if at the end of her life, so despite hearing that it was impossible, she talked her way into a news internship at Portland‘s NBC affiliate and sold her first story to network. Then she discovered her real passion, acting, and has been making a living at it, against all odds, for over twenty years. 

She’s proud her daughter is going after her own dreams now, which are very different from hers.  “That is the best gift I could have given her, watching me fight for mine, so that she now has the courage to make her own dreams and destiny come true.  It’s not about money.  It’s about waking up every day and loving what you do!”

Barbara also speaks to corporations and campuses across the country about her struggle with an eating disorder, so that others will speak up about their own secrets and get help.  She’s appeared on television shows talking about the pressure to be thin in Hollywood, and is profiled in a book called “Feeding the Fame: Celebrities Tell Their Real-Life Stories of Eating Disorders & Recovery.”

When she is not in front of the camera, Barbara takes time to pursue other aspects that enrich her life, and lends her support to numerous charitable organizations.  She loves to say yes to adventure, and recently spent a week at a ranch in Montana, learning to herd and cut cattle.  She's a beginning golfer and says she has a “magic putter”.  She’s also a huge animal advocate, and spends a lot of time on animal rescue efforts.

Barbara@BarbaraNiven.com
www.BarbaraNiven.com

” Don’t settle for less than wonderful in your life.
And don’t give up five minutes before the miracle!”

Check out her website at www.BarbaraNiven.com for more information.

Click here for Barbara's Contact Info.

"Live your dreams!
Don't settle for less than wonderful in your life.  
And don't give up five 
minutes before the miracle!"

-- Barbara Niven