From Scripts to Scholarship
Actress and alum Vinessa Vidotto is turning an early promise into an endowed scholarship.
Photo: Provided by Vinessa Vidotto
Vinessa Vidotto ’18 came to the University of Arizona as a first-generation college student, raised between Albuquerque and Tucson in a household where practicality was the prevailing language and creative ambition was something closer to a private dialect. “I had to decide one day, do I click engineering design, which is what my parents wanted, or do I apply for acting?” Vidotto took the leap and chose the latter, keeping it a secret for as long as she could. Then, one summer morning in 2014, she got a letter: She had been accepted into the School of Theatre, Film & Television — one of just 14 students selected from a pool of more than 200 applicants.
Like many students who get into college but have limited resources, Vidotto built her education fund from whatever was available: scholarships, grants, overnight shifts at Coronado dorm. The work was unglamorous, the hours unforgiving. But the generosity she received from others kept her going. “Those are the people that drove me to give back. The relief I felt is almost hard to describe. But it’s a relief I want to give to other students.”
Vidotto began early to envision how she might pay it forward. “In freshman year of college, we had to do a performance that included a monologue. In mine, I said in five years I want to create a scholarship.” To some, this may have seemed a tall order. After all, Vidotto would only be in her mid-20s by then — an uncommon age to establish a scholarship. But she made it happen. In 2024, after finding success in Los Angeles with roles in TV shows like “Lucifer” and “FBI International,” she established the Vinessa Vidotto Scholarship in Acting — a $12,000 annual award supporting three students in the School of Theatre, Film & Television.
One thing Vidotto requires of the scholarship recipients is to write a short essay describing their biggest fear. The question comes from a systemic issue Vidotto observed afflicting her peers as far back as high school: the challenges of navigating the college application process. “I can remember the feeling of them being overwhelmed. You’re clicking so many things, signing up here and there. I could tell the process itself was pushing people away.”
Students are often asked about the future (What do you want to do? Who do you want to be?), but Vidotto believes that talking about their fears is more helpful. “It’s not to impress me,” she says. “I want students, for a moment in their life, to sit down, think about themselves, and write it all out.”
Students from the School of Theatre, Film & Television working on a production
Photo: Arizona Arts
“I want students, for a moment in their life, to sit down, think about themselves, and write it all out.”
Off-screen, Vidotto sees herself as a natural listener; without acting, she says there is every chance she would’ve channeled that instinct into becoming a counselor. As well as offering financial support, her scholarship’s core question around fear offers care and mentorship to its recipients, as a good counselor might. The hope is that naming what scares you is the first step toward moving past it. For Vidotto, that meant stepping onto a stage; for the scholarship recipients, it could encompass almost anything — something, perhaps, even unrelated to acting.
“I would say we all have a fear in common, which is the fear to change,” Vidotto says. “Often we are scared that people will judge us. But those around us usually, if not always, have the same fears to change, too.”
