Everyone please welcome my dear friend and fellow actor and model, Chloé Godard, to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Chloé is an actor, hand model, fit model, yoga teacher, and voiceover artist, along with a close friend of mine. From working with her hands on set for companies like Mattel, to fit modeling for shoe companies like Lulu’s, to acting in national commercials and film, Chloé is no stranger to her body parts being in the spotlight.

In our conversation, we touch on so many important topics. Chloé shares how she strives to use inclusive language while leading her yoga classes, the importance of listening to cues from your body so you can properly nourish and move your body, and how we have to reframe what our personal best looks like because our bodies are constantly shifting and evolving from day to day. There’s so much wisdom Chloé shared in our conversation, and I cannot wait for you to listen!

“  I have been thinking about, too, inclusivity for all bodies, and I know there's gonna be so many things that I'll miss, but I've even been thinking about how not everyone has ten fingers and ten toes. So instead of cueing people, and for this example saying, “Stretch your ten fingers out on the mat,” I don't know, I just say, “Stretch your fingers out on the mat.” Some people have trauma with their body, and using trauma-inclusive language, I find that fascinating and I wanna even learn more about that. You could just go on and on how different people's minds are and their bodies and the things that go on with that, but I think we do have to give you ourselves grace and other people grace at the end of the day.”

- Chloé Godard

Chloé Godard: My whole life story through my body. I guess we'll kinda start from the beginning.

Megan Gill: Okay. I love it.

Chloé Godard: I was a dancer. I didn't do sports, so I danced competitively for 10 years with my sister, which was so fun. I guess some people do say dance is a sport, you know? There are two different schools of thought for that, but I loved dance. It was such a fun way to be creative and express myself and use my body. That was probably when I was in middle school to high school, and then that's when I got into more theater and stuff like that.

Then when I went to college, I danced a little bit less, and I was a little bit more in the theatrical realm, and you probably get this too, doing theater in college is a lot of body movement still. I also did stage combat, so I did a lot of training with rapier dagger, knife onstage, physical contact. So looking back, I feel like I have been really in tune with my body and have used it in so many different shapes and forms, constantly using it even though I was not an athlete.

Then when I came to Los Angeles for acting, I stopped dancing and was using yoga as my form of fitness. I've been doing yoga since I was 15, so a long time. And I'm now a certified yoga teacher as of March of this year, 2025. So that's been such a fun journey doing it for so long but now doing it in a different aspect. Then being in Los Angeles trying to support myself acting for so long is when I fell into hand modeling, and I've done a lot of toy commercials, and that has been very fun because I never imagined being a hand model or knowing what a hand model was.

Megan Gill: Knowing that your hands could be such a hot commodity in your career.

Chloé Godard: Yeah! Front and center. So I wanted to play piano when I was younger, but my parents couldn't afford to get me lessons, so I played guitar a little bit, and then my dad would just always compliment my hands. He'd say, “Oh, you have such beautiful thin, long fingers.” So then with hand modeling, that was always just a funny thing. I'd be like, “Oh, well I guess people have noticed my nice hands. So I do feel like they're proportionate to my body. But yeah, it's been fun to see a part of me on screen and also knowing that it's my hand. I'll see certain commercials and I'll be like, “Oh, okay, that's my hand,” or I won't remember a commercial, and I'll look back and I'll say, “Oh yeah, that's my thumb.” Now I feel like I know my hands so well. How often do you look at your body parts and know what they look like, you know? Do you know what your elbow looks like? Can you pick your foot out of a lineup?

Megan Gill: Maybe, honestly. I don't know. I'm kind of weird like that. I like my feet, so I look at them.

Chloé Godard: I’m like, “I could put my hand outta a lineup.” And my wrist is my favorite body part. I love my wrists. They're nice and little, tiny. I like the little bones. I love seeing the little veins on the insides. I'm like, “Oh, I'm alive. That's so nice and beautiful.”

Megan Gill: Blood is pumping through me.

Chloé Godard: Blood is pumping through me.

Megan Gill: And how cool also that your hands, this thing that we almost like – I don't mean to speak for you, but I almost take for granted, or we never look at our hands and we're like, “What a good part of our body.” Well, when I was transcribing, I was maybe praising my hands like, “Wow, you're doing a lot of good work for me,” especially when I started to notice they would get sore and tired and all of that, but what a cool experience to connect so deeply and to have such a strong relationship with this part of your body that not many people probably have a strong relationship with.

Chloé Godard: Yeah! I'm so grateful for my hands, and through yoga I also learned how important your feet are to your body, and just like that is your foundation and how you stand upright and straight. Your foot health is so important. So the more knowledge that I gain and the more experiences that I have, I'm finding that I find a greater appreciation for my body and the things that they can do. Like my feet, like using my hands.

I'm very protective of my hands. Cooking in the kitchen, I love to do. I can't rock climb anymore, getting calluses. I love strength training, so I wear gloves at the gym. So it's really, taking care of your body is something I find really important instead of shaming my body. I think I want to have this healthy body for as long as I can. So like strength and mobility are really important to me and feeding myself, nourishing myself. So I just feel such gratitude for the body that I have and for all the things that I can do, yeah.

Megan Gill: I love that. I think that's such a beautiful reframe too. Instead of expending energy, like you said, shaming your body or the things you don't like about your body or the way your body looks, you're expending energy on. Taking care of these parts that are so integral to your career, to how to your livelihood. And not only that, but I think that's just such an important lesson that I'm looking at that thinking, wow, that's so lovely that being a hand model has kind of – I don't know if it's synonymous with this appreciation you have for caring for these parts of your body so deeply.

But I am even thinking, because I also am. In a yoga practice, myself and my hands and feet are what get me through each of my classes, right? And so, even just having appreciation for, “Wow, these hands and these feet allow me to go to a yoga class and move my body in the way that I enjoy moving my body, and how freaking cool is that?” MaryJane really wants to be a part of this conversation.

Chloé Godard: She’s like, “I love yoga.” Downward facing dogs.

Megan Gill: “I love my paws too!”

Chloé Godard: Oh, MaryJane, you have the cutest paws. Wow, sweet girl.

Megan Gill: But I love that. Something that I really – as someone who, myself, has struggled with a lot of disordered eating habits in my past and who is now coming to this place of having a really, for the most part, pretty healthy relationship with my eating habits and food and the way that I nourish myself, I really appreciate observing you nourish yourself. And I think that you just do it unapologetically and you, from what I can tell, just seem very intuitive and joyful about the ways you're nourishing yourself.

It's very interesting for me, it's like once you see it, you can't unsee it. So I kind of pay attention to these types of things in my friends, not only the language that they use about their bodies and food and exercise, but also their behaviors. And that's something that I really admire in you and I think is so important because so many people put so much focus on it or have a tendency to shame themselves. I just think that that's really lovely and wanted to share that with you.

Chloé Godard: Thank you. Where your mind goes, your energy flows, what is that saying? Something like that. So yeah, I just try to think of what gift can I give myself? So if I wanna go work out in the morning, setting my electrolytes and my coconut water out the night before and like a protein bar or something because I've noticed the more I get attuned to my body and certain rituals, what is a help to me.

Working out first thing in the morning on an empty stomach and really tired, I can't do things that I normally can do, but if I get a good night's sleep, if I have a little something to eat, if I have my water the morning of or night before, then I notice I can hold crow pose longer, or I can lift a little bit heavier weight. So it's just trying to set myself up and talking to myself most of the time in a kind way to help me. Because I wanna be my own best friend, not my worst enemy.

Megan Gill: Yeah. Amen to that right ther