Chapter 23
For over two decades now, I have been working in educational theatre. In my current position as director of acting programs at the University of Miami, I teach several levels of acting as well as script analysis. I also direct plays in addition to my administrative duties. I like my work very much. Most people who see my productions consider me a talented director. My students tell me what a great acting teacher I am. I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. Having a job in theatre where I get paid regularly to do things I love to do makes me feel fortunate.
I didn’t always feel lucky, however. In fact it took me several years to come to feel the way I do now. For many years I wanted to make my living acting. I trained for it, I sacrificed security and family for it, I felt I had earned the right. But when I was thirty-six years old, I gave up acting professionally. After ten years at it, I quit. I couldn’t make a decent living acting. I earned far more money with my “survival” jobs—as a houseboy, as a house painter, as a waiter, as a house cleaner, as a part-time professor of public speaking—than I earned as an actor. I never worked any of my survival jobs for free. But as a professional actor, in spite of the fact that I belonged to all the professional actors’ unions, I often worked for little or no money just to get a chance to perform, just to be seen. But even the opportunity to work for free came too seldom to me, and I finally folded my hand.
Occasionally, I still do a commercial or film audition, and I have acted in a couple of productions since I’ve become a full-time teacher/director, working on stage with the students I teach or have taught. Once I appeared in a production of Orphans by Lyle Kessler, in which I played the adult lead. Two former students played the young men in the cast. Just after the production closed, I received a backhanded compliment from one of my acting students. “You were excellent,” she told me. “In fact, it was obvious that you were a professional actor and the other actors were not.” In addition, she said that at intermission her father—who had met me—had asked her why I wasn’t in the play after all. He apparently hadn’t recognized me as my character on stage. But the comment I remember most was when she asked me why I still wasn’t acting professionally since I was “too good to just be a teacher.” To say her remark chilled me a bit would be an understatement.
The fact is that for years I asked myself the same question every day I was unemployed: Why wasn’t I acting professionally if I was so good? Why couldn’t I get a job as an actor? During those years, I never came up with an answer to the question. I simply repeated it like a mantra. But maybe I chose not to answer the question because I was afraid of the answer. Today, because I am comfortable where I am, I can answer it, and I hope that what I say is helpful to every young actor who is reading this. If you are serious about a career in theatre, you must begin to think about some very important aspects of your possible life in the business, aspects as important as the question parents always ask me: “Does my kid have talent?”.
Surprising though it may be, having talent and having what it takes to make it in the acting business are only distantly related. I remember reading about something Stella Adler, the legendary acting teacher, once said when asked who was the greatest talent of all her students. She might have said James Dean or Marlon Brando or Jack Nicholson, since she had taught many of the greats of the postwar era. Instead, she declared that the finest actor she had ever taught was someone I had never heard of. Ms. Adler, of course, was pointing out that talent is only one of a number of considerations that come into play when a young actor tries to “make it.”
In one of the great all-purpose acting textbooks, Acting is Believing, Charles McGaw refers to “the two t’s”—talent and training. McGaw says that your talent is a given; what you have is what you have. Instead of worrying about his or her talent, a young actor should focus on training to maximize the best possible use of that talent. This is excellent advice and will lead the actor to become the best possible actor he or she can be. Training is invaluable when an actor auditions or works on a role. But any actor who thinks that being a “good” actor is an automatic passport to success is very naive indeed. Had that been the case you would not be reading this chapter right now. I would have been too busy preparing some role or giving an interview to have written it.
So if it’s not talent and training that make an actor successful, then what is it? I’ll give you a hint. Be cynical. Brilliant reviews never put food on the table or paid the rent.
EXERCISE 23-1
Take a few moments to brainstorm. Compile a list of attributes that you think a successful actor must possess. Remember, “successful” here means “an actor who can make a living acting.” (I should point out that there are many fine community playhouse and amateur or semiprofessional actors who are “successful” in terms of their own definitions of the word.)
All right. Here is my top ten list in descending order of importance.
1. Luck
2. Knowing the right people
3. Having money or having someone to supply you with money between engagements
4. Looks
5. The willingness to see yourself objectively as a commodity
6. A healthy ego
7. Patience
8. A controlled aggressive streak with the ability to know when to pull back
9. The ability to avoid comparing yourself and other actors
10. Talent and training
I told you to be cynical. If you are to respect yourself as an artist, you must, of course, develop your talents through craft, but realize that much of your time in the profession will not be spent as an artist, but as a salesperson selling a single product—yourself.
EXERCISE 23-2
1. Make a list of the most successful actors you can think of. Examine your list. Are the actors on your list also the most talented actors you know? What do you think are the characteristics that have made them so successful?
2. Make a list of the most talented actors you can think of. Examine your list. What characteristics do you think keep them from being the most successful? In other words, why is Tom Cruise a bigger star than Aaron Eckhart or Liev Schreiber? Why is Julia Roberts a bigger star than Julianne Moore or Naomi Watts? Use the top ten list to help you. (Keep in mind, of course, that this is a relative question. The fact that the actors on your list have made your list at all means that they are already extremely successful in terms of the definition we are using.)
Let’s examine my top ten list in a bit more detail.
Luck gets top ranking because with it, your acting career can take off no matter how little talent you have; and without it, you’ll be just another talented actor waiting for that big chance. You could also be born with any or all of the attributes for success on my top ten list. That, too, is a result of luck. Never underestimate the power of being six foot three with blue eyes and a chiseled jaw, or growing up to look like Julia Roberts. There’s luck again.
Being in the right place at the right time is a matter of luck. When I was in graduate school, the woman who always played the romantic female leads was beautiful. She was also over six feet tall. I was the obvious dashing male lead in my class—good-looking, athletic, and a pretty good actor. My only competition was another good-looking guy, far inferior to me in skills. He was much taller than I was, however, and he got the leads because he could reach that actress’s lips without a stepstool. For three years I played character roles. Had another actress been in my class, had I gone to graduate school a year sooner or later, had my luck been better, I would have been Romeo instead of Father Lawrence, Dracula instead of Renfield, or Kilroy instead of A. Ratt.
I once heard a perhaps apocryphal story that Jack Nicholson discovered Mary Steenburgen one morning while ordering coffee in a Howard Johnson’s. She was the waitress. A few weeks later she was playing opposite him in the western he directed, Goin’ South. She is a fine actor, but no beauty; and, if the story is true, it was scrambled eggs and luck that jump-started her film career. Had she been working in the diner across the street, she’d be word processing the midnight-to-six A.M. shift today.
EXERCISE 23-3
1. Are you lucky? Evaluate the part luck has played in your life.
2. Do you rely on luck to get you through your life? Explain.
3. Do you consider luck and fate obstacles that work against you? As forces that you must overcome? Do you ever find yourself railing against these forces? How do you handle these forces in your life as an ongoing issue?
Jeff Bridges is one of my favorite actors. Michael Douglas—though less charismatic—may be a better actor than his father was. There is a young Hanks starting to make his way toward the top. Matthew Broderick’s dad was a character actor who starred in a family drama on TV when his son was still a little kid. The late Natasha Richardson was as talented as she was beautiful. Peter, Jane, and Bridget Fonda? Drew Barrymore? Miley Cyrus? Three guesses what all these actors have in common. (The answer is not necessarily awesome talent and unrivaled beauty.)
In case you lead a very sheltered life, here is the answer: They all know or knew someone in the business. This quality cannot be underrated in spite of what you hear on talk shows. Time and again actors declare in interviews that they made it on their own. In some cases, the talent inherited from their parents or grandparents gives credence to this claim. But Jeff Bridges and Natasha Richardson were helped enormously by the fact that his father was Lloyd Bridges, and her parents are Vanessa Redgrave and the late director Tony Richardson. Michael Douglas did not suffer professionally from being the son of Kirk; and, Peter, Jane, and Bridget share that unusual and well-known brand name made famous by Henry. And the name Barrymore has roots in big-time showbiz going back close to a century.
EXERCISE 23-4
Examine the list of stars below and research who their parents are. What conclusions can you draw?
Sean Astin
Candice Bergen
Josh Brolin
Jamie Lee Curtis
Laura Dern
Robert Downey, Jr.
Melanie Griffith
Paris Hilton
Bryce Dallas Howard
Kate Hudson
Angelina Jolie
Gwyneth Paltrow
Charlie Sheen
Kiefer Sutherland
Tori Spelling
Ben Stiller
Liv Tyler
Sigourney Weaver
Knowing someone in the business may not get you the role, but it gets you in the door. Even if you have talent and training, getting through the door—making contact with that agent—is one of the most difficult and trying aspects of being an actor. At this point you may want to stop reading and begin searching for show business parents or grandparent. Or you might like to form some new acquaintances.
EXERCISE 23-5
1. Make a list of the people you know who could help you with your career. How can they help you? Be specific?
2. Do you know other people who have better connections in the business than you do? What are these connections? How does that make you feel?
3. Would you be willing to ask others you know to introduce you to someone they know in order to make a good connection? Why or why not?
Most young actors who venture to New York or Los Angeles after graduating from some theatre school or university are no longer acting after five years or so. There are many reasons for this. Several are in my top ten list. But one of the things that wears actors out is finding rent money while unemployed as an actor. Since most actors must constantly give up their rent-paying jobs when cast in a play or film, the stress of constantly finding and losing jobs is incredibly draining. A rich parent or patron is very helpful in overcoming this obstacle. Since many of us are without that particular piece of luck, it is very important that—along with acting training—the young actor develop skills that will make him or her employable between acting jobs.
The most common job-between-jobs for an actor is probably waiting tables. If you are good at it, you can make a lot of money and maintain flexible hours. However, the work is not for everyone. If you know that this occupation is not for you, think about alternatives before you make the move to one of the coastal meccas. During my acting career, I did several things for money that I could never have dreamed of doing. In addition to those I mentioned earlier, I was a building superintendent, a skyscraper window washer, a flower delivery boy, a catering waiter, a wheelchair pusher, a library alphabetizer, a proofreader, a freshman English teacher, and a judge for oral interpretation contests. I never did word processing, but, like waiting tables, it offers a good deal of flexibility at a very decent hourly wage. You must, however, have solid skills, so learn them before applying.
Looks and the Willingness to Recognize Yourself as a Commodity
I’m combining numbers 4 and 5 on my list because they’re so closely related. By looks, I don’t necessarily mean physical beauty, although I couldn’t argue with beauty’s power in the marketplace, any more than I’d argue against being six foot three and built like an Adonis. What I do mean is having a look that is marketable. Do you look like a gangster, a jolly fat guy, a young mother, a prostitute, an egghead? Agents can sell you if they can pigeonhole or type you in a particular way. Most actors bridle at this idea, but nevertheless it is a reality of the acting business. It is important for you to know how you’d be perceived by those selling and buying you. Once you understand this, you are more likely to get in the door and sell yourself. Then, when you make some money for agents, they’ll try to sell you some more. That’s good business—theirs and yours.
EXERCISE 23-6
1. List the actors that you are most like and explain why. Don’t be modest; don’t lie to yourself. Evaluate yourself as honestly as possible.
2. Type yourself, and write a brief description of how you look and how you would come off to others in an interview.
3. List the kinds of roles you could be cast in. Think in terms of movies, television, commercials, and theatre. Justify your opinions.
4. What are the great roles that you are right for, or will someday be right for? Justify your answers.
5. Ask someone you trust to answer the previous questions with regard to you. Compare their answers to your own. Draw conclusions.
I’m about five foot nine, and was fairly good looking, as I mentioned; but I have a thick lower lip. I used to get sent out for commercials very regularly for a while. But I did not have tremendous success as a commercial actor in spite of the fact that I often read very well (according to the casting directors). Once, while I was auditioning as a young father in a Pampers commercial, I was told that my lips were too sensual for me to play a young father. (Now I’m an older father and my lips seldom affect my performance.) Another time, while auditioning for the role of a young, sexy guy in a Miller Beer commercial, I was told that my lips were distracting. I offered to cut them off, but the casting director said it would be easier to cast someone else.
In my first few years as a professional actor I got a lot of work as young executives and lawyers on soap operas and in industrial films, often playing much younger than I was. A few years later, I looked too old to get that kind of work, but agents told me that I looked too young to be believed as an established lawyer or executive. To conclude, I didn’t seem to fit well into any of several molds in my thirties, and therefore—in spite of my talent, training, and good looks—acting work was difficult to find. My balding roommate with a developing beer belly (who will come up again later) was becoming more employable as a type with each pint of Cherry Garcia he swallowed and each hair that went AWOL.
Some of you are no doubt thinking, “I’m gonna be an actor. I’ll be able to play all kinds of roles. That’s my job.” That is positive actor thinking, and it suggests that you have a healthy attitude about your abilities. That is another important quality we’ll be discussing later. But the fact is, as so many fine unemployed character actors will tell you, there are always actors available, perfect for any kind of role. If a role calls for an ugly, middle-aged Irish guy with a limp and a lisp, there’s an ugly, middle-aged Irish actor with a limp who can play him. If the role calls for an underweight, albino African American who can wrestle in Greco-Roman style, there’s a fine underweight, albino African American actor who can wrestle in Greco-Roman style to play him. In fact, not long ago, I heard character actor Ned Beatty tell an interviewer that he knew he had arrived when he read a character description for a movie that called simply for a “Ned Beatty” type. So work on your craft. Develop your skills and broaden your range. But know how you will most often be seen. Don’t fight it, because it could be your meal ticket.
For years my roommate fought his image. “I’m no fat guy!” he would often exclaim. “I’m James Dean!” On the inside, my roommate was James Dean, and for years he had a flair for self-destruction. He refused to do commercials because, whenever his agent sent him up for them, he found himself surrounded by middle-aged men or fat men or ugly men. “That’s not me!” he chanted. “I’m James Dean!” And so for years James Dean moved furniture instead of acting. Lived like a pauper instead of acting. Got angry instead of acting. Once he even turned down an interview with Oliver Stone, who was casting Wall Street at the time, because he heard that Josh Mostel, a decidedly overweight actor, was up for the same role. When my roommate saw the film, he could have kicked himself, because the role was not for a fat actor; it was for a good actor, and the good actor who got the role happened to be fat. Don’t fight how you are seen. You won’t win, but it could defeat you if you try. Actors need to work. Accept the facts of the business.
The most brutal aspect of being an actor has to be the fact that in order to do your art, someone must give you a job. The composer composes, the writer writes, the painter paints. The creative process can be fully engaged in spite of what others think, in spite of whether someone else hires you. It is true that all artists have an equal chance of starving, but actors are in the unenviable position of starving without having had the opportunity to create. Of course, they can work on monologues or take acting classes, but that is not the same thing as working on a role and doing it in full context or in front of an audience. (For a detailed and helpful analysis of things you can work on as an actor while you’re not working as an actor, check out Acting Solo by this author.)
It is also true that, for the actor, rejection can be far more damaging emotionally than for other artists. When you reject the work of a painter or composer, it is clearly the work that is the issue. The painting or composition is a tangible commodity separate from the creator. The actor and his or her work, however, are one and the same. When you don’t like my work as an actor it is me that you have rejected. Bruce Miller was wrong for the role. Bruce Miller was unconvincing. Bruce Miller obviously does not have the looks or skills to adequately fulfill the demands of Hamlet.
Not only can the criticism of an actor be brutally ugly, it is also ironic. Those nasty blurbs about the actor Bruce Miller came, let’s remember, after six weeks of hard work. And that came after a giant victory—I auditioned for the part and got it because some director or casting agent thought that I, above literally hundreds of other fine actors, could do the role better. If I was really wrong for the role, is it my fault some jerk cast me in it? If I was unconvincing after the director and casting agent thought I was very convincing at the audition, is that my fault or the fault of the director who directed me badly? If my looks and skills are wrong, can I be held responsible for knowing that? Should I have turned down the job if I did?
It doesn’t really matter, because you will be blamed. You may also be blamed if a play is poorly written, or underrehearsed, or badly cast, or badly directed. That is the nature of the beast. The bottom line is that this will happen to you. Every actor has gotten bad notices at one time or another. Many actors always get bad notices, yet continue to find work. Some actors get fine notices and seldom work. There are no rules. There is no real fairness.
So you must be strong. You must believe in yourself. That may mean believing in your talent, your training, your connections, your looks, or any combination of the above. If you spend time, energy, and emotion downing yourself, all that you are doing is shortening your life expectancy in the business. Your getting or not getting any particular role may or may not have anything to do with you. A role may have been already cast; the director may just be looking for new ideas, not actors; you may not be right physically for the role. Or any of a thousand other things. The point is that you have no control over any of these reasons. You can’t afford to waste energy over it. Getting down only weakens you for the next time and shortens your life expectancy in theatre.
Of course, there is the possibility that not getting the role was your fault. Perhaps you were terrible. Even if you were, though, what good does it do to suffer over it? Anyone can have a bad audition. If it was not your day, then bury it—now it’s past. But if you always think you’re terrible, then you have a problem much bigger than lack of talent. If you are so bad that you can’t believe in yourself, then get out of the business, because there is only hardship and pain in front of you. However, if you do believe in yourself and your talent, but you have this bad emotional circuitry that causes you to punish yourself any time you come up short, change it! Now! Mastering your self-abuse is far more important than talent, looks, voice production, technique, who you know, and so on. You must believe in yourself. You must be your own best friend and nurturer. The world of theatre is too damn hard to survive it any other way.
Statistically, survival in the world of theatre and film is a very bad bet, anyway. Ninety percent of those who go to New York at twenty-one to be actors are out of the business by the age of twenty-six, mostly because of broken hearts and broken spirits. When getting a job means paying the rent, and failing to get it means the wolf’s at the door, fun is minimal. It’s tough to keep an upbeat attitude.
Most of you reading this chapter are young actors just beginning a life in the theatre. Here’s some useful advice: Keep it fun while you can, while there are no bills to pay, while life pressures are still in the background. Subdue that ego, and train yourself to find the joy in the work you do in theatre. If you learn to do so, you will possess a skill as valuable as any you’ll learn in acting class. Make sure when you get the role, you’re happy about it, even if it’s not the role you wanted. Remember you’re working. Make sure that opportunities to rehearse and the time spent in the studio are joyous even when it’s not going right. This is what you love to do, so love it even when you’re not perfect. Finally, if when you’re working on a scene or rehearsing, you find yourself resenting it, think about doing something else in life, because you’re supposed to be happy at this moment.
EXERCISE 23-7
1. Evaluate your ability to take criticism. Do you see criticism as a positive force? Can you accept it without emotion? Can you convert criticism into positive action?
2. Evaluate your ability to take rejection. Does it make you withdraw, or make you more determined? Find examples from your life. If it makes you withdraw, what are you planning to do about it? How?
3. Do you avoid things you are not good at? Or do you work even harder to master them? How does it make you feel when everyone around you is better at something than you are? How does it make you react? Find examples from your life.
4. Ask yourself the following question: Is acting really fun for you? I mean really fun? Fun enough to sustain you through all the potential pain and disappointment that exists out there as a genuine possibility?
Remember that roommate of mine who did everything possible to keep himself from succeeding? Well, today he is a success. In his mid to late fifties, after over twenty years in the business, I see him everywhere. On a Rolaids commercial, as a cop in a John Sayles movie, working in a film with Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, and Ed Harris. He has had regular or recurring roles in several television series, including 24. Several years ago, I even saw his snarling face and balding head staring at me from the Sunday New York Times. His picture was part of a giant ad for a David Rabe play.
There are two reasons that it’s happened for him so late in the game. In the first place, he’s now willing to play the game. Somewhere along the line, he discovered that doing a commercial, even if it means auditioning with fat guys, can be more rewarding than moving furniture for a buck. No doubt he would now be willing to talk to Oliver Stone. Today, he’s probably even polite to strangers. But the second reason he’s working now is patience. My roommate stuck with it. There are a lot fewer actors in their late fifties than in their twenties. The competition has thinned out, like my roommate’s hair. Actors have given up. Some have moved on to live normal lives—lives with steady paychecks and families, where goals can be reached through hard work and persistence.
And twenty or thirty years’ worth of contacts give an actor a better chance of knowing influential people in the business—people who know who you are, people who see you as a type or as a product (even if you don’t), people who can help you, people who may even have learned to recognize your talent and training. For some this never happens, but patience in the business substantially increases your chances. My own acting mentor began seriously pursuing his professional acting career in his late sixties. In his late eighties, he still works when he wants to. He’s happy because he recognizes that he’s too old to play Hamlet and he’s okay with that fact. It may not happen for you quickly. Accept that truth, but only stay with it if there’s absolutely nothing else for you. Otherwise it can be poison.
EXERCISE 23-8
1. Evaluate your patience level. Do you want it all now, or are you willing to work for things that are not handed to you? Give examples to prove your position. Ask a friend to evaluate your patience level. Compare the evaluations. What does this all mean?
2. Are you willing to audition for the work or for the part? To do whatever it takes? Over and over without success, if necessary? What does this mean about you? When you fantasize about your future, do you think of yourself as a star or as an actor? What does this all mean?
Aggressive patience is the oxymoron of the acting business. In order for people in the business to notice you, they have to see you in something and be impressed. If agents think you have something they can sell, they will help you. Waiting for your chance requires tremendous patience, but the aggressive actor will try to impress an agent or director with persistence and determination while patiently waiting for the big break. This requires guts and ego. How many times are you willing to have an agent refuse to see you? How many postcards are you willing to send? How willing are you to schmooze and fawn at interviews? Can you make an impression in two or three minutes, convincing someone who has seen a hundred people before you that you are special? How good are you at pushing people into helping you? How good is your ability to recognize when you’ve pushed someone far enough? How long can you continue to do these things? You may have to continue doing them for a very long time—while sustaining your energy and optimism. That’s what it may take to succeed.
In my own graduate school class, there were two people more aggressive than the rest of us. Though they both possessed a charming side and could be great fun, the rest of us grew to hate them. They were out for themselves big time. There was nothing, even in graduate school, that they wouldn’t do to get a role or to make themselves look better than anyone else when on stage. They were willing to kiss up to anyone at any time if they thought it would profit them somehow. Truly, they were the living embodiments of the Anne Baxter character in All About Eve.
Of the twelve in my class, these two actors have had the most successful professional careers, though both of them work far less often than they did several years ago. Could it be that they have finally burned their bridges? Could it be that over time, people in the business decided they wanted no part of them? Obviously, many successful actors have great integrity and are wonderful people, but there are many like the ones I have described. Play the game, but keep your integrity.
EXERCISE 23-9
1. Evaluate your own aggressiveness. Give examples.
2. Ask someone else to evaluate your aggressiveness. Does this quality remain an asset, in that person’s opinion, when dealing with others? When do you start to rub people the wrong way?
3. Compare yourself to the examples given earlier. Where do you fit in? Realistically, evaluate your ability to do what is necessary to get work. What do you need to do to improve with regard to your ability to take charge of yourself and your career?
The other day, after a cold reading exercise, a student who works as hard as any I have ever taught came up to me at the end of class. He had read during the exercise and had not done particularly well, a result more of his lack of reading skills than any shortcoming specific to his acting ability. He was very upset and wanted to ask me something. Finally he got it out. “How am 1 doing?” he asked. “I mean in class. I mean, you know, acting is everything to me and I know my reading sucked, and, like, I’m worried about if…you know, am I gonna make it or not…cause like other guys in the class…you know…did a lot better than I did in the reading.”
This is what I told him: “Look at your acting now, and then think about your acting when you came here in September. Think about where you will be as an actor in June. Forget everything else. It doesn’t matter if others read better, it doesn’t matter if someone else gets a role you want this year or next year. Right now you should be thinking about becoming the best actor you can be. You’ll never be anyone but yourself; you’re stuck with you. If you can’t cold read too well, work on it. It’s important to be able to read if you’re an actor. It’ll help you get work. So work on it. But no matter how well you read, no matter how well you act, if you’re wrong for something, you won’t get it. If you’re right, and if you’re lucky, you will get it. But being the best or worst in your high school or college class is meaningless. It won’t get you work. Agents and casting directors don’t care if you played Macbeth in high school. What matters is paying the rent when you’re a working actor. Spend your time preparing for that!”
That’s what I told that student.
EXERCISE 23-10
1. How much time do you spend comparing yourself to others— in your work, in other aspects of your life? How much time do you spend saying “if only” or wishing you could change something about yourself?
2. Make a list of the things you’d like to change about yourself. Examine the list.
3. What things are changeable? Are you willing to do what is necessary to change the things you can change? How will you do it? When will you begin? What keeps you from starting now?
4. What things are not changeable? Why? How will you deal with this? When will you begin to deal with this? Why didn’t you say “right now”?
5. Do you see the importance of asking yourself these questions? Explain the importance—to yourself and to someone else.
And that brings me to the last item on my list.
You can’t learn luck or buy it. Some people won’t play with their looks, although in some cases modifications can help a career. Whether you know people who can help you at the start or meet them as you go, you’ll still have to show something when you get through that agent’s door. That may happen sooner or later, depending on how you’ve mastered the sales aspect of your career and on how aggressively you handle your professional connections. If your spirit, ego, and sense of humor are all intact when the moment finally happens for you, what you do for the agent boils down to two things: whether you look right and whether you act right. That means talent and training.
An agent may not know good acting from bad. For a particular role, how you look may be more important than what you can do. But you have no control over these things. So in the end, it all boils down to what you can show when you’re asked to show it. In the end, for most of us, it all boils down to those “two t’s.”
If you possess a prodigious talent, you may intuitively be able to make exciting and believable acting choices when you walk through the casting agent’s door. You may be able to create moments that are clear, specific, bold, and logical. Your voice and body may naturally transform into the personification of the character you are reading for. No matter what the rigors of the role, your body may be naturally prepared to take them on. Your emotional range may permit you to be totally available for any situation. Instinctively, you may perceive the differences between a character living now and one living a century ago or in the Middle Ages. You may be so sensitive to poetic language that it falls from your lips with beauty and clarity. You may automatically intuit a playwright’s purpose and how your character serves it. In every acting situation your mind, body, and spirit may be ready to work—automatically.
If this is not the case, however—and the chances that you fall into this second category of actor are strong—then it’s time to recommit yourself to that second “t.” Training—rigorous, dedicated, and disciplined—will go a long way toward getting you ready for the moment when your big opportunity arrives. Keep in mind, of course, that you never stop learning. Acting, like all other art forms, is an ongoing process of development. The more you learn, the more you need to learn. For instance, each time I pick up a favorite book on acting, it says something new to me. What I have learned since the last time I read it both changes and deepens what the book is saying to me and what I can do with what it says. As a developing artist, you too, hopefully, will have the same experience.
So—better get back to work. Keep reading. Keep working hard on your craft.
It may take a while before the other nine on my list start to kick in!
It will take more than talent and training if you are to have a successful career. You will need to decide for yourself the definition of “success,” of course, but for many people in the business, a successful career gives you regular opportunities to do the work and be paid for it. The opportunity to work at what you love is almost pay enough. But the reality is that bills must be paid, and an actor who can work and be paid for that work generally considers him- or herself lucky. Indeed, luck is a quality that most successful actors, at least to some degree, possess. If you are to succeed, you will also need patience, a healthy ego, and an ability to pursue your goal doggedly and without letting up. It will also help if you know someone who can help you along the way, either with connections or with money to sustain you through the tough times. A marketable skill to help you provide for yourself is an additional asset. You also need to be realistic about who you are and how the world perceives you. This means you will need to do three things. First, you must learn to be absolutely honest about the art, the craft, and the business you are in, or may someday enter. Second, you must, wherever possible, be willing to change the things about you that will keep you from succeeding. Finally, you must continue to develop your craft, both because it is part of your artistic makeup to want to do so, and because it is necessary part of your growth as an artist.