How To Prepare To Be An Awards Presenter

Unless you’ve ever presented, received or been nominated for an Oscar, Grammy, Golden Globe, or Emmy, it's hard to imagine the amount of pressure on these performers.

The pressure might seem odd, as the role has been booked and the excellent performance recorded. It seems like the bulk of the work has been done. All the performer has to do is show up on awards night, act natural, and try not to hit the champagne too hard, right? Wrong.

In addition to coaching actors for their film and television roles, I also coach presenters for all the major award ceremonies, and believe me when I tell you that awards presentations can be truly terrifying—even for the most seasoned actor or musician. As one of the celebrity clients I coached said regarding her Grammy presentation speech, “I’m a bit embarrassed I need help with this, but there are millions of people watching and I need to be myself…Help!”

One of the first reasons for extreme anxiety is the sheer volume of viewers for these award shows. Another reason for nerves has to do with the pervasiveness of the Internet, an often unkind entity. Who can forget Natalie Portman’s snort/laugh during her Golden Globes acceptance speech and the fodder for days and days of fun that gave the online playground? My clients truly believe – and rightly so, I feel – that if they make one false move, they can do irreparable damage to their careers. 

The final reason for nerves orbits around the fact that when presenting at awards, there is no “character” or mask to inhabit. It’s just you, unmasked and live, in front of these hoards of viewers. This can really freak an actor out—particularly the ones that enjoy or seek refuge in playing characters.

It has always been my firm belief that the personality of the actor is nine-tenths of the performance. Due to over training and excess “technique,” actors have been trained to believe they’re not interesting enough as themselves, so they must construct a whole façade to hide behind. This buries an actor’s humanity. I believe the ultimate goal of the performer is to reflect the audience’s humanity back at them.

When a presenter is scared, there’s a tendency to start trashing the script and not speaking the speech as the writers put forth. Or there’s a tendency to stand around woodenly (ahem, James Franco). This only makes the presenter look petty and weak.

When coaching for awards presentations, I help the presenter bring their lit-up and empowered selves to the podium. I call it finding the “hook” of the speech. A “hook” is the performer’s light-up right before they make the speech. Something they can activate on the tips of their fingers before they walk on stage. It could be a specific attitude, a funny, dark or sexy image, a piece of music, etc. Anything will do as long as it doesn’t force them to “feel something.”  It must be activated in seconds. Perhaps the most genuine (and extreme) example of this is when Roberto Benigni, director of "Life is Beautiful," accepted his Oscar in 1999 by dancing across some seatbacks.

Think of past awards ceremonies and the speakers who really shook the room when they presented. What did they do? They affected the greatest change while making their speech. The most memorable speeches that you can recall are probably by the ones where the presenter was able to radiate their true selves outwards in a seemingly effortless manner. I still remember Meryl Streep’s speech from the 2012 Oscars. It was honest, unexpected, self deprecating, and gracious. It completely won me over. She started from a genuine place, of authentic humor: “Oh my god. Oh c’mon. Alright. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. When they called my name I’d had this feeling I could hear half of America going ‘oh no… oh c’mon…why… her…again?’ But whatever.” Then she ended in an even sincerer place—highlighting the friendships this business has given her and the joy of making movies with her friends. That kind of authenticity is apparent to every viewer and it allows the performer to give the audience yet another gift—a glimpse at their real self.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

3 Steps To Booking The Roles You Deserve

I coached 68 clients to book roles in feature films and network TV last year.

This success—not a byproduct of luck or forces of nature—was a direct result of all 68 actors honing specific, crucial elements in their audition performances.

These actors knew that reaching their “booked-role potential” was in part related to their ability to use aspects of their real selves—even if those facets of their personalities were bizarre, ugly, perverse, bitchy, alarming or downright creepy.

As Ron Perlman said, “I've always felt there were aspects of me that were monstrous, and you can either hide from it or confront it, embrace it and understand that those are aspects that make you unique and…that's the very thing that makes you who you are. That's your emotional and spiritual fingerprint.”

I like to call what Perlman is describing as one’s "tip." A tip is the unique fingerprint [or mark] of personality you leave on your performance. Here's how to make your mark on a performance and book the roles you deserve.

1. Figure out what your distinct "tip" is. A "tip" revolves around the idea of something extra you give to your performance without even trying—it’s something they’ve never seen before and didn’t know they wanted. That something extra is YOU, and it’s the elusive something about you that makes it possible for you to be memorable among a throng of actors.

One of my clients has an innate gentleness to everything she does—it’s just a part of who she is and how she has always interacted with the world. Thus, even when she’s reading for the part of a sociopath, she doesn’t try to bury that gentleness. Instead she stamps it on her performance to make it even more disturbing. Another client’s "tip" was simply that he exuded the vibe of a young Willem Dafoe—effortlessly. There was something about him that was always just teetering on the edge of creepy, even when he was just eating a sandwich.

You might not like your "tip," just like the way you might not like the shape of your nose, but it’s yours and it’s unavoidable.

Embracing your tip gives you such a profound advantage because it allows you to put your stamp on the character in a way that no one else possibly can. Bryan Cranston memorably describes auditioning for “Breaking Bad” and wanting to make a formidable impression on the creator, Vince Gilligan. “‘I wanted to go mark Vince,’ Cranston said to the Los Angeles Times in 2011. ‘I wanted to creatively lift my leg on him, and the script, and leave my scent so that he saw me and nobody else doing this.’"

2. Don't act your technique of preparation. When the role has been responsibly coached and prepared, the actual “acting” should feel as easy and effortless as if you were simply playing yourself. This can seem terrifying for two reasons. First, you won’t feel like you’re doing anything, and second, you may not feel you’re interesting enough. However, the end result is your work will appear seamless to the producer and director, and they’ll simply see the character as if he or she was a real person who happened to walk into the audition. That’s magical.

3. Stop trying to guess what “they” want. Imagine how ludicrous it would be if the waiter in a restaurant tried to guess what you felt like ordering? Imagine how even more ludicrous that would be if you didn’t even know what you felt like ordering? Because no matter what the waiter picked, he’d be wrong.

More directly stated, Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

Your job is now to stop guessing and make a strong choice—and make it one you really like. It should be the fun choice, the choice that lights a fire under your ass and the choice that’s a little scary. Not the choice that “seems right.”

What’s certain is that “they” are not looking for a neat presentation of acting training, nor are they looking for a choice made on guesswork.

Whenever we’ve seen amazing performances, the acting techniques that these stellar actors have studied are nowhere to be found. Instead we just have people. New people who have been invented by these actors—characters we call them. All tremendous actors have gone through the task of bringing themselves to the part and taking their training, balling it up, and chucking it out the window.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Personality Is Half The Audition Battle

This pilot season, 17 of my clients booked roles in major network and film projects. There's no mystery as to why. The secret to booking a role begins and ends with this: Don't try to guess what "they" are looking for. Assume you are what they're looking for and bring yourself to the role! Your secret weapon as an actor is your unique personality.

Bringing your personality to the role starts with realizing that you are interesting enough without having to add anything (technique, character, etc.). If you have prepared and coached the role responsibly, the work should be planted deep inside you without you having to "show it" when acting. You can never "act" your preparation. Any worthwhile preparation should only strengthen and elevate your performance, not take the place of or protect you from it.

Dealing with oneself can be terrifying. Many acting "techniques" feed off an actor's need to escape from himself into something warm and fuzzy, essentially doing everything but the work at hand. What inevitably happens is the work starts to smell like acting technique and loses the actor's humanity.

The personality of the actor is nine-tenths of the performance. I help my clients reflect their own humanity back at their audience, not by playing themselves but by bringing themselves to the role. It's "you" at your best, under the influence of and filled up with deeper, more powerful, and more fun emotions. This creates the illusion of character. The higher art is not to ask, "How should I play the role?" but rather, "What would I do if I were in that specific situation?"

The difference between "good" and "great" is very small. Beginning your audition emotionally full of something specific instantly sets you apart from every other actor starting with nothing, having to warm up as they go. You can't force yourself to feel that emotion or squeeze yourself into some emotional place -- it must be activated in a flash as if on the tips of your fingers, ready to go seconds after your slate or call of "Action!" on set.

Don't let anyone try to steal your talent and sell it back to you in the form of some stale technique or method. Fight like hell to bring your unique and original self to everything you do.

This article was originally posted on Backstage