How Actors Can Have The Best Pilot Season Ever Without Representation, Part 2

Are you at your Olympic-best and not competing for every role you’re right for this pilot season? Don’t do what every actor does: Don’t blame your reps for not being good enough, and don’t blame your lack of auditions on not having reps at all. 

In my previous article, How Actors Can Have the Best Pilot Season Ever Without Representation, I addressed the false belief that actors need representation to compete for major film and TV roles during pilot season. Having representation is not a guarantee you’ll be going out for every role you’re right for. The bottom line is centered on accountability: In order to have the best possible pilot season, you have to be responsible for it. If you’re not going out for every part you’re suitable for, you need to examine your own actions and choices, and determine how those factors are contributing to a lighter audition load.

The Olympic Level of the Game
If you want the life of an actor who is competing at the professional level and is going out on 30 to 40 auditions per year, you must consistently be acting at your highest level of excellence—what I refer to as the Olympic level. 

That means you’ve dedicated yourself to years of studying your craft. You’ve read all the great books on acting such as the ones written by David Mamet, Michael Chekhov, Uta Hagen, and Constantin Stanislavsky, as your responsibility as a professional. You make it a priority to watch nearly every newly released film. You are up to date on all the major television shows. You’ve made a commitment to watch one old movie a week, in order to better understand the roots of the film industry. You go to the theater regularly as your duty to support the community and to observe theater actors at work. Create a short list offilm or TV projects you feel your personality is best suited to.

It always amazes me to see actors wanting to start auditioning for major feature film and TV roles after only a few months of study as an actor. It’s like one day deciding you absolutely love the tuba, and, after a few months of lessons you decide it’s time to audition for the director of the L.A. Philharmonic. This is a ludicrous idea, but helps to illustrate the point of how absurd and hazardous it can be to try to attempt to audition for major roles before you’re ready. It’s a small industry—it’s easy to see the majority of major casting directors in any given year. If you were pitched for a role you simply weren’t right for OR you weren’t at your absolute best when you went into the casting room, the doors to those offices may close and never open again.

Building and Maintaining Relationships
Because the industry is so small, people tend to favor the people they know and like. Thus, you need to figure out a way to become one of the actors that people in power know and like. This revolves around building and maintaining industry relationships: casting directors, directors, producers, writers, etc. Another effective way to meet those people is at industry events: Going to events such as forums, screenings, and Q&As are going to put you in close proximity with such people. Be friendly and bold: Bring business cards, a smile, and start shaking hands. The SAG-AFTRA Conservatory offers workshops with casting directors, directors, producers, and other industry leaders. When it comes to casting directors, it’s vital you specifically target the ones whose projects are ideal for your personality and acting strengths.

Create an “Accountability Group” of Your Peers
For a profession which relies so heavily on human relationships both creatively and on the business side of things, acting can feel pretty lonely at times—after all, it is just you in the audition room. Creating an actor “accountability group” can make you feel like you have a team behind you and supporting you—it can give you a much needed boost of morale. 

An actor “accountability group" is a group of your peers who meet regularly to hold each other accountable for being proactive in their careers, read scenes, work on auditions, trade industry tips, etc… This makes you feel like your actions (or lack of actions) have someone to answer to, which is good. Such a group can also help you with troubleshooting and brainstorming, which can be helpful if you feel like you’ve hit a brick wall in certain respects with your career.

Wolves survive because they hunt in packs; actors can also benefit from that pack mentality of helping one another survive and thrive. 

Seek Out A Mentor
One of my very talented clients proposed the idea of seeking out an industry mentor...someone working at the top of their game like a major producer, director, celebrity actor, etc. I think it’s an incredible idea as it encourages an actor to bravely pick up a telephone and pitch themselves to an industry professional. And if such a pitch is successful, the mentorship could be life-changing. This successful professional could help show you the ropes and insider secrets that you may have had no idea even existed. This is a person who could truly help open doors for you and help you to build some pretty crucial relationships with others. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Interview: ACTING COACH JOSEPH PEARLMAN SETS OUT TO EMPOWER CLIENTS

What are your classes like?

I call it “private coaching in a class setting,” so until they feel they have a clear way they can bring, they don’t work on a traditional acting class piece. They’re going to work on a piece as if it’s a booked role or an audition. So we’re going to go in any direction they need to go in, and we’ll coach on it until they have an undeniable breakthrough—until they feel they have such a clear way that they can bring with them on set or to the audition the next day.

How is being on set different from being in your classes?

Oftentimes, I’ll work with an actor in their trailer. When I’ve worked with Zooey Deschanel, we’ll work at her house. We’ll coach there in preparation for her to be on set. What I’m doing is helping my clients prepare for that first moment. The difference between good and great is the actor that enters that scene on the call of action, emotionally lit up and emotionally full instead of empty.

What makes your coaching technique different?

I work with career clients and help them to reject this herd mentality—they feel they have to go in the same door as everybody else. I help my clients launch their careers in a very atypical way: by standing up for themselves—essentially by owning what makes them amazing. 

What are some of the biggest challenges of being a coach?

It is such a huge responsibility, because you have a lot of people out there doing what I’m doing, but you have actors who it’s really tough to launch their career. You have these artists who, in large, don’t make a lot of money, and this is an investment. I feel the weight of it, and it’s important to me that they have that breakthrough in the session. At the end of a class I am tired, but I can actually sleep at night knowing they paid and I delivered.

It seems like there are a lot of proud moments in your career. Can you think of any in particular?

There’s a right way for actors to pitch themselves, so when I empower a client to take his or her career into their own hands and actually get an audition without having an agent or manager—that, to me, is awesome. I get emails every week from clients and the gist of them are, “Oh my God. I can’t believe it. I actually made the call. I was scared shitless, but I made it.” And for me, I can help actors have breakthroughs. I can help them to reach their award potential or their booked-role potential, but when I see an actor realizing that he or she has the power to actually launch their career themselves, that is just inspiring. You have to be able to do it on your own.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Tune Your Heartbeat To Your Character's Heartbeat

The actor’s job is to find ways to relate to the character. You need to be able to create a connection so strong to this fictional person, that you and him/her become a Venn diagram together with zones of overlapping qualities and zones of separation. 

Developing a role into a nuanced individual should feel like you’re developing a close relationship with another person—it should be intimate and a little terrifying, as you’re allowing yourself to be exposed, while looking into the shortcomings and oddities of this new individual that you’re helping to shape. 

Michelle Williams’ reflection on playing Marilyn Monroe so fabulously in the film “My Week with Marilyn” clearly demonstrates the importance of aligning your heartbeat with the heartbeat of the character. As one L.A. Times journalist recounts, “‘This is nice,’ she [Williams] says at one point. ‘I miss Marilyn, and talking about her keeps her close. I'm still not ready to let her go.’" This sentiment clearly reveals an actor who has been able to synchronize heartbeats—so much so, it’s as if they had forged a real relationship. Creating that connection is significant as it makes the character you work on more and more authentic.

Many doctrines and techniques offer seemingly warm and fuzzy escapes from the dangers of facing this fictional person in the moment, as it’s far less scary to dance around the rabbit hole than to dive in headfirst without a safety harness.

Here are a few ways to connect with your character.

Own them in the moment. 
This work starts with four simple words, “I am one who…” This work can be done anywhere you like: car, subway (only for the brave), home, etc. This is the time to start wading into the deep end and confronting the aspects of your character that might be charming, or those which might be disturbing. For instance, this exercise might cause you to say things like “I am one who has sex for money,” “I am one who saves all my fortune cookie messages,” or “I am one who brings a flask to work.” This exercise is extremely effective as it allows one to shine a flashlight towards the darker areas of a character’s psyche, allowing one to come face to face with some of their demons, quirks, and golden tinges. Often times, this work gives the actor courage to make the more dangerous choices—the ones other actors may be too afraid to make.

Coming face to face with these details of the character allows you to own them in the moment, and begin to forge a lasting rapport with this flawed, but fascinating human being.  

Backstory exercises are boring; here’s an alternative.
Go to a website like Pinterest and create a visual backstory board, which, essentially, will be an online collage of all the things related to your character. You will have millions of images to select from, so you can be very precise. The importance of this exercise revolves around the fact that you are developing a visual rendering of the influences which have shaped and continue to shape your character’s world. For example, you can find images of their abusive parents, or the tenement where they grew up, or the boarding school they were sent away to, and the heartthrob or movie star they adored as a kid. 

By creating these visual renderings, you can develop a much deeper and more intimate understanding of where this fictional person has been and why he/she does the things he/she does. You’ll also get a more lucid sense of where you end and where your character begins. 

Go on a date with your character.
This is one of the more wackier exercises that one can do when seeking to create this deeper level of intimacy with a character, but it is effective. Clear an evening and leave the house, going to all the places your character would want to take you on a date. Where would you end up? A dive bar? A five-star restaurant? A train yard? A movie theater? Would the night be fun and a non-stop adventure, or would it be more predictable and safe? Visiting all these places and going through these activities while looking at everything through the eyes of your character can’t help but foster a deeper sense of how your character views the world, and what he or she wants from it. 

The goal of all these exercises is to foster a tangible sense of overlap with the rhythm of your heartbeat and that of your character’s own heart. These exercises will allow you to get to a place where when you no longer have to play this role, you will in fact, like Michelle Williams, miss this person. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Permission To Make The More Dangerous Choice

John Cusack. One of the bravest and most versatile actors in Hollywood. A line from an interview he did in 1998 always stayed with me, as it illustrates one of my strongest beliefs about acting. “Cusack was 23 when he made ‘Say Anything.’ Now, some eight years later, he says that working on that film is still one of his most treasured memories: ‘Lloyd Dobler was simply the best part of who I could ever be.’ And so who is John Cusack, really? He smiles that killer smile. ‘You know how in The Grifters, my character, the con man Roy Dillon, had such a dark heart? I'd have to say I'm right smack in the middle of Lloyd and Roy.’”  

What Cusack reveals about his approach to acting in this sentiment is that he is not afraid to use his personality to create a character. The most shockingly powerful truth in acting is that 90 percent of the performance is the personality of the actor. Why this statement is so terrifying is that at first glance it seems like I’m professing actors should just play themselves—I’m not. The work that goes into that 10 percent is enormous. What I’m proposing is that our personality is the instrument—or clay—with which we can compose an infinite number of characters. All of those characters will have the scent and soul of our own personality.

The 10 percent of the character which is not you, needs to revolve around the most dangerous choice—something that Cusack also instills his characters with. When playing Lloyd Dobler in “Say Anything,” Cusack constantly made the most dangerous choice—putting his heart and his feelings out there again and again (only to be rejected again and again—until the end, of course). 

When playing Roy Dillon, John Cusack consistently stepped into the red mist of danger, from lying to people in the intricate web of con artistry with a smirk and a sense of entitlement to making out with his mother in a haze of repressed incestuous desire. With each character though, the careful viewer can still see the foundational traces of Cusack apparent. Cusack is always drawing upon his personality to give these brave but damaged people an authentic place to originate from. 

Permission to Use Your Personality
Here’s a question I pose to my new students and clients:

“After all the work is finished, what if your best acting felt as easy as if you were simply playing yourself? Would you feel you were interesting enough?”

The temptation to hide behind doctrine or technique is so seductive because it allows us a way to escape from the danger and fire of facing ourselves. This comes from a multi-faceted place: on the one hand, many actors don’t feel like they’re interesting enough. On the other hand, many actors do have a latent amount of fear connected to the act of drawing upon themselves—which means using their own perversions, flaws, moments of dishonesty, and manipulative qualities. Sometimes the act of using one’s personality is actually the act of admitting to oneself, as Cusack did so boldly, that one does in fact have a dark heart.

The 10 Percent That Isn’t You
This is one of the more challenging parts of developing the character and it helps to be able to write it out with a pen and paper. Make a list of the attitudes, qualities, actions, feelings, or thoughts that are connected to this character that genuinely are not you. When you’re done with this list, take a long look at all the things on it and really be honest with yourself: are all of these aspects things which are not part of your personality or blood memory? 

This might be an easy yes for many actors, but with this exercise, many will find that there are still areas of overlap. 

With the attitudes and character traits that are completely foreign to you…find a way to embrace and adopt them so that you are in fact, making the most dangerous choice. For Cusack, this meant instilling every action, moment, whim, and line that his character Roy Dillon made in “The Grifters” with a sense of deeply buried desire for his mother. This choice was underlying every single thing his character did in that film, and it was one of the bravest choices an actor has ever made.  

This article was originally posted on Backstage

How Actors Can Have The Best Pilot Season Ever Without Representation

Pilot season is just around the corner and you’re still an actor without theatrical representation. Don’t worry! Take a deep breath and relax—you’re going to be fine.

The most contagious disease effecting actors is the belief that signing with an agent or manager guarantees you’ll compete for every role you’re right for. My private clients are divided among actors who compete for 0-6 major auditions per year v.s. actors who compete for 30-40 top-tier auditions per year—that’s a staggering 3-6 auditions per week during peak seasons.

What’s the difference? The actors with the 30-40 auditions are being pitched via telephone followed by a personal email to the casting office. Those only going out for 0-6 per year are only being submitted online via “breakdown services” by their reps. Also, some agents have long-standing relationships with certain casting offices, and the CD will bring in literally whomever that agent submits. 

Fact: less than one percent of agents and managers actively pitch their clients, either via phone or personal email. The reason most reps don’t pitch is because they simply don’t have the relationships or clout with casting directors, or they’re terrified of losing face should they misjudge an actor’s “rightness” for a role. Ask any great agent or manager and they’ll tell you that a rep who isn’t pitching clients should get out of the business. 

Your success in launching your acting career is directly related to how visible you make yourself and to your ability to build and maintain relationships with industry professionals: directors, producers, writers, actors, casting directors, etc. Your results depend on how you build those relationships. 

“I’ve already made it.”

Adopting the attitude “I’ve already made it” instantly tunes you to the level of confidence needed to stand up for yourself and build those crucial industry connections.

It’s important to reject the herd mentality—what every other actor is doing—every step of the way. Sending a press release-style email is miles more effective than a mass postcard or headshot mailing, as it instantly separates you from the herd and gives the illusion that you’ve already made it. People in this business respond to that sort of confidence. If you’ve never written a press release and have no idea what you would put in yours, a quick Google search will give you more than enough guidance. 

Stop waiting for permission to market yourself.

Get in the habit of rejecting the archaic concepts of “niche” and “type” as they only serve to box you in and stifle your originality. Start owning all those awesome things that embody your personality—the crazier and more out there the better! You’ll soon start to define your own type, which transcends any of the “types” already out there. Steve Buscemi is an actor who embraced his unique flavor of quirkiness to create his own tailor-made type. Zooey Deschanel has immortalized Jess on “New Girl” as the charmingly clueless, singing neurotic roommate with the big blue eyes and sexy hair. Who knows if they would have had the success that they’ve had if they had spent years trying to stuff their uniqueness into the box of some preconceived type that the business had already dictated?

This means that for the next audition you get, stop trying to think of how you can cram all your glorious oddities and neuroses into the narrow confines of what you think they want. Instead, give yourself permission to let the bizarreness, ugliness, sexiness, or disarming qualities of you come through, imprinting the character with something priceless. Such courage is indeed worth the effort. 

Before the huge successes of “New Girl” and “(500) Days of Summer” Zooey Deschanel showed up to one of our coaching sessions with a deeply ironic casting breakdown. The breakdown was looking for a “Zooey Deschanel type.” Zooey was between acting jobs and we both laughed at the absurdity of it all. For me, that moment solidified the fact the she had officially made it.

In my career coaching work with actors, I help my clients to reject the lottery mind-set—to see acting success as commensurate with the amount of focused work they put in, rather than just a series of lucky events.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Why Actors Need To Let The Lines Do The Heavy Lifting

“Throw it away more.”

Nearly every actor has heard this direction either on set, in acting class, or during an audition, but how many actors really understand what this particular piece of direction is getting at?

Telling an actor to throw away their performance, their delivery, or certain lines of the script more simply means that the actor isn’t letting the writing do the work. The actor isn’t placing enough trust in the writing or in their self. Thus, the actor’s performance becomes too much, putting the actor in danger of overacting, of getting bigger, louder, and all in all, not delivering the nuanced performance that they are capable of.

One of my clients went in for a role of a tough street punk on a popular Showtime dramedy. Granted, the office she went in for was notorious for being nasty to actors, but the note she received from the casting director was, “Stop acting tough. The lines are already tough.” While I wasn’t there, and while I have confidence that my client is a gifted actor, I got the impression that nerves took over during the audition and she felt the urge to do too much, trusting herself less, and essentially, over-acting to an extent. 

My client got over her disappointment from this audition with the resiliency of a professional. But I urge us to now examine how the act of auditioning and the high stakes involved can too easily stir up one of an actor’s greatest fears: the feear that you’re not interesting enough as yourself. This greatly increases the temptation to give the acting a little something extra—to push it.

There are times when you must take your foot off the acting gas and let the lines do the hard work and heavy lifting in the scene. In other words, stop pushing the acting! I’m not telling you to do less—I’m saying, sometimes the best choice is to actually do nothing. 

A great example of doing less is with Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada.”  I thought the film was great and that all the actresses did a wonderful job. However, it was only when I read David Ansen’s review in Newsweek about the film that I realized how brilliant and smart Streep’s performance was. “Never raising her creamy voice, Meryl Steep is scarily sensational as magazine editor Miranda Priestly, the tyrannical, all-powerful arbiter of New York fashion.” A lesser actress would have yelled, and would have punctuated each line with explosive venom in order to create an “intimidating character.” Instead Streep infuses each line with a soft, lingering poison, the lilt of her voice evocative of the quiet shake of a rattlesnake.  

Performances like these are a manifestation of how the more physical and emotional space you create inside yourself, the more room you open up to invite the character to be expressed through you. Much of the work I do with my private clients is focused on opening up space inside them to create room for the character to come through in the most natural way possible. This way, actors can leave themselves alone and let the lines do the work.

The most beautiful and skilled writing can often stand alone, without an actor imposing upon it.  But what about if the writing is bad? In such cases the actors generally feel an even more aggravated need to inflict their mark upon the writing in order to make it better or “more believable.” I’m of the opinion that this is the wrong instinct. With bad writing, I say throw it away even more (after you’ve done your preparation and have allowed the character to come through you of course). Think of the cheesiest, most soap-opera-esque line you’ve ever had to deliver (“You’ve turned our love into nothing but lies. Lies!”). This is a prime example of how, really, any imposition on the writing by the actor is just going to call attention to how awful the writing is. It’s kind of like dabbing a stain on silk with a damp washcloth and creating a big watermark that’s even more noticeable than the stain ever was. In such a case, you need to approach the moment from a place of honesty, with all the work you’ve done on the character, and just speak the speech.

The difference between “good” and “great” acting is just a few millimeters of focused and specific work, and the ability to trust that it’s firmly rooted inside you before the call of “Action!” That little bit extra is often the difference between a strong audition vs. a booked role, or being nominated vs. winning the award. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage