Is Your Skin Thick Enough For This Business?

I’ve talked a lot about certain traits an actor has to possess at the bare minimum in order to be successful. A true, deep-seated love of acting is one of them, along with proactive efforts, the knowledge that only you can make your career happen, and a dedication to the craft—all wrapped up with a bow of teeth-gritting tenacity. I cannot emphasize enough that these attributes are the bare essentials for success, given the difficulty of making a career in acting. However, one trait that we haven’t talked about enough is the necessity of thick skin.

It is absolutely crucial to have thick skin—so much of one’s success in show business truly depends on this. I cannot tell you how many times I have encountered or worked with actors andthought, “Wow, so talented, but just doesn’t have the stomach for this business.” These are often actors who need more hand-holding, who worry more about what people think, who spend hours or even days after an audition replaying everything that happened in the room in their mind. 

I’m sure some thin-skinned people have somehow managed to forge lasting careers for themselves, but I’m also willing to bet they’re the minority. When you “make it,” you open yourself up to even greater scrutiny—especially now in the age of the Internet. It never fails to amaze me how there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who revel in hating talented actors whom they’ve never met. Some of my celebrity clients have Tumblr pages and entire blogs dedicating to hating them and how “f—ing annoying” they are.

The point is that if you don’t have thick skin, and when you get to this level of success, you’re going to want to bleed out in a bathtub of warm water. If you can’t handle a casting director telling your representation that you “didn’t seem connected” in the room, how are you going to handle A.O. Scott calling your performance “wooden” (or worse), as such criticism is pretty mild for Scott and some of the other notorious critics. Imagine having a nationally recognized critic refer to your performance in a major motion picture as “evocative of someone trying to paint by numbers while locked inside a casket.” Again, now is the time to develop thick skin. If you don’t have any, then you better start growing some fast. If you already have thick skin, it’s time to do everything you can to reinforce it. 

Having thick skin truly does revolve around your ability to not give a fuck about what others think—even if you look like an asshole or a freak. Even if your closest and dearest friends say, “Hey, when you did that thing, you really looked like an asshole-y freak.” You need to be able to commit to whatever it is you’ve done (or are going to do) and let everyone else have a blast judging you, calling you a weirdo, calling you a talentless hack, calling you desperate, or seeking attention, or mentally defective. 

One way to help develop thick skin is to regularly do things that take you out of your comfort zone. Make a speech at that wedding. Do five minutes of stand-up comedy. Join an improv team and actually invite people you know to shows. Be a street performer for a day. Tell a joke to strangers on the subway, or in an elevator, or in line at the coffeehouse. The best part about this exercise: the worse your performance, the shittier the speech, stand-up routine, street performance, random joke…the more effectively and faster you grow thick skin. Why? Because you’ll probably see the looks of pain, horror, disgust, or pity that flit across peoples’ faces. And all those looks will be the result of something you did. 

At the end of the day, you’ll realize that the worst responses to whatever you’ve done are when people don’t respond at all—when you’re ignored or dismissed or treated like you don’t exist. And those might be the moments when you develop the thickest skin.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

4 Tips For Owning The Audition Room

Who you are—your personality and lust for fun—defines the results you achieve as an actor, and in every other professional life endeavor. Thus, your personality and capacity to have fun needs to be present and accessible when you’re auditioning, and this needs to start the moment you cross the threshold into the audition room. As many of my producer and director colleagues attest to, your audition starts the moment you walk into that room and not—as many would believe—when you start “acting.”

Do not put yourself into an emotional “state” trying to “get into character” before you walk into the room. If you invest in a preparation that must be constantly stoked, fluffed, and “maintained” prior to the first moment of the scene, you’ll miss every moment leading up to your performance. It creates a scenario where you’re in your head—you’re nowhere close to being in the moment, you’re focused on some end result that you feel you must arrive at and which must look a certain way. 

I see this most often when clients have a scene where they have to cry at some point.The actor often gets hung up on getting to the emotional point of having tears that he or she makes that the primal focus of the scene. It would be like spending an entire first date focusing on whether or not you will get a “goodnight kiss” to the exclusion of all else that may have happened on the date—clearly this is a recipe for failure. You’d miss out on getting to know the very basics about the person sitting across from you at dinner, and would have no idea whether you two had any real connection or not—all because you’re preoccupied with some end result.

For actors, existing in some contrived state of emotional preparation in the waiting room is just as problematic. It prevents the actor from doing the things that might actually help them land the job. 

You’ll miss the opportunity to reveal your personality when you walk in. And God forbid, have a meaningful and fun conversation with the casting director, director, producer, etc.

The whole journey of acting is the act of becoming—if you arrive at a destination the journey is over, and you’ve essentially stolen the experience from the audience by telling them what they’re supposed to feel. 

When an actor forces him/herself into an emotion, not only can the audience sniff out the lack of authenticity (even if the audience is just the camera operator and casting director), they also no longer need to feel anything as you’ve already told them what to experience with the selected emotion you’re trying to cling to and present. You close the space for your audience to feel something you never thought possible. You strangle the moment and cut off blood flow, leaving no room for fun, surprise, or to effect change. 

If you find yourself getting in the dangerous position of clinging to your emotional preparation, here are some points to remember.

1. Walk in with confidence. One of my exceptionally talented master class students walks into every audition with the attitude of confidence, “I’m the fucking solution to your problem.” And, he can back that up every time by making a specific and fun choice. This is comparable to how, on a date, an average looking person can instantly seem more attractive just by the confidence he or she brings to the table. It all comes down to believing in the product of you and having complete certainty that everyone is going to want to buy. 

2. Say hello to the casting director, camera operator, reader, associate, etc. Acknowledge them—however brief—and the work they’re about to do to put your best performance on tape for the director and producer.

3. Don’t be overly chatty or too eager to please Just as it’s important to walk in with confidence and say a quick hello to all the people in the room, it’s also equally important to not walk in with this sense of desperation that you have to win over everyone in the room at the first moment. This often manifests as actors being overly chatty in the room, cracking too many jokes, and awkwardly putting out the vibe of “please like me.” If you walk in with confidence, then you know that they already like you. Furthermore, some casting directors find that an actor who is too talkative at the top of an audition might be too talkative on set.

4. Say thank you and leave; don’t ask for a second read! Make sure you leave your best performance in the room and afterwards simply say thank you. Never ask if you can “try that again.” That shows you weren’t confident in your original choice. Often times the first read was perfect and the second read shuts the actor out of contention. Leave the room the way that you entered it—with cool, collected confidence. It’s the quiet knowing smile that your date flashes you at the end of the night that proclaims he/she knows you want to see him/her again, and you can go in for that goodnight kiss.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Book The Role (And The Room) In 5 Steps

“I’m not sure if they want me to play this more like, quirky and weird, or more like, dry and sarcastic.”

I hear remarks to this effect from my clients around 18 times a day. In this case, they refers to the casting office, and this refers to the character the actor is auditioning for.

I know I don’t need to the tell the professional actors who read this column that’s it’s not your job—nor is it worth your time—to even let your mind wander near the neighborhood of, “I wonder what the casting director is looking for.” All you need to know is that the casting director is looking for someone to save his or her ass. So, make a fun choice and bring yourself to the role!

As I’ve expressed in other articles, it’s your job to start every scene emotionally full with a precise point of view. These two pillars are at the fundamental base of your choice. 

Every actor who has completed some form of quality training has been instilled with the knowledge that it’s important to make a “strong choice.” Even so, it’s still necessary to take a long look at the interlocking factors that make up a winning choice. 

What is a choice? During the process of breaking down any script and building a character, hundreds—perhaps thousands—of specific and fun choices must be considered and either accepted or discarded in order to determine the exact rhythm of your character’s heartbeat.

Here are five steps to move you forward along the path of making an Oscar-level choice:

1. What is the style of the writing? Asking this question helps you to determine what world you are in. A Sorkin universe, where everyone is educated and ready with a quick retort, is lightyears away from a punctuation and pause-specific Mamet universe. 

2. What is your specific bare bones relationship to the other character in the scene?Say you’re going out for Alex, the supportive friend. No one is ever just a “friend”… they’re your best friend from childhood you’ve known for over 10 years, or they’re the friend from work you’ve known for 18 months that you just hang out with at happy hour on Thursdays, but would never spend time with out in the real world. 

3. What’s your specific emotional relationship with every other character in the script? 

“I like this person,” or “I just met this person.” I can’t tell you how these answers from actors really make me groan. Sure, they’re a good starting point, but answers like these are so vanilla and non-specific; they’re not really going to help you. 

I like this person: OK, if it’s a friend, is there resentment anywhere? Buried? What about envy? Adoration? Emulation? A desire to please? A desire to distance oneself? A sense or worry or responsibility towards this person? Few friendships are as simple as, “I like this person.” Once you get to know someone and really care about them, things start to get a wee bit more complex, even for the most seemingly “perfect” friendships. 

I just met this person: OK. Would you ever sleep with him orher? Sober? No? How many drinks would it take? Do you look at this person and feel superior? Inferior? Do you want to help this person get a new haircut and better shoes? Do you want this person to help you get a new haircut and a better pair of shoes? Think about it. 

4. Where are you specifically located in time and space? You’re never just hanging out with your girlfriend at the mall… you’re the fifth customers in line waiting for a table at the sushi restaurant in the strip mall without enough available parking. You have to pee. You don’t really like California rolls, but you’re going to order one today. If you can’t see where you are,you can be 100 percent sure your audience will have no clue.

5. What am I actively doing in the moment? Forget goals and objectives and hell, let’s even forget the word action. In fact, let’s not even refer to ourselves as actors. Many “techniques” impose upon actors the need to figure out what they’re “fighting for.” When in our real lives are we only fighting for one particular thing? Quite often, scenes force us to experience other people doing things to us or pushing us to feel something.In acting, a reaction is also an action. 

All of these choices will eventually culminate in a final overwhelmingly hot hook: a deeply emotional point of view to ignite the start of every scene. I speak more about finding the “hook” in my previous article, “How To Stand Out in the First Moment of a Scene.”

Remember Krysten Ritter’s very poignant and haunting recurring role on “Breaking Bad?” From the moment her character entered the storyline, she carried the quiet baggage of a woman who was fighting hard to stay sober with the chamber of horrors and complicated familial relationships that interlocked. It was a quiet level of depth that made her performance so lovely and so lingering. Ritter got to that depth, no doubt, by making a series of very specific choices which led her down the iridescent path to emotional fullness and, ultimately, an unforgettable performance. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

4 Ways To Make Your Career Last

We’ve all heard the expression, “It’s a marathon and not a sprint,” when it comes to a career in acting. This is an absolute and utter truth that I completely believe in, as do my clients who consistently work and have careers. 

But what does the marathon-style career actually look like on a day to day basis? What are the realities of living your life this way? In my opinion, most of the actors I work with don’t know. Taking a long look at the marathon-focused career trajectory in acting can not only make all of your efforts more effective, but also give you greater peace.  

The Long Game

The marathon-approach to acting refers to active engagement in the long game. Like a con artist committed to defrauding his victim over a period of years withalengthy long con, the long game refers to conducting your career in a way that shows you’re not attached to instant results. You realize that the industry relationships which are actually going to move your career forward are the ones which take time to develop—a lot of time. 

One of my clients has been friends with a casting associate of a major network show for years. This is someone she met and bonded with via industry events. They’ve only now just begun hanging out outside of the work environment. This is the type of relationship that you want to have and nurture, but it also doesn’t happen overnight. Tenacity is a major aspect of the long game. It’s not enough to meet an industry professional once—the real value and work is found in building that relationship over time. 

Booking the Room vs. Booking the Role

Another major pillar of the long game is the commitment to booking the room during every audition. Actors who understand the long game, also understand their powerlessness in booking the job. Actors who are well-acquainted with the business of acting are the ones who understand that they could give an audition that is the best damn thing a casting office has ever seen in their lives and stillnot book the role. These actors understand that this particular part, which they have read for so astoundingly, and which should be renamed after them, might actually end up going to a friend of one of the producers, the girlfriend of one of the writers, an actor with a bigger name, or a redhead (just because). 

With the long game in mind, these actors don’t sweat it. They know that by giving the best audition they’re capable of, they’ve already won. They might not book the role, but they sure as hell will book the room. And they’re right. Casting always remembers actors who give phenomenal performances like that, and those are the actors they bring back, year after year, for part after part. 

Acting as Much as You Can

For those of you not familiar with Malcolm Gladwell’s famous thesis in his book “Outliers,” he essentially concludes from years of research that in order to achieve mastery within a given field, one needs to devote 10,000 hours to one’s profession. How many actors in L.A. are really on that trajectory? How many actors in L.A. are acting every day—even if it’s just rehearsing a scene with a friend—and how many are just bitching about not getting enough auditions? 

Part of the long game is a devotion to becoming a better actor every day. One way to achieve this is by being in a small acting class where you experience an acting breakthrough every session…not every four weeks! Every student at my studio experiences an undeniable acting breakthrough every class—this is the only way to ensure steady and rapid growth.

Stop Waiting for Breadcrumbs or Handouts!

One of my celebrity clients who has spent the last 23 years establishing a distinguished career of over 110 film and TV credits recently made the brave yet strategic move to abruptly put the brakes on her career. She turned down a leading role in a feature film and asked her representation to immediately stop sending her out on auditions. She needed space from the feeling that she was just getting thrown breadcrumbs by schlepping from one audition to the next and waiting for guest star/co-star handouts from others. She was starved for projects she could “sink her teeth into.” 

This uniquely gifted artist was finally able to breathe and take a step out of a box she felt had limited her ability to do projects that really mattered to her. She gained a new perspective on her life and career. Within weeks of creating this space, she started booking the roles and projects that meant something to her: the lead in an Off-Broadway hit play and a new pilot. This highlights, that even within the long game, you still have the power to guide and sculpt your career in the direction you want it to go. Ultimately, saying no to projects you don’t want can be a scary but empowering choice within the scope of the long game. 

Jeremy Renner

Jeremy Renner has been acting since 1995. Most people never even heard of him until 2008 when he starred in “The Hurt Locker”…when he was 37. During those 13 years, Renner acted in small parts in film and on TV, slowly building up his résumé. He even started a side career flipping houses—a hobby which would provide him with more financial stability—so that he could continue to act. Renner is a great example of how vital it is to be fully dedicated to the long game, as a deep love of acting combined with other hobbies and talents can give one the staying power that creates a real career.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Do You Truly Love Acting?

I know I don’t need to tell a single person just how difficult this career path is. I, and other experts, have discussed at length how truly thorny the field is—how the competition is as tough as the Olympic Games and the future is always uncertain. I’ll save you the speech about rejection, aging, the lack of good parts, the growing size of the competition each year, and the sometimes insurmountable challenge of just getting your foot in the door to audition for a role you’re right for—let alone the issue of booking the damn role. 

The First Type of Actor

I’ve lived for years in Los Angeles, a city which is so oversaturated with actors, that when you meet someone between the ages of 18 and 50 with good teeth, you just assume they are an actor. You don’t even ask anymore. Here’s what I’ve observed: There are essentially two kinds of actors. The first kind of actor truly, truly loves the craft and process of acting. This is the actor who has made untold sacrifices to come to Los Angeles. They’ve left behind their family and friends, have made peace with living hand to mouth and the fact that they’re probably not going to follow the standard milestones of life (marriage, kids, buying a house) in any cohesive timeline. 

These are the actors who will do theater to audiences of seven, who will go out for every audition they’re called in for—even for short films that pay nothing and are being directed by inept film students, and even for characters they find badly written or out of their age range. They’ll read for parts requiring Icelandic accents and fencing skills, and they will try their damnedest. They’ll accept one-line roles in Web series and will thank the director genuinely for the opportunity. 

They do all these things with sincerity and eagerness from the bottom of their hearts because of the love of the craft. The pure desire to act shoots out of every cell and nerve-ending. 

These are the actors who are going to make it, if they so choose. Sure, only a fraction of them will probably enjoy any big success, but the bulk of them, if they stick with it, will figure out a way to use acting to support themselves, and will be able to forge a lifelong career in some fashion. For some, this might mean doing commercials and industrials and booking a couple of guest star roles a year. For others, this might mean teaching acting to support the theater company they created. And still, others might run a successful blog on acting and be able to monetize it, while still having the time to go on auditions and pursue passion projects. 

The point is, for these actors, their sheer love of acting will always be their guide—even when the career feels shitty, even when they haven’t booked a job in two years, and even when they walk into an audition waiting room and see eight other actors that resemble them so acutely, their great Aunt Irma wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. With a foundation of real love, they will all eventually figure it out. 

The Second Type of Actor

The second kind of actor is just playing the lottery, and this is the type of actor that L.A. is just teeming with. This type of actor is way more common than the first kind and they are often the reason why this business is as hard as it is. They contribute to an oversupplied and overcrowded playing field, essentially making the field more competitive than it needs to be. 

These are the actors who don’t truly enjoy the challenge of acting. These are the ones who will say things like, “I can’t afford to be in an acting class right now.” These are the ones who don’t audition for small parts because they have it stuck in their heads that they’re going to be stars. Showcasing themselves is their only concern, and ensemble efforts are also rejected. Money and fame are always the most important goals, and they trump every other aspect of the process. 

Coincidentally, this is often the type of actor who is extremely attractive and married to the idea of playing the leading man or leading lady. This is the type of actor who is often content to just live in the bubble of L.A. and would never even consider going anywhere else. Being comfortable is a priority, and this actor drives to auditions from the comfort of his or her air conditioned car.

The good news with these actors, who are rolling the dice that they’re going to have a star on the walk of fame, is that they don’t have much staying power. These are the actors who generally pack up and start studying for the LSATs after a couple years of hardship in L.A. Unfortunately, there seem to be droves of actors ready and willing to replace them who are constantly moving into town. 

Thus, I invite you to really consider which type of actor you are. If you’re the former, congratulations and welcome to the ranks of the strong. If you’re the latter, how about you do every one a favor and start figuring out what truly makes you happy?

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Why You Need To Ensure Your Reps Know You

One of my clients, an edgy young woman who resembled a darker version of Avril Lavigne, was once repped by an agency in Los Angeles, who consistently sent her out for the wrong roles. In a single year, she went out for around 30+ roles in the “young mom” category. Nothing could have been more off-base for this actor. In all fairness to her agency, they submitted her for these roles, because she had one headshot online which made her look like a young mom, ready to pack some school lunches. The agency would submit with that picture (which was very good and popped successfully from the thousands of other submissions), my client would get called in for the young mom role, would grudgingly go to the audition dressed and prepared to read for a young mom; the casting office would sense how ill-fitting she was for the part, and she wouldn’t book it. This cycle would repeat for months—for a year exactly, until the agency dropped her because she almost never booked. 

Now, unfortunately, this is a common tale for actors all over the country. If your reps are consistently sending you out on the wrong roles and projects, you need to take responsibility for this as well. I’ve mentioned in previous articles how I deplore “niche” or “type” when discussing actors and their careers. Those terms are mostly used by industry charlatans looking to steal actor’s watches and sell them back to them in the form of trashy “career counseling.” They only serve to box an actor’s individuality into someone else’s stale notion of type. At the same time, you still need to be able to verbalize the parts that you are right for, and you need to be able to verbalize this to your representatives so that they know how to submit you.

Thus, just because we don’t believe in boxing you into a “niche” or “type,” that doesn’t mean we’ll necessarily be able to get your representatives on board with this, or that we’ll even be able to get them to fathom the idea that you are more than a type. 

It’s important that everyone on your team have a clear understanding of your singularity as an actor—the thing that nobody does better than you! For example, my friend and colleague, manager TJ Stein (owner of Stein Entertainment Group), sets the bar high when it comes to knowing their talent. TJ brings all of his clients into the office multiple times throughout the year to present work for the entire team. The goal is to prevent the team from becoming desensitized, and to prevent them from putting their clients in neat, confining, and ultimately, career-stunting boxes. Thus, clients are brought in throughout the year to perform scenes to showcase their work in the most varied possible mannerso that their reps are constantly aware of how they are growing and developing as artists. 

Unfortunately, not every agency is as responsible as this one. That’s OK. If you’re not being submitted for the roles that you’re absolutely right for, you need to do the following:

1. Make sure your headshots online aptly capture this singularity of yours, and correct them accordingly if necessary. While actors generally have the hardest job in town, being an agent or manager is no picnic either. It’s in your best interest to sympathize with their struggles, and to give them the best tools possible to get you in the door. And this starts with having recent, fresh, quality headshots up online that they can use to submit you appropriately for those parts that you’re right for. 

2. Put yourself on tape throughout the year. Not for a part, but as a creative means of staying in touch with your reps. Select a scene you love that showcases you in the best possible way, or in a new possible way, and put it on tape. You know that friend that’s always asking you for agent/manager referrals? Get her to play opposite you as a way for your reps to see her face and abilities.

Seeing you excel in a new way can give your reps the confidence to submit you for a larger number of parts that you’re right for, and that you do best. Just as no one has a sh*t-eating grin quite like Jack Nicholson, there’s something singularthat you convey, that no other actor can touch. It’s your job to make sure your reps understand what this is, and be able to act on it. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage