Why Your Should Stop Looking For Representation

In the decades I’ve worked in this business, I can say with confidence that nearly every single actor I’ve met possessing incredible representation, was directly scouted out by the reps themselves. They didn’t do mailings, they didn’t do showcases, they didn’t ask their friends for referrals. They got to a place in their careers where all the years of ass-busting started to pay off, and were suddenly at a level where people who mattered began to notice them. 

What is incredible representation? It’s the kind that pitches you via telephone for every role you’re right for. It’s the kind that generates 5–6 major auditions per week during peak months. The kind of agent/manager who you sign with as a result of you seeking them out is the not kind of rep that will pitch you for every role you’re right for.

As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, 99 percent of agents and managers do not pitch their clients to production offices or casting directors via phone—they will send an online submission. This is the equivalent of chewing gum and blowing a big bubble in the hopes that will help bring the client in for an audition. The submission they click on falls into a sea of thousands of other clicked-on online submissions. The actor becomes the needle in the haystack.

I’m not going to rant about the lack of effectiveness of this process. I’m merely going to ask that the actor reading this article take a moment to reflect on how many auditions this has gotten them in the last year. 

Without the right phone pitch the average client of that agent/manager will only see 0–6 major film and TV auditions per year. There can be up to 50 major roles that an actor could be perfect for, but she/he will only compete for a few of those. 

The actors who do get to compete for every role they’re right for are the ones who have reps that kick open doors for them. These reps have the relationships with casting offices, and if they don’t have those years-long relationships with certain offices, they have no fear or hesitation in picking up the phone and making a strong pitch for their client. 

Here’s a common sentiment from “great” agents and managers: “Stop looking for us, we’ll find you!” 

This really is the truth. If you’re at a point in your career where you’ve truly done the work to get noticed—either through booking work without representation, or creating your own work—then these great reps will find you. Just recently, a highly desirable management company tweeted, after my client—with no representation—booked 12 major (paid) film and TV roles as a result of my career coaching approach:

“@josephpearlman @colestroud @Humin send your info to us!!! We love a proactive actor!”

What makes these great agents and managers so great is that they keep an ear to the ground. In combination with their assistants and colleagues, these reps are constantly watching TV and film, and trolling YouTube for the next new thing. These are the reps who watch indie films—and if they don’t have time to do all of that research, then they make damn certain to keep up with the trade papers. 

These are essentially the reps who live and breathe this industry. They love the business, they actually love actors—(Most of the time, and who can blame them?)—and they make it their personal responsibility to keep up with the brightest talent that is swinging from the vines of the industry jungle. 

These truly great reps are going to be the ones who are really going to make a discernible difference in your career. They’re going to be able to help push you forward in ways that you simply can’t do yourself. Here’s the catch: You have to get to a place where you deserve to be able to meet with them. I’m not going to lie, some actors get to this level through luck, family connections, or a lot of early breaks—or a healthy mix of all three.

Other actors get to this level by trying, struggling, working, failing, trying something else, and bleeding out. But at the end of the day they make it. 

And the prize is unity, because this actor is no longer swinging punches and kicking down doors alone. The actor has a team behind him/her that matters. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Are You Beautiful Enough For This Business?

I recently coached a very talented client for a series regular role on a major cable drama pilot. This actor has a considerable amount of top tier film and TV credits and is, by all mainstream standards, extremely beautiful.

I called the casting director—a major casting office—for feedback a few days after her audition. When I got the casting director on the phone she said, “Oh yes, I remember her, she was excellent. Let me check my session notes. Oh here it is, yes, not beautiful enough.”

The Subjective Nature of Beauty
Suffice it to say, I am a man of great self-restraint. As you can imagine, there was a part of me that suddenly morphed into this client’s mother and wanted to shrilly bark at this casting director that my client looked like a pageant winner and a stand-in for Gwyneth Paltrow, and how dare she suggest anything to the contrary. But I thanked the office for the (candid) feedback and amicably ended the call. 

The conversation definitely brought to light an issue that riddles the city of Los Angeles like a plague. This is a city that contains some of the best looking people in the nation, and few actors ever feel they’re beautiful enough (men included). There’s a good reason for this: It’s a part of the culture here, more so than in New York, I assure you. This is the culture that welcomes plastic surgery with open arms, where I’ve heard agents say, “I’ll represent you, just get your nose fixed,” where friends tell other friends that “a boob job would just even out your proportions.” A place where my male students won’t touch the tortilla chips at our bar nights because they’re on a low carb diet, because their reps said they have to lose weight and get a six-pack before they submit them for leading man roles.

Here’s the thing: In Los Angeles in this business, there’s no shortage of people to remind you where you stand in the looks department—almost anyone here in a mild position of power is eager and willing to tell you. If you’re not a 10, boy, you’ll find that out fast. But even the clients that are 10’s are still under pressure to not lose or screw up what they’ve got, and to get subtle enhancements (injections, mild surgeries) to enhance their divine genetic code. Essentially, no one in Los Angeles is free from scrutiny and insecurity—not even those we consider luckiest. 

Other actors help reinforce this culture of insecurity by making each other feel insecure, by applauding each move for cheek implants, each dinner of Swedish fish and celery, and each attempt to emulate the appearance of the model or celebrity of the day. When in reality, actors need to be embracing the weird and asymmetrical stuff that makes them distinct. 

You’re Not a 10: Use It to Your Professional Advantage
Look, the remainder of this article is not going to be some attempt to convince you to love yourself for who you are, along with your crooked teeth and acne. I’m not a self-help guru (and common sense should nudge you in that direction anyway). Nor do I have the energy to try to convince anyone that they need to love the things that drive them crazy in the mirror. Nor will the rest of this article tell you to pack it up and move to Iowa where those mid-America folks will definitely consider you a perfect 10 (if only it were that easy…). 

Rather, I’m here to tell you that it’s time to leverage the lack of perfection in your appearance to your advantage. 

There’s been a revolution in the last 10 years that indicates we are more willing to accept the interesting face. It’s almost as though the media is loosening up: Just as we’ve shrugged off the notion that the perfect TV family has to have two white parents and a smiley, fresh-faced set of kids (one of each gender, of course), we’ve also shrugged off the idea that a leading man/leading lady has to look like they stepped from the pages of the A&F Quarterly.   

Now, more than ever before, people are willing to agree that beauty is subjective. Just look at Lena Dunham, Zooey Deschannel, and Jenny Slate—all female actors who have been told repeatedly (and continue to be told) that they don’t meet the traditional benchmarks of beauty. 

Sure, about half the agents, managers, and acting coaches in Los Angeles still haven’t caught up, but it’s your job as actors to be aware of that. It’s your job to showcase your singularity and individuality during your next headshot session—and not get made up and photographed so you represent some glamour boy/girl.

One of my trademarks as a coach is that I help my clients use their unique personalities to find their acting singularity—the exclusive combination of attitudes and behaviors that make them a complete original. This process involves discarding and torching any impossible or arbitrary beauty ideal. Success as an actor isn’t going to happen if you try to imitate others. So now is the time to showcase a personality and aesthetic people have never experienced before—yours. 

Who remembers the first time they had a Frappuccino? I remember when I had one for the first time. In New York, in 1996, and I thought, Hot damn, that’s pretty good; I’ve never had a coffee drink quite like this. Interesting, provocative, and daringly different actors like Jenny Slate, Zooey Deschanel, Lena Dunham, Seth Green, and Jonah Hill all figured that out: They took everything about them and turned it into a “hot damn that’s different” selling point.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

SAG-AFTRA LOS ANGELES SUMMER INTENSIVE

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