Permission To Not Be Perfect

How many times have you left an audition room wondering if you “did it right” or if you were “what they were looking for.” Questions like these are so defeating because they imply that there is some sort of perfect answer, and it implies that you, the actor, are trying to zero in on some form of correctness or some sort of zone that is free of flaws and error. This is a problem in more ways than one. First of all, it’s entirely futile as we’re talking about art and art is always subjective. That Jackson Pollack is, after all, a masterpiece to the guy sitting next to you, and a goddamn mess to me.    

The real danger with maintaining focus on some fanciful notion of perfection is that it can subvert the crucial journey of trying (and failing) requisite for artistic development. “The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried,” says cartoonist Stephen McCranie. In fact, I would argue that the master has failed more times than the beginner has even fathomed trying. Perfectionists are named as such because they do not take action—they find any and all excuses not to do something. Have you heard these? “I’d put myself on tape for that role I’m perfect for, but I have to lose 10 pounds first.” “The production company likes my script and is ready to purchase it, but it’s not where I want it to be yet.” “The audition is tomorrow and I don’t have enough time to memorize the lines so I probably shouldn’t go,” and so on.

Giving yourself the permission to not be perfect means you’re giving yourself permission to take a big jump and perhaps sail over to the other side of the cliff—or of course, plummet to the ravine below. This is the name of the game that you signed up for. Big risk, big reward. You may fail, and that’s part of life, but if you’re going to fail (and you are to some extent), you may as well do it on your terms with your head held high and making an impression.

You’re exactly who you are at this moment. You’ll either get cast or you won’t. But when you don’t take action (if that action is to pick up the phone, go to the audition, or sign on the dotted line), you’re protecting yourself from both potential failure and success. “You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take,” is a famous Michael Jordan quote. I help and empower all of my clients to launch their careers by competing for every role they’re right for—to not let a single role slip away.

Protecting yourself from taking action in the name of perfection or some related excuse also prevents you from engaging in the absolutely requisite work of forging a career. Every TV or film script you read and think is amazing is a 10th draft. Every performance you are blown away by is either a 10th take, a take after 10-plus years of intense training and experience, or several takes finagled into one by the editor with more experience than every actor in the project combined. This is a collaborative process brought to you by people who have been knocked on their asses for a period of years and the reason they’re able to call themselves professional actors, comedians, or musicians is because they kept getting back up. Maybe some bitching, moaning, and whining were included in the process as well, as after all, they’re human, but the bottom line is their career goals were more important to them than pasting on some oversimplified excuse that shielded them from having to take risks. 

Nobody’s perfect; no project is perfect. Everyone is part of the process from craft services to the EP, and everyone is working together to make a phenomenal project. All you can do is jump and see what happens. Don’t wait. How old will you be by the time you get the courage to tenaciously pursue your dream role or create your own Web series or pitch yourself for a role you’re right for? The same age you’d be if you never did.

Any actor I know who has a career I envy says, “I just never left.” Sometimes the only thing you can do when you’re at the end of your rope is to just keep hanging on. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

5 Steps For A Legendary Cold Read

Let’s get real: A professional cold read is 10–20 minutes of laser-targeted prep to lay down a winning audition. A properly prepared cold read can have the same impact as a fully prepared audition, where the actor has at least 24 hours of prep time. 

This is analogous to how sometimes a 30-second commercial can make you laugh harder than a five-minute “SNL” monologue. It’s the compelling choices made—not the time and effort spent—that makes one successful and the other not as much. Smart choices make a lasting impact. Labored, inauthentic choices—or those reeking of acting technique—only reflect the misguided effort used to get there. 

Sherri Shepherd, a former student, once performed a cold read in my class where she was reacting to a home invasion, under the threat of imminent death and rape. It was one of the most dangerous and impactful performances I’ve ever seen. She didn’t make the mistake of pasting together a flimsy take on the material after frantically scanning it twice. She took a requisite amount of time, around 20 minutes, to make specific, fun choices and organize her mind. It was remarkable in that—without being off-book—she was so emotionally full (fear, shock, and horror) without once dropping the connection to her reader. She was also an expert at the technical demandsof a pitch-perfect cold read—she effortlessly lifted the text up and off the page. 

The time constraints of a cold read are often the primary challenge that can rattle actors. 

You don’t have hours to repeat your damn lines in front of the mirror, or with your roommate, or to your mom over the phone. You don’t have time to record your practice reads with your phone and watch them back. You don’t have time to sleep on it either, awaking in the morning refreshed with the taste of some inspired choice that will no doubt help you book the job. 

Cold reads are like standing at the drive-through window with eight cars honking behind you. No time to stare into space and think about which acting theorist really touched you the most. Cold reads are the time for steel-edge concerted focus. And even with the dearth of time you can still create a great performance. Just as a drive-through window shouldn’t prevent you from having a great meal, it’s all about the decisions made under the gun.

The 10–20 minutes you have to prepare a cold read don’t prevent you from making specific, fun, and devastatingly impactful choices. You just need to keep a razor-sharp focus—like a Navy SEAL or a trained assassin.

The golden rule of the cold read is the same as any audition: Don’t guess what they are looking for. Assume you are what they’re looking for, and bring yourself to the piece with choices that pack a punch.

Here are five tips to help you prep for your next cold read.

1. Style. What’s the style of the piece? What world are you in? Film or TV, and what genre?

2. Bare-bones relationship. What’s your bare-bones relationship to every character in the scene? No “he’s my friend” answers here! The specific answer is, “He’s my best friend since childhood. In fact, we grew up in the same house when his parents were going through a divorce.”

3. Emotional relationship. What’s your emotional relationship to everyone in the scene? What’s your specific emotional feeling for them?. No “I like her” answers will do! “She’s the love of my life and I’m intensely attracted to her” is what you’re looking for.

4. Context. What’s the context? How do you see the scene? Paint the picture of how you see everything in the scene. Never just “place” people here and there like furniture! The higher art is to ask yourself, “How do I see it?”

5. Hook. Your “hook” is your deeply emotional attitude at top of the scene. My article “How To Stand Out in the First Moment of a Scene” shows how a “hook” can light you up at the start of any scene.

After that hook, it’s blank canvas time. You don’t know what she’s going to do, and she has no clue what you’ve got up your sleeve—moment by moment, talking and listening. 

There are actually two more steps in this process, and I want nothing more to share them with my dedicated and educated readers. I just get the impression my students would lynch me if I gave everything away outside of class, and I see where they’re coming from.  

Even so, if you can make precise decisions on these five choices alone, you’ll be well ahead of virtually the bulk of actors auditioning, creating a smooth runway to launch a soaring audition. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Permission To Say No

You’ve all heard it enough: This business is competitive. You’re rejected by people who matter on a daily basis. 

This however, does not mean that you have to accept every single job you’re offered. This can seem extremely counter-intuitive, particularly if you’re newer to the business or if you’ve gone a long time between jobs. 

Making the decision of whether or not to do that tenuously written short film, or to act in that derivative web series, or to engage in a shoddily produced summer production of “The Taming of the Shrew” isn’t just about damaging your brand or your reputation. Those things matter of course, and should be thought about. By saying yes to a project that…hell, you just don’t feel good about, allows you to set the bar lower for yourself and for what you’ll accept professionally. 

In the summertime, actors often find themselves saying yes to a project that they wouldn’t normally accept, because it’s slow and there’s this mythology that truly committed actors will act in anything they’re given a chance to be in—particularly if their résumé is light. Truly committed actors will act at any given chance by virtue of their deep love of the craft, right? 

No. 

Truly committed actors have taken the time to foster a realistic understanding of the business and they get that there’s a lot of crapola produced, a lot of stereotyped roles written, a lot of fear-motivated productions, and a lot of people scrambling around in the dark. 

Truly committed actors honor their commitment to acting and have the good sense that it could be extremely damaging to their love of acting, their love of the craft, to align themselves with such people. Acting is fun. The fun starts when you work on projects that you find fun, not when you sign on to projects that suck the joy of this career choice from you. 

Plenty of naysayers of course do abound, saying things like, “I’m not at a point in my career where I have the luxury of saying no.”

My response to that is: What if you are?

By saying no you propel yourself to the career you want now. You’re all probably familiar with the expression of God shutting doors and opening windows. By shutting that door yourself, you’re now forced to open a window, even if it means finding a damn axe and breaking through a wall.

If your thought process is “It’s slow (or I haven’t booked in over a year), I should just accept this role (that I don’t like or connect to) in this production (that I don’t like or have faith in) because I’m an actor and I need to act,” then you should have the courage to turn it down and go create an opportunity for yourself. This could mean writing a part for yourself, producing something you do care about, or reaching out to casting offices that you have relationships with—or any of the proactive endeavors that keep actors busy and their sense of personal integrity intact.  

From a more logical standpoint, if you don’t connect to a role when reading a script, chances are, you won’t connect to it in the room, either, or perhaps even on set when it matters. You will have spent your time and production’s time on the audition when neither was necessary.

Your representation may fight you on your choices to turn down an audition. They are working day in and day out to get you in any room. But don’t be afraid to say no. If you are uncomfortable auditioning for a prank show because you think they’re mean, try to fathom how violated your personal values would feel to actually be a paid performer on a prank show—where being mean would be a requirement. Just say no. If you don’t identify with science fiction and aliens, just say no.

 A role that is better for you will definitely come along, and you won’t have to force yourself to start from square one reading about science fiction worlds and rules. I promise you there are actors who already know and love everything sci-fi. Let them have that role. Yours is just down the road if you wait a bit.

“No” is just information. Think of it as equal to “yes,” which is just information, too. When someone else books a role you auditioned for, it’s not a “no” for you, it’s a “not yet.” Or a “not this one, but another one.” Same if you say no to a project. “Not this project, but another one that I’m more passionate about.”  

Still, in this business, you’ll hear the expression “work is work”—an expression that I like to think of as an excuse for not having the courage to have the career you really want. 

“Work is work” orbits around the notion that acting is a tough career choice. There aren’t enough jobs to go around, so why would anyone turn down work?

Even when you’re a nobody in this business, you still need to give careful consideration to the project that you attach your name to, the roles you agree to play, and the ways that you allow yourself to be portrayed. 

As Arthur Miller reminded us in “The Crucible,” as John Proctor: “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life!”

This article was originally posted on Backstage

A Toast To Your Successes

I can’t tell you how many times a client has told me about a recent booking only to tag the news stone-faced with “Yeah, but it’s just a short film,” or “Yeah, but it’s just a pilot,” or “Yeah, but it’s just a small theater company.” However small, it’s vital you acknowledge your successes—all of them! Essentially, if you’re competing in the playing field of New York, L.A., Chicago (or hell, even New Orleans these days), there’s really no such thing as a small success. You’re playing a hand at a casino in Vegas, kids. Any achievement is worth bragging about. And I mean, any booking whatsoever. 

This is a never-ending journey. There will always be work ahead of you. If you don’t acknowledge your triumphs along the way, you will be in a constant state of misery. Beating out 20 other actors for a well-written student film is an accomplishment. Beating out 200 other actors for a celebrity-studded festival-bound indie is also an accomplishment. Now, to most actors, the latter matters and the former is nothing to feel good about.

That attitude is so problematic because there’s always going to be work and struggle in this business. This is what you all signed up to do. You all signed up for a career path where the future is for the most part, more uncertain than the accountant’s down the hall. Thus, if you book a short film and then piss all over it, you’re not only setting yourself up for a lifetime of feeling inadequate, you’re setting yourself up for a serious, lack of longevity—dangerously so.

If you don’t start celebrating each success today, you’re not going to be able to make a real go of it in this business. It’s just going to be too morale-crushing. You’d have to be a straight-up masochist (and I mean a sleeps-in-a-bed-of-barbed-wire-drinks-battery-acid type of masochist) to endure this career path without smelling and celebrating each and every rose along the way. The alternative is worse: The lack of acknowledging one’s successes almost puts one in a situation where there’s no possibility for surprises—a dynamic which could be incredibly detrimental to the safe and successful blossoming of your career at large.

Sometimes I find my clients are viewing their careers through the eyes of everybody back home. The fact of the matter is a lot of people “back home” who don’t work in the industry don’t really think much of a short film that is never going to be in their local theaters. They only care if that pilot you booked gets picked up and they can watch it on their television in the living room. Many of the successes that I see my clients have—successes which take a lot of talent and perseverance—really don’t mean a hill of beans to Uncle Marty and Aunt Fanny or your cousin Alyssa. Lord knows it’s rough being an actor and when you see your family, you feel like you have to give them a report card of “how things are going.” When you mention that short film you booked, it’s met with tepid excitement and canned encouragement. Situations like these are tough, and it’s easy to take on the perspective of these people and view these smaller projects as nothing more than a way to kill time. 

If you’ve made the noble and brave decision to be an actor, you’ve already decided to stop living life on someone else’s terms. So stop ranking out your accomplishments according to what the schoolteachers and investment bankers in your families think of them. This can be especially difficult, because progress in this field doesn’t resemble progress in other industries. In fact, just reading for a major part is a sign of massive progress. However, to people outside the industry it looks like you’re bragging about having a job interview while you still remain unemployed. 

I help my career clients to compete for every role they’re right for. I see it as my job to help empower my students to boost their audition rates, so that they understand how to get their foot in the door to be just as important as helping them book their roles and reach their Oscar potential. 

One of my career clients was just asked by the director of a major upcoming feature film to audition via Skype for him and one of the producers. This was an opportunity this actor would have never had had I not taught her the right way to properly pitch herself for roles she’s right for. Rather than celebrating the opportunity and putting all of her energy into preparing for this Skype audition, she complained that she didn’t have a good reel to send them, after they requested to see something on tape. Just getting the opportunity to audition for top tier film and TV roles is a major milestone for this actor. Rather than celebrating this triumph, she complained that there was another mountain in front of her after reaching the summit of the one she so desperately desired to climb. Adopting an attitude of constant defeat is unsustainable and exhausting, and ultimately leads to actors leaving the business.

Rather than drowning in defeat, start by making a list of the good things that happened to you in your career so far. Know that things might get easier, but not by much, and that most of this is a mental battle. After wrapping a recent film, Gwyneth Paltrow said to me, “I know it sounds awful, but it’s stressful not knowing when the next job is coming.” Accept that it’s tough for even Oscar-winning actors, and that there’s something beautiful in such a life choice—if you allow yourself to see it. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Taking The Chill Out Of The Cold Read

There are cold reads as they exist in acting class and there are cold reads as they exist in first-project productions (student films and novice production companies). Then there are cold reads as they exist in the professional arena of the industry. 

The first two are rushed with often unrealistic expectations marked by a shoddy understanding of the business. The latter refers to a legitimate/professional cold read: When a casting director, producer, director, or writer hands you a piece of text (audition sides or on-set revisions) and says, “We would love to see what you can do with this material. Please take 10–20 minutes—in your own space—to prepare the piece. It’s a given that you won’t be memorized. The only difference between a fully prepared audition and a winning cold read is that your lines are not memorized. 

Somehow, certain acting teachers and low-budget productions have gotten the idea that they can hand actors some sides, say “take five minutes” (which can end up to be more like two) and expect to see a decent performance. This is akin to an emergency room doctor walking up to an unconscious patient and the nurse turning to him/her, and saying, “Go on, save his life.” Obviously, any doctor, no matter how brilliant, would have to take the time to first determine what was wrong with the patient before taking steps to prevent a fatality. 

More importantly, no doctor worth a damn would allow himself or his talent and experience to be put in a situation so unprofessional that it bordered on absurdity. Actors need to have the same zero-tolerance policy for these unprofessional cold read situations.

There is no professional situation in which an actor would have a script dropped on them and be asked to “act” without being given a minimal allotment of prep time. Dropping a script on a performer and giving them the command “go” takes away their power. It is the responsibility and the duty of the actor to stand up for him or herself and say, “I’m going to need 15 minutes of prep time” with a firm voice and a smile.

Last week, a client described a horrible cold read experience she recently had. She said she felt extremely rushed and overwhelmed. When I asked how long did you take to prepare she said, “They only gave me one minute.” I instantly knew this must have been a first-project production team. No major/reputable casting office or production company would ever tell an actor she only had one minute to prepare previously unseen material.

Thus, if people are going to treat you, the actor, in an unprofessional manner, you need to be the one who puts them in check. This doesn’t have to be done in an annoyed or irritated fashion, as such emotions really just stem from fear, after all, and you’d just be reflecting the emotions projected at you in this instance. By asking this production team or acting teacher for the necessary amount of time, you’re like a kind guidance counselor who essentially reminds them how to treat people. By sticking up for yourself, you’re essentially doing them a favor. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Find A Rep With Passion

The actors who 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.

This article was originally posted on Backstage