6 Ways To Make Your Career Go Viral

Actors hear all the time how much harder it is to be an actor in this day and age. There’s a ton of competition and the industry is basically overcrowded. This simply means more people and fewer jobs to go around. The good news is that social media is something that exists today that young actors of the 90s simply didn’t have access to, because it didn’t exist. While social media can be dizzying and overwhelming, it can also allow you to push your career and your brand forward in ways that previous generations were never able to. 

The key is to find your singularity—the thing you do better than anyone else—and to consistently promote that specific flavor and fingerprint of you across all media platforms from blogs to newsletters to videos—any and all content you create. Remember, creating content equals freedom. Rather than seeing content creation as a form of drudgery and another obligation, view it as something that frees you from waiting for the phone to ring and allows you to engage your audience and funnel them into your special world. It empowers you to stop asking for permission to have a career! 

1. Be consistent with your brand online.

• On all social media platforms, your content lives on. Screen it carefully as you would an outside observer and be careful to ensure that your content is reflective of the public version of you. Seldom should your content be about “how we got drunk on Saturday night,” as that’s your personal life and generally boring. It’s also quite derivative as so many young people already have that story to tell.  
• Choose a “mission statement,” or value proposition, for you (your business) and try it out for a few months. If it doesn’t work, you can change it. For example, your mission statement could be “to regale the world with tales of my misadventures in dating.”
• Keep it clear: When presenting yourself to the public, you should be the girl/guy who thinks/does/wants. For example, I’m the coach who has the highest percentage of clients who book in the industry, and I empower actors to get themselves in the room and book the damn role. You might be the girl who wants love but can’t get it, the dirty bearded man-baby who does fart jokes, the conniving socialite alpha girl who takes delicious pleasure in destroying her competition, etc.

2. Not all content is good content.

• Use this opportunity to really introduce yourself as a performer. Internet content lives on, so really think about the message you’re sending. Subpar content (derivative, offensive but not meaningfully so, porn, etc.) can be a detriment to your career rather than a boost forward. 
• No snobbery: Some people do still make a name for themselves with fart jokes and dancing with their puppies in tutus, so don’t feel like your content has to be super high-brow. However, it does have to look good and it does have to be original. 

3. Engaging your audience.

• Social media is the proverbial “water cooler” of our era. At work, the water cooler is for chatting, updates, gossip—basically an exchange of info. Use social media the same way. You need to have dialogue with people on social media, which can allow you to build a following.
• Building a following through sincere dialogue can help enormously in the game of gaining online support for your endeavors. People want to feel invested in you personally as well as your career. 

4. Be in the know.

• I don’t care if you quote Nietzsche in your spare time and if the walls of your apartment are painted black and if the only people who ever really understood you are a bunch of deadbeat poets. It is no longer okay for you not to know what Vine is or to not be on Instagram. You have to be on social media and go aggressive if you want to work in show business. 
• Use Hootsuite to schedule your tweets/statuses for free. These updates should not be perfect. They don’t really matter, so dare to fail on these and test your boundaries. Your “voice” will come.  

5. Roll with the punches.

In life and in show business, there’s a strong expectation that you need to roll with the punches. Social media requires you to roll with the punches to an even greater degree, but all on your terms! This is the time to grow that thick skin and to accept that you’re never going to be perfect. 

• Depend on failure and make mistakes. You’re not always going to say or do the best thing on social media. That’s OK, no one expects you to, and few people are actually doing it themselves.
• Depend on trolls and haters. This can be the hardest issue for actors to grapple with, and can certainly take some adjustment, but the reality is, if everyone likes you, you’re doing something wrong. As Andy Warhol once said, “Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.”
• Even so, make sure you don’t become a hater. You’re too smart and have too much value to join their ranks.

6. Final thoughts. 

• Start slow. Add one thing to your social media list per month and keep growing.
• Know that this is the new normal of show business and it will never stop.
• Know that as you grow, you will have bigger challenges as you have bigger successes.
• In the end, this is work; but you chose this job. Always remember why you wanted to do this job, and give yourself three reasons to love what you’re doing. It’s too easy to get bogged down in the mire of “business,” so if you need to add a dash of color and spice to the mix, do it. Choose fun stamps, listen to music in between phone calls. Make a silly Vine that has nothing to do with “your singularity.” 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

6 Signs You're Ready For Pilot Season

As one of the most competitive acting season approaches, you spend your days preparing mentally, physically, and emotionally. Here are six signs you’re ready for pilot season.

1. You don’t buy into the myth of representation. You’re not lulled into a false sense of security that your agent or manager will pitch you for every role you’re right for. The responsibility of getting into the room is your burden alone. You know how to pitch yourself for every role you’re right for and you don’t blame your overwhelmed reps with their often overly full rosters for not getting you into the room. 

2. You’re a worthy opponent. This is the Olympic level of the game. You must be at your absolute best before going into major casting offices, otherwise you risk closing more doors than you open. To stay competitive, you must get a vigorous acting workout every week. I cannot stress the importance of a small class where you work every week! At my studio, every student leaves every class having experienced an undeniable acting breakthrough, or they don’t sit down! 

It’s also important to have a clear context for the work you bring into class. Ideally the pieces you devote your time to should not be just for the bubble of the class: it should have a clear context (film, TV, or theater) and purpose (scene study, refine audition technique, practice cold-reading, fine-tune a workshop piece). 

3. You don’t fight your personality, you embrace it. You’ve long stopped trying to guess what “they” are looking for. You know that it’s your job to assume you are what they are looking for. You’ve done the work and have brought yourself to the piece with fun and impactful choices.

4. You’ve got a backbone of steel. This business is so tough, it’s practically a war zone. If you’re really, truly ready for pilot season, you’re able to shrug off the near-misses, almost-bookings, and toxic industry members with grace and aplomb. Being pinned or put on hold for a major role and then not booking it happens to actors in this business every goddamn day. The real professionals shake it off and resume their place in the chain-gang. Nor does some poisonous casting director rattle you or some eye-rolling producer who yawns through your audition. You don’t take any of the garbage seriously or personally because you know your survival in this business depends on it. 

5. You’re a walking encyclopedia. You realize that part of your responsibility as a professional actor means being acquainted with the style, tone, and expectations of the different networks. You understand that you could take a single scene and do it 12 different ways for 12 different networks. You know which networks prefer actor performances that are more grounded, and which prefer more character-y reads. You know which networks like comedic performances that are more “up” and which like those that are more “thrown away.” You have this knowledge hardwired to your brain like the last four digits of your social security and you are able to adapt at the snap of one’s fingers. 

6. You’ve got a sense of perspective. At the end of the day, the cards are going to fall where they’re going to fall. You understand that as professional, talented, and deserving as you may be, you might not end up attached to a pilot when all is said and done. And even if you are one of the lucky few who books a pilot, you understand that its success and longevity is largely out of your hands. Whatever happens, you get that there is only a finite amount of what you can control, and you’re at peace with that. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

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