What Belongs on an Actor’s Résumé

Photo Source: Jesse Balgley

Your résumé is simply a document which shows your credits, training, and special skills in a professional manner. If you don’t have a lot of recognizable credits, there are still ways to enhance the overall presentation. For example, if you acted in indie films which played at festivals or won awards, you can denote that on your résumé with an asterisk and a note at the bottom. If you’ve just done student films, list the name of the director rather than the name of the university, unless it’s a prestigious film school, such as AFI or NYU. Highlight your training and make sure the résumé demonstrates that you have studied with reputable teachers. Use the special skills section to list abilities that could add to a production, such as firing a pistol, gymnastics, and foreign language skills. Have fun with the special skills section! Add an offbeat special skill such as “dropping electronic equipment” or “catches every Seinfeld reference no matter how obscure.” Often that can be an organic and fun talking point during an audition. In our Career Coaching Program, we help actors launch their careers and construct résumés for maximum impact. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

What ‘Jurassic Park’ Can Teach Us About Winning The Role

Most of us remember the scene in “Jurassic Park” when Jeff Goldblum illustrates chaos theory by placing a drop of water on Laura Dern’s hand. The presentation serves to give a clear example of the fallibility of prediction. Each time Goldblum placed a drop of water on the same spot on Dern’s hand, he asked her which direction she thought it would roll. Each time she was wrong. It’s the same with auditioning. Though your starting point might be the same, don’t expect your audition is going to feel like what you did at home, in the car, or in your acting class.

Here are some things I hear actors say: 

• “I had it memorized in the car.”
• “I nailed it at home with my boyfriend.”
• “I nailed it in my class.”

As one should anticipate, the audition is simply going to feel differently in the audition room. This is, in part, by virtue of the fact that you’re in a foreign environment, and partly because nothing is ever the same—as Goldblum’s character so memorably demonstrated. There are a range of factors which can be unexpected or adjusted in the room which you can’t control, and which could potentially throw you from how you felt when rehearsing the scene on the phone with your Mom—whether they have you sitting down or standing up, whether the reader is close or far or male or female. If you aren’t malleable, you’re not going to be able to survive—much like the dinosaurs, to continue the analogy. 

But more importantly, as an artist there’s going to be a sense of disappointment that you experience along with a stunting of development by virtue of the fact that you’re not constantly creating something, but rather reciting something. 

This is a problem because it strips your audition of any danger or real dynamism. Every time you act a scene, you should be living through it in a completely different way each time. 

In my opinion, the only thing you have control over is your start—a really specific, fun and impactful choice (hook)—and the structure you created in preparation. Essentially, this start is akin to Goldblum placing the drop of water on Dern’s hand. You need to hit the proverbial mark that you prepared, but you should honestly have no idea where it’s going to roll. After the start, the rest of the scene shouldn’t really feel like a comfortable pair of shoes. In fact, the more off balance it is, the more it resembles the dangerous uncertainty of life.  

If you don’t have that about-to-fall feeling, I think you’re just playing it safe.  

This leads us back to the “Jurassic Park” scene. If you’ll all remember, the conversation about water droplets and chaos theory took place in one of the Jeeps. But shortly after, all the main characters leapt out of the cars and started exploring past the fenced in borders of the park, where the danger (and adventure) lurked. You need to have that mentality of starting from a strong place of structure (and comfort), such as in the seat of a Jeep, and the willingness to rip off your seatbelt, throw open that door, and head into the uncharted territory, where you don’t know what you will encounter. 

I coach my clients to 110 percent so they can go into the audition room at 100 percent and book the role, seeing it as an adventure and an exploration—not a place to regurgitate prepared material, but a place to take their bombproof preparation, jump off it, and not look back. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Tips for Determining Your ‘Brand’

Photo Source: Jesse Balgley

The best way to determine your brand is through a combination of soul-searching and market research. Do this the old-fashioned way by looking in the mirror with a pen and paper handy and make a list of words and phrases that come to mind. These could be traditionally descriptive adjectives such as impish, weaselly, ordinary-looking, trustworthy, squidgy, or random phrases like “Get off my lawn,” or “I’ll cut you.” 

From your list, start building a greater sense of what you have to consistently offer the industry. Use your pen and paper for this part of the exercise, finishing the sentence, “I’m the ____ who ____.” For instance,this could be “I’m the sweet-faced guy who gets kicked around.” “I’m the ivy-league lawbreaker who eats Vicodin for breakfast.” Often your brand is connected to your acting “sweet spot” and it’s worth exploring them both—here’s my article on the subject: “How To Find Your Acting Sweet Spot.” 

The final step in determining your own personal brand revolves around reaching out to your closest friends and asking them for adjectives and phrases that describe you. Most importantly, give your friends permission to not be complimentary. In my career coaching program, I help actors discover their acting “singularity”—the exclusive combination of attitudes and behaviors that make them an original.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Stop Waiting For Your Real Life To Begin

L.A. is a tough town to live in. Show business is a tough as fangs business to work in. We know that. But one aspect that makes both of these arenas particularly difficult is the fact that this city has a Never-never-land element to it—one where actors refuse to be happy or financially responsible in the now, but chronically push such elements off into the future when they’ve achieved some tabloid-worthy success. 

Below is some of the most classic shit actors say that gets in their way and some of the most destructive. If you can overcome it, you’ll be happier than you ever imagined.

“If I get this job, I’ll never ask for anything else…”
“If I book a ___, I’ll know I’ve made it!”
“I’ll be happy once I’m a series regular.” 
“I’ll start saving money once I’m making six figures.”

It’s really great and important to have such goals, but if your goals start getting in the way of your day-to-day happiness and your ability to act like a human being by being present in your daily life, your goals have now become obstacles. 

How to make your ambition your friend and not your enemy. Essentially, you need to put your ambition in check, be happy now, and stop hedging all of your happiness on outside forces that you can’t control. 

How many times have you let the entire day pass you by as you waited for your phone to ring to find out if you got that part, that call-back, that agent, or manager?

You are at the mercy of so many external factors as an actor. An unfathomable amount of decisions are out of your control. Despite your very best efforts to book a role, you might be too short, too blonde, or not a close enough relative to the producer. Many key details that stand between you and your desired outcome are out of your hands and it can leave you feeling very unsteady. 

You have a responsibility to take control of your inner world. Not to bemoan how unfair the industry is or to push your happiness to some pie-in-the-sky day. Your job is to be centered. How? Stop waiting for your “real life” to begin and enjoy, relish in, find all the peace and pride in the life you are living in, right now.

Take a break and enjoy the sunset. Take time to fall in love and have your heart broken and to very creatively plot revenge on that jerkface. Being happy now is your responsibility as an artist. We forget that. 

Ambition is the obsession with the end result. Tenacity and grit is the moment by moment. While ambition may have planted the seed of where you’d like to go, you don’t let it drive you there—you don’t hand over the responsibly. Ambition will eat you alive. Center yourself so that your ambition doesn’t take over the show.

Easier said than done? Whether you’re a beginner or an Academy Award winner, the same series of questions plague us all. What if I fail? What if I never work again? What if I made the wrong choice to work on this or that film and it ruins my brand? What will happen to my career now that I’m aging, now that I’m larger, now that it has been three years since I’ve been on a series…? Believe it or not, there is no top of the mountain, there will always be peaks and there will always be valleys.

As Julianne Moore memorably said at the SAG Awards this year, “As an actor, you’re always surprised when things work out.” This means that even established, lauded, and award-winning actors experience a profound sense of what-ifs and wrenching amounts of uncertainty—particularly if that’s something Moore felt compelled to say on the red carpet. 

One of my clients is currently in the process of creating an original series for HBO. As exciting as this sounds, he is absolutely terrified. He feels that it could all go away in the blink of an eye. He’s right. It could. He’s also always extremely grateful and excited, as this is a huge career milestone. The lesson to be learned is that once one mountain is conquered, the view unfolds before you with a vast valley of new mountains which all need to be conquered.  

What you have control over. You have control over delivering the best performance you possibly can. I help my clients book their roles by making fun and impactful choices in the room. Wherever you are in your career, love what you are doing. Wherever you aim to end up, be grateful for where you are at and what you have right now. 

We often hear amazing performers recount their experience of their best performances as such: “I genuinely can’t remember what happened on stage, I was completely lost in the moment. I’m so glad you enjoyed the performance.” They were living in their performance as it happened. Chances are, they weren’t 20 minutes ahead of themselves, removing their make-up in the dressing room and planning what to make for dinner. They weren’t thinking to themselves as they recited “To Be or Not to Be…,” “Yeah, this speech is gonna win me that Tony award…I wonder what I should wear…” The future doesn’t belong to any of us. All you have is this moment.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

When Is It OK to Turn Down a Role?

Photo Source: Jesse Balgley

There’s a pressure on actors to accept every piece of work offered to them, particularly when they’re just starting out. All work is viewed as a “résumé builder” and an opportunity for much-needed experience. However, just as you wouldn’t go out on a date with every single person that asked you, you should exhibit a certain level of particularity when it comes to the acting jobs you accept.

While I discuss this topic at length in the article “Permission to Say No,” a good rule of thumb is whether the job causes more damage than potential good: If the job could damage your brand or your soul, don’t accept it. For example, if it would chip away at your soul to play a topless waitress in an edgy indie that might play at major festivals, don’t do it. You’re going to have to live with your soul for a long time. Don’t let the potential promise of festivals and the pressure to be “brave” as an actor push you past what your gut and spirit say you’re truly not comfortable with and which violate your brand.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Be a Blank Canvas

Photo Source: Shutterstock

In life, you truly don’t know what the person you’re talking to is going to say or do. You can achieve this dynamic on stage or on screen as well. Some actors protest and say that the script prevents that sense of wonder and spontaneity, but I disagree. If you really are in the moment, emotionally full but allowing yourself to be a blank canvas which responds truthfully to what’s happening before you, you really will respond in an organic manner as if you don’t know what you’re partner is going to say or do.  

This article was originally posted on Backstage