A Must-Watch TV Performance

I would highly encourage aspiring actors to watch the work of Mark Duplass. Duplass is the creator and star of the HBO series “Togetherness”—a show that looks at human relationships, expectations, dreams, and realities with honesty and humor. Duplass, along with a cast of capable supporting actors, navigate the challenges and general b.s. of life, families, and relationships with a truly nuanced wit and candor.

Duplass is also an important figure to follow because he condones a very proactive and realistic method of achieving industry success. Using his career as an example, Duplass empowers young creatives to produce projects—with almost non-existent budgets—that have the power to ignite their careers. Actors see more results when they generate projects themselves, rather than waiting for work to fall into their laps. If you can’t write, find a friend who can. In my work with actors, I help them to book more roles and launch their careers—on their own terms! Duplass is a testament to the powers of teamwork and self-created momentum.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Why the Best CDs Don’t Want You to Please Them

Anyone who’s been part of my readership for even a few months knows that I constantly acknowledge that this business is hard for everyone. Working actors have to compete against formidable competition, while up-and-coming actors have to fight against the masses to get noticed. Staff members of post-production houses work 14-hour days or more. Shows are given the greenlit and halted liked the ebb and flow of the tides. Movies bomb, production companies are laughed at, and careers end based on opening weekend numbers. Casting directors are soldiers in this business, just like everyone else, and their jobs are truly difficult. 

You’re Not Here to Be a Pleaser
I make my living by empowering actors. So do certain casting directors. As much as I have dedicated my life to this work, it frustrates me when I see talented actors engaging in self-sabotaging actions that thwart their progress and derail their careers. These self-destructive behaviors include coming to class unprepared, making safe/derivative choices, or acting like their agents hold the keys to career success.

I can only imagine that casting directors, being the creative and eclectic group of individuals that they are, would have their same amount of frustrations with actors and their own pet peeves about the auditioning process in general. Just as some acting coaches don’t express their frustrations well (barking at actors or demeaning them), neither do casting directors.

But the No. 1 rule of the audition is always stop trying to guess what they are looking for, assume you are who they’re looking for, and bring yourself to the piece with a specific and fun choice. 

Aside from getting in and out of a room gracefully and making fun and specific choices, your focus should never be to “please” the casting director—or the director, or even the producer for that matter. Your job is to demonstrate through your brave choices, courage, ingenuity, and professionalism that you are the fucking solution. 

Casting directors are discerning gatekeepers, and many of them exude an artistry in their jobs that is obscenely overlooked in the industry today. While they can influence the final casting decision, they are not the ones who make it—the producers, writers, and directors are. Forging relationships with these individuals is equally important throughout your career as they are the ones who can actually give you a job.  

Casting Directors with Acting Studios
When it comes to casting directors with acting studios, this is indeed a balancing act of sorts. On the one hand, many casting directors are passionate about acting and want to help actors perform better in the room and share their knowledge. On the other hand, there is undeniably a slippery slope at work, as favoritism for being called in (or even cast) could be given to students of the casting director (which happens), and that poisons the merit-based well of “the best actor gets the job,” and creates an actor mentality that they have to kowtow to this casting director, or essentially pay for class as an indirect way to pay to get auditions or book work. 

The bottom line is: Great casting directors want great performances, not to have their asses kissed.

Forge New Relationships
Instead of trying to ingratiate yourself to industry professionals who are limited in the ways that they can advance your career, why not reach out to directors, writers, and producers and maintain relationships with them? Not only do professionals, like writers, not receive enough recognition, they are also likely to be more open to meeting actors and building relationships with them, as they’re not so besieged by actors trying to get their attention all the time. The same goes for indie directors. Making an effort to meet indie directors whose careers are on an upward trajectory is a wise idea: They want to meet new faces and they won’t have the hang-ups and barriers present that other industry players may have.

In my career coaching program, I help actors launch their careers—on their own terms—by building and maintaining game-changing relationships with major directors, writers, and producers.

Casting directors are an important alliance to have, but they’re not the “jackpot” that many new actors make them out to be. Finding off-the-beaten-track methods for opening industry doors is possibly the best way to get ahead in this business. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

What I Wish I’d Known Before I Started in the Industry

Success is always self-created. I learned very quickly that waiting for someone else to create my success as the leader of a thriving acting school would be a certain recipe for failure. The only way to ignite a truly awesome career is to do it oneself.

Never put your career success in the hands of another person, particularly agents and managers, and stop waiting for opportunities to fall into your lap—they never will. Any meaningful success will always need to start with you creating your own opportunities first.

I wanted more meaningful experiences as an acting coach, so I created my master class—a melee of successful artists, celebrity clients, and emerging actors and writers. The achievements of this class reinforce themselves and breed more accomplishments, helping me to create a thriving community of elite actors. My success as an acting coach continues to revolve around the idea of created opportunities in that I help students achieve their goals: launched careers, booked roles, awards and nominations, and irrefutable acting breakthroughs in every class.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

How to Develop Attractive Confidence and Win the Role

The audition starts the moment the casting director, director, and producer lay eyes on you, and not—as many think—when you start “acting.” This could be the moment you walk through the door of the audition room, or during the walk from the waiting room to the audition room. The moment you are identified by your name, here to read for role X, every word or action needs to generate the illumination of pure, complete confidence. 

Your success is a direct result of such confidence. You need to think of yourself as an elite surgeon who is there to perform the most crucial life-saving surgery—and only you can do it just so. Thinking of yourself as akin to someone in the medical profession is useful, as we’ve all experienced confident doctors with warm smiles and handshakes, who aren’t intimidated or disturbed by our gross or mysterious ailments. These are the doctors who convince us they can cure us, heal us, and help us, even though they don’t have to say a word affirming this. Their body confidence is so strong it’s like another entity in the room; it tells us so. 

On the flip side, there are the doctors who do everything but exude confidence. Their words and actions produce anxiety and lack of clarity, effortlessly suggesting that our stubborn rash or odd bump might be something that rhymes with smancer. They seem unsure of themselves and our symptoms do nothing but to befuddle them. Medical professionals like these are like actors who have a shaky grip on their preparation, who don’t believe they’re right for the role, who don’t believe they deserve it, or who freak out if there’s a last minute change of sides or additional pages to prepare. No one wants a doctor like that, and no one wants to pay an actor like that, or have such anxious energy contaminating a set. 

Building Confidence
Just as I’ve always said that the personality of the actor is nine-tenths of the performance, fostering and exuding real confidence is essentially the foundation on which this performance rests. It’s the cement layer upon which you build your skyscraper. 

Just as you must distill your “hook”—the deeply improvisational and emotional attitude that launches you into the start of every scene—you must adopt and ignite a body attitude of power, grit, and determination before walking into the room.

Body confidence leads to actual confidence (emotional confidence). Just as your words create your reality, confidence in your body develops into internal confidence that starts to effect change. Before walking into every audition, one of my brave and talented master class students lights himself up with the attitude: “I’m the fucking solution.” 

If you consider the confidence of certain celebrities, such as Scarlett Johansson, one can conclude that it’s a direct result of accumulated years of constant validation. I help actors develop that level of impactful attractive confidence within minutes to help them go into the room and book the role. 

Authentic vs. Fake
As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, genuine confidence always comes with repeated success, colossal failure, and many years of flying hours. In the audition room, you need to know deep down in your gut that you’re the best person for the role and that you deserve it. Unless you are able to hold those two truths simply and utterly in your heart, you’ll reside in the danger of having your confidence look fake, manufactured, or as if you’re trying too hard.

Again, we can return to the doctor analogy to illustrate this point. Truly confident doctors radiate their unshakable belief in themselves with each syllable and each second of eye contact. Doctors who aren’t confident but desperately try to appear so are the ones who say things like, “don’t worry” in such a way that it does nothing but ignite anxiety. 

The 3 Results Confidence Will Get You
When you’re at your Olympic best as an actor, brimming with confidence, there are only three results you should be satisfied with after an audition:

1. Booking the role. You got the part, kid!

2. Booking the room. They loved you and your performance blew their minds, but you are just not right for the role. Maybe it’s your height. Maybe you look too similar to the lead. Be assured that they will be calling you back for another part in their next big project. You will most likely win that role.

3. Bringing you back. This is a subset of booking the room. This means the powers that be bring you back in either for a callback, a producer’s session, a chemistry read, or to read for some other part in the same project. 

These are the career-launching results that a performance lit up with confidence will deliver.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

An Inspiring Performance All Aspiring Actors Must See

One performance that every aspiring actor should see is Dustin Hoffman’s role in “The Graduate.” While it’s a superb performance, there are three distinct reasons that it is a must-watch for actors. The first reason is that Hoffman was cast in spite of his appearance. As the story goes, the powers behind that film were looking for a tall, basketball playing, ivy league-esque leading man. Thus, actors, don’t shun an audition if you feel like you don't look the way the part is envisioned. The second reason is that Hoffman shows real innovation in the craft: As legend has it, Hoffman saw the director chuckling off-camera after some clunky move he made with Anne Bancroft onscreen. Determined not to break character, Hoffman starts banging his head against the wall—a move which made it into the finished film. Now that's determination and creativity. Finally, Hoffman shows us how pursuing the simplest attitude—“I’m going to get this girl back,”—can be truly riveting and dynamic as he approaches it through a variety of angles: desperation, comedy, lunacy, and courage. No special effects needed. With the highest percentage of booked roles in the industry, I help actors make the brave and surprising choices that win them the role and help them reach their Oscar potential on set.

This articla was originally posted on Backstage

What Should an Actor Never Do in an Audition Room?

Don’t guess what they are looking for. Assume you are who they’re looking for, and bring yourself to the piece with a fun and impactful choice. Too many actors examine their sides with a focus upon trying to determine what the lofty-powers-that-be are looking for. That’s honestly the most futile thing you can do. Quite often, what the producers and directors are “looking for” is someone to save their ass. That’s the full extent. Sure they might have a rough idea of the character in their heads, but so what? They’re seldom married to that hazy notion. Have the courage to assert yourself as the solution to their casting problem, and then make a courageous choice that leaves a permanent mark, so that they see you and nobody else in the role. Trust in your own individuality and instead of stifling your uniqueness in the name of trying to be more what you think they want, let your weirdness, imperfectness, depravedness, and freakishness shine! Those are quite often the most memorable. I help actors discover their singularity—the exclusive combination of attitudes and behaviors that make them an original. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage