A Must-Read Book for Actors

David Mamet’s “True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor” is essential reading for any actor navigating the jungle of acting training.

Mamet’s book is indispensable, as it exposes the dirty underbelly of this industry by calling nonsense “techniques” out for being undoable, running actors through hoops, stealing their money, and offering little in the way of practicable, or actionable advice.

Mamet exposes the fact that character is an illusion created by the personality of the actor and the circumstances within the writing. For him, “There is no character. There are just lines on the page.” This concept is at the core of my work with actors—I help them to use their singular personalities to book the role and reach their Oscar potential on set. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

6 Ways to Get Noticed Faster

I’m going to move to NYC/L.A. and I’m going to get an agent and sign up for an acting class with a reputable teacher. I’ll audition around town for a couple years and I’ll eventually land my big break in a major film or well-received indie or I’ll book a series regular role on a pilot that gets picked up. 

Great game plan. 

If this were, of course, 1996. 

This is a decent model for success for an actor in New York or L.A. approximately 20 years ago. 

Far too many actors are still trying to work this model: agent, audition, booking. 

And sure it does work. Commercially, I know a handful of actors who excel at it, don’t have day jobs, and regularly add to their retirement plans. 

Theatrically, I know five out of every 100 for whom this model is working. Meaning for every 100 actors I know, I know five who are steadily adding to their résumés, their bank accounts, and their general public popularity via the method of agent, audition, book role. 

This is 2015. The entertainment industry has changed. You need to be the one who wakes up at dawn each morning with a chisel and a cup of coffee, determined to carve one out for yourself. 

All that being said, below are six ways to get noticed faster.

1. Being pleasantly persistent and not waiting around. Most actors lack follow-through. Actors know they need to send follow-up emails to industry professionals who can help them move forward in this long-ass shit-shoveling show known as forging a career. But they don’t. Call it fear of rejection, call it laziness—whatever. If you start following through on every connection you’ve made consistently, I guarantee you’ll see results over time. 

2. Confidence. “It’s this way.” Have you ever followed a complete stranger’s directions, simply because they seemed sure of themself? You need to have the conviction of the random guy on the corner that says the marina is that way, even though there is no evidence indicating one way or the other. I help actors adopt a body attitude of attractive confidence to go into the audition room andwin the role.

3. Patience. Stop demanding instant results. If you start getting down on yourself that you’re not moving forward at a fast enough rate, you’re going to psych yourself out—and become victim to many of the elements that actors fall prey to: depression, low self-esteem, self-doubt, and aggrandizement of “safe” professions. (Maybe I should study for the LSAT?)

4. Stop being afraid to look like an asshole! I’ve seen so many safe performances, I feel like someone should pin a medal on me. Such performances often stem from the actor’s irrational desire to determine what casting or producers are looking for, and thus emulate that. The result is boring—so boring I feel like the actor should have to pay a fine. By letting out your inner weirdness, you make your performance a jillion times more interesting. 

5. Help a sister out. Give. Offer to read someone’s script and provide feedback. Go to someone’s table read. Be a PA on a friend’s short film. Give your acting class friend a referral to your agent if you can. In helping your colleagues out in these ways, you’re building up your ranks of support and creating a wealth of good karma that’s going to benefit you later. 

6. Create your own projects. This piece of advice is probably the most essential, and the one that actors protest against the most. But I’m here to act. I don’t/can’t/won’t write. OK, fine, then hire someone who can. Align yourself with talented writers and cinematographers who have the skills you don’t in order to create content that will get you noticed faster than any co-starring role can. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

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