“You call yourself an actor?”
My heart sunk. I had been working on the scene for weeks and I was so excited to finally get feedback from my acting teacher, and that is not what I was expecting to hear from him.
In retrospect, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
I’ll always remember the look on his face when he asked me that. He was completely serious, and I immediately knew that it wasn’t intended as a joke, even though I chuckled.
To this day, I can’t exactly identify what that look was, but I knew I didn’t like it. Over time, I came to know exactly what he meant.
I respected my acting teacher very much, and I hung to every word and every critique.
This was probably the biggest one and almost no one else in the class caught the deeper meaning. Those that did, went on to build incredible careers and have participated in some amazing productions.
Over the last few years, I have begun sharing that message and what I learned from my acting teacher with members of our Boost My Star tribe, and those that have taken it to heart have enjoyed massive success in their acting careers too.
If you want to be successful as an actor, it all comes down to 2 things...
The truth is, most actors that are truly pursuing this as a profession are doing almost everything right, yet they struggle to make meaningful career progress.
Audition, Agent, Repeat. That’s how it mostly goes. Every now and then they book a role and after the production has wrapped, they go back to the same cycle, right where they left off.
What pushes talented actors out of the industry isn’t a lack of work. It’s a lack of interesting work.
One liners and bit roles are only interesting the first handful of times. After that, the monotony sinks in, especially when you know that there is so much more you can offer, if only someone would give you a chance.
We have all had those moments of hollering at the TV or squirming in our seats at the movie theatre, thinking we could have played a role so much better.
One of the reasons that I started Boost My Star, was that I noticed everyone (including me) putting the cart before the horse so to speak.
Every actor I knew was focused almost entirely on refining their talent and getting better. They were always in enrolled in one acting class or another, and sometimes they were in a few of them at the same time.
It seemed like they were at a workshop every other weekend and they were completely focused on becoming better actors.
However, they never took much time to focus on the things that would actually lead to them having an opportunity to share their talent.
That’s why most careers never get off the ground.
Actors are creatives and as such, we love flexing that creative muscle and we tend to forget about the things that are necessary to build a career.
Even if you have an agent it’s still up to you to make contacts with industry decision makers, nurture those relationships and ultimately generate interest for your talents from CDs.
Remember that at the end of the day, the industry is a business. Unfortunately, talent is not enough, and you have to make yourself into a marketable commodity. That’s why Instagrammers and YouTubers are coming to the mainstream entertainment industry in droves.
They draw in viewers and also bring people to the box office. This makes it worthwhile for the networks and studios to cast them, even though there may be actors that are better suited for the role.
While I completely disagree with this and think that talent should always win, I do understand it.
Unfortunately, it’s one part of the industry that I don’t see changing anytime soon, if ever. Rather than hoping things were different the most successful actors have learned to operate within the system instead of trying to change it.
After you have some traction on that side of the coin, then it’s time to focus on other things.
See, you can take a dozen classes on how to master an audition, but it won’t make a difference if you don’t have many auditions to go too.
So, focus on generating as many opportunities for yourself as possible first, then focus on how you will deliver a star worthy performance.
That way, when step on set you can stop thinking of yourself as an actor and you can instead be a vessel through which your characters come to life.
When you approach the industry and your craft this way, you immediately become irresistible to industry decision makers, because you will be the “whole package.”
Casting Directors, will want to hire you on the spot.
They see talented actors all day every day but talented actors that also have the business workings of the industry figured out are very rare, so they will lean on you and look to cast you at every opportunity.
CDs love to work with talented actors that can also add value to the production and draw an audience.
Making an effort to meet industry decision makers, work on generating opportunities for yourself, and focusing on the “business” side of things is not why actors choose the industry.
Because of this, I have built tools to make you visible to decision makers and help you promote your career practically on autopilot so you don’t have to worry about it.
If your acting career isn’t progressing as fast as you hoped and if you are not booking as much interesting work as you would like then it’s time to do something differently.
If you do this, the at the very least you will be doing something differently than the 99.99% of actors who simply hope to be noticed and “discovered.”
You will be taking a bold step towards making things happen. That’s a perfect recipe for success in your acting career and what I hope will lead me to...
See you at the top,
Scott