At some point in every actor's career, a decision has to be made about which way to go next. The industry is always looking for the next big thing and actors who don’t reinvent themselves will soon fall out of favor.

You will often see actors go from having mediocre careers, relaunch their career properly and go to entirely new levels of success.

Reinventing and relaunching careers is a conversation that happens almost on a daily basis in the offices of the majors, but hardly any other actors ever think about this.

I bring this up with actors often, and they typically think that it doesn’t apply to them if they don’t already have an established career. However, this also works if your career has stalled, or even if you are struggling to get it off the ground.

The same strategies that helped Chris Pratt go from playing a goofy, carefree guy to being a bona-fide action hero, without skipping a beat, are the same strategies that can help take your career to the next level regardless of where your career is currently...

Before we get into the specifics of how to do this, I want to be clear on something...

Sometimes, it doesn’t work and it’s usually because an actor’s instinct is to change things up too much.

When you are looking to reinvent and relaunch your career, it’s important that you don’t jump to another extreme from where you are now.

Take Chris Pratt’s successful reinvention as an example. There is still a thread of a carefree, goofy guy that is present in the other characters he plays.

Most actors go too far in the other direction. They want to go from playing comedic characters to action heroes, while leaving the comedy behind entirely.

Kevin James jumping from playing a mall cop to playing a psychopath didn't work because the character was completely disconnected from his signature comedic brand.

That’s not to say, it wasn’t a good performance. Personally, I think it showed an entirely new level of acting skills that no one knew he had.
It was an impressive performance, but not one that is going to be very effective in reinventing himself and relaunching his career.

On the other hand, comedian Kevin Hart can play dramatic roles masterfully because he builds his characters with a bridge to his comedic nature.

He won’t be passed up for a project, for a lack of believability in the dramatic parts of his characters, and that’s what you want to achieve.

Whether it’s through the projects you are going to work on, or through the characters you build within those projects, you need to have a believable stepping stone.

Here’s what I mean by that...

It’s possible to jump from one extreme to the other, as long as you choose the project carefully. It should have a character that you can bridge to whatever category you are moving from.

If you are working on launching your career and don't yet have a foothold in any particular category, then find the stepping stone from your personality.

Then, you just need to hone your skills in whatever direction your reinvention is taking you. Chris Pratt got some stage combat training so he could handle himself well in the action scenes.

The mistake most actors make is training for the sake of training. When you train without a specific goal in mind, you tend to be spinning your wheels.

It’s kind of like going to the gym, and wandering around aimlessly. Sure, doing a little bit of something is better than sitting on the couch, but the results won’t be very different.

However, training with a defined goal is completely different. It’s then simply a matter of coming up with a plan and executing that plan.

So what does a plan like that look like?

This is something you would work on with your management team, but let’s go over the most important part of that plan: building an audience.

The question most actors have when we discuss this is “how do you build an audience, before you even have any projects in the new category you want to focus on?”

Start by associating yourself with people who specialize in the category you are moving into.

There are a number of ways you can do that. These are just a few ideas...
You can launch a YouTube channel that focuses on what’s going on in the category you are training for.

You can start an Instagram channel featuring the events and developments of the new category.

Highlighting the category could even end up opening doors for you as decision makers start to seek you out, to help drive attention to their projects.

If you have been around Boost My Star for any length of time, you know that an actor that can bring attention to a project will always capture an industry decision maker’s interest.

Combine that with a solid industry reputation and you could soon be making huge career progress. Here’s the part I can help with.

When you are reinventing and relaunching your career you have to come up with a detailed plan for how you are going to go about building your career. That could involve new management, focusing more on your social media presence, or even putting together some projects of your own.

Whatever you decide to do, making yourself highly visible to the industry will be very important. This will help you get started on that.

Recently, I’ve heard from some actors that don’t necessarily want to become “world famous” and see their name in lights. All they want is to go full time in their acting career and to be able to do what they love.

Whatever you want to achieve in your acting career, you have to be sure that you are building your career on a solid foundation.

Over the coming weeks we’ll be talking more about that, and we’ll be getting into the specifics of how to build the career you actually want.

For now, get started on what we went over today because it’s truly foundational. Everything will build from here, regardless of whether you are just getting started or whether you are looking to take your career to the next level.

If you have any questions about what we went over, remember I’m only a comment or an email away and I’m always happy to help however I can, because I truly want to...

See you at the top,
Scott