Every actor goes through a period of time when they feel like things just aren’t going their way.

They’re not getting callbacks and the few auditions they may be able to get into don’t turn out very well. It’s a normal part of everyone’s journey to becoming a professional actor.

Some make it through this period and make incredible career progress and go on to have long and fulfilling careers in the industry.

Others let it get the best of them and they hang up their acting shoes for good. A tiny percentage of actors skip this part altogether.

Let me ask you a question...which group would you rather be in? Most actors start making their way out of the industry shortly after they get in, they just don’t know it.

I spoke with an actor who was fired on Friday the 13th one year and she was sure that it was just “bad luck.” She was working on a big budget studio picture with actors that have long been household names.

Even though she only had a couple minutes of screen time, getting the part was a dream come true, especially since it was only the second job she had ever booked.

Everything had lined up just right and she blew away the entire casting department during the audition process. She had originally been scheduled to read for a different role, but she was bumped up to a much more prominent one.

That all changed when she was on set, because she wasn’t able to perform up to the same standard she had set. After several takes, she was ultimately “excused” from set and another actor took her place.

Over the years, I’ve seen that most actors are very one track minded. They either go deep and work really hard on mastering the audition or they work on their on set performance.

World Class actors do something completely different, and if what you want is to become a professional, full time actor there’s something you need to start doing right now...

Understand, what I’m about to share with you will probably go against most of what you’ve heard about what it takes to make it in the industry.

What world class actors do, the ones that make it to the top levels of the industry, is focus specific skills that enable them to connect with an audience.

In other words, they get really good at making the audience feel what they want the audience to feel.

If you can do that, just about everything else becomes irrelevant.

The reason this is so important is that, when done effectively, it’s no longer about you (the actor). You become a vessel that brings your character to life and everything flows naturally.

A big part of this is timing.

While post can and does help with this a bit, it can only do so much. If you react too quickly in a scene, they go back and add a beat.

However, if your cadence is off, meaning your pace of speaking is too fast or too slow, there’s not much they can do about it.

How you pace yourself on set is probably the single biggest factor that will decide whether your character will linger with the audience or whether it will fall flat.

There are other things that enhance the quality of your performance of course. We’ll get into those over the coming weeks, but I wanted to start here because this is probably the most important one.

Think about it this way...

Close your eyes and picture someone talking really fast. How would you describe their state? Nervous? Anxious? Hyped up on coffee? Rushed?

Now picture the opposite. How would you describe someone who is speaking slower than molasses?

Lazy? Tired? Overworked?

See how pace alone can take a character from one extreme to the other? Vince Vaughn is a master at using the proper pace for a character.

He can go from one extreme to the other, without skipping a beat, and often in the same scene or even in the same block of dialogue.

His rate of speech is already a bit on the high side, but he manipulates it very well on set to give his characters an edge.

When you master the art of pacing, you can even turn a character that is poorly written and underdeveloped into an absolute powerhouse.

Think of a film or a show that you watched, where a tiny character stole the show. It happens often and the actors that are able to pull it off can leverage that performance into bigger and better opportunities.

To create a connection with your audience that sticks with them, start by asking yourself what emotion you want them to feel.

That will get you to the root of the character, and get you out of your head. Most actors get caught up in trying to figure the minutiae: what to do with their hands, where to look, which word to emphasize.

World Class actors look at the bigger picture, then they reverse engineer what they want the audience to feel and turn it into on screen actions.

It works because when you give someone what they want, they want more of it. In this case, if the audience is tuning in to have a good laugh and you provide them that, they’ll want to see more of you.

They will actively seek you out on social media, and even on IMDb to see where they can see more of your work, since the last time they tuned in you gave them what they were looking for.

Delivering like this on set, will also make directors want to work with you over and over again. Plus, if you started out with a minor role and were able to turn it into something that stuck out to the audience, production remembers that.

Directors love to take actors to the next level, and CDs that discover the next big thing become the talk of the town.

Of course, the first step in all of this is to get on their radar.

If you are not making the kind of career progress you should be making, this is often the culprit.

So, if you want to pick up the pace on your career, check this out. I​t is one of the most effective things you can do today to move your career forward.

What we went over today will do wonders for you once you get in the room, and it will definitely help you deliver a stellar performance on set.

But, if you don’t have enough opportunities to showcase your talent, then it will all just be wasted effort.

Sadly, that’s what I see happening to actors all the time.

They spend way too much focusing on the wrong things, but I get it! Handling your promotions and putting yourself in front of industry decision makers can be pretty mundane.

It has to get done, if you want to be a professional actor. That’s why I created this to help you, so you can focus more on what you do best.

I’ve seen a ton of actors ,who were unbelievably talented, leave the industry without having accomplished even a fraction of what they set out to.

Typically, the reason is that they couldn’t keep up with the things that you have to do off-set, to position yourself to get an opportunity to be on set.

We’ll go over that in more detail another time.

For now, start with what I’ve laid out for you here, because it is the foundation. Everything else will be built from this.

Remember, I’m always only a comment or an email away if anything comes up or even if you just need to toss some ideas around.

Let me help because I truly want to...

See you at the top,
Scott