We celebrated Veterans Day a few days ago. This time of year, heading into the holiday season always gets me thinking about big picture stuff...
Particularly, the events that marked veterans day got me thinking about what it means to be a veteran in the industry.
Most of the actors I’ve ever spoken to have a flawed idea of what it means to be a veteran actor.
Everyone knows what it’s like to be a green, newbie actor because that’s where everyone begins their journey in the industry.
Because so few ever earn “veteran status” there’s a lot of confusion around what it actually is. So why is it important that you understand what being a veteran actor is?
Because veteran actors have built accomplished careers that have withstood many, many industry changes and they’ve done it while understanding a key industry element that other actors simply don’t get.
Most other actors try to wing it, when it comes to building their career. Veteran actors almost always follow in the footsteps of someone else.
If you want to build a career as a professional actor, pay close attention to what the veterans are doing. Following in their footsteps is about as close to being a sure thing as you can get in the industry.
Here’s where to start...
I watched an interview recently from one of the “experts” on casting and she spent a lot of time building up the actor she was interviewing as a veteran who had seen it all and accomplished a lot in the industry.
When it came down to it, she was interviewing an actor who had arrived in LA after a few years of doing off broadway shows and a few student films.
He had booked 2 episodes on a primetime show and had been signed with an agent at a second tier agency.
I don’t intend to minimize his accomplishments, at all, but he is far from being a veteran.
Sure, he had some great things going on and he had made some great progress pretty quickly but that doesn’t make him an industry veteran.
I say that to bring up the following...
Most actors get the idea of following in someone else’s footsteps but knowing who to follow isn’t always an easy thing to figure out. However, if you study a veteran actor's career you are almost surely going to start down the right path.
So who are the veteran actors?
By definition, it means that they’ve been in the industry for a long time. What separates veteran actors from actors that are an “overnight success” is that they have survived industry and career cycles.
The industry changes constantly.
There was a time when acting way over the top was desirable in an actor. When that changed, the actors that couldn’t change with the industry were quickly left behind.
Stuff like that happens all the time, and it’s been happening since the dawn of the industry.
When movies changed from silent pictures to talkies, the actors who had never thought about things like inflection and tonality quickly found themselves sitting on the sidelines as the industry kept moving.
Every actor’s career also goes through different cycles.
You can’t play an action hero at 70 years old, at least not in the same way that a 29 year old could.
Similarly, a teenage heartthrob who puts on more than a few pounds in his late twenties won’t continue to book roles in that category.
What I just mentioned could be a career killer for someone who was an overnight success, but for a veteran actor it just means that it is time to shake things up.
Regardless of what career cycle they’re in, veterans have always been good at differentiating themselves. That’s how they stand out from the pack.
Their ability to do this is largely what helps them become successful and stay relevant over the long term.
So, to follow in their footsteps, come up with something unique you can bring to your characters.
It can be almost anything so feel free to get creative with this, even if it means that you have to learn a new skill.
Are you good with speaking in foreign accents? I can think of several actors who were booked for having this particular talent as a differentiating factor.
It doesn’t always have to be an actual trait. It can even be a personal interest that is such a big part of you, it always makes it on screen somehow.
Whatever it is, your differentiating factor will always come from who you are off set.
Nicolas Cage has that pensive and intellectual manner of speaking and Robert Downey Jr. has charm like no one else. That’s what sets them apart and what they bring to the characters they play and it’s also who they are off set.
When a character that calls for a quality like that is presented to a casting director, those actors become the obvious choice.
It becomes difficult for anyone else to even enter the conversation.
I know it’s easy to look at a veteran actor’s career and feel discouraged because of how much farther along they are.
Instead of looking at their career as a whole, break it down into their different career stages.
Don’t look at their career at stage 10 and compare it to your career at stage 2. Look at where you are in your career and plan your next steps, based on what veteran actors did when they were in a similar stage as you are in now.
If you want to have a long and prosperous career, then you have to build your acting career on purpose, and this is how you do it.
As you start planning your career you will come up with some things that you need to do and you will have to decide whether they’re things you need to bring on a manager or a pr rep to help with, or if you need to do them yourself.
Building a team with the right people is something veteran actors take very seriously. Most actors are just happy that someone wants to represent them, but veterans seek out the right people.
It’s the reason I built this to help build your industry credibility and become an actor that casting directors and industry decision makers want to work with.
It’s not a magic pill of course, but it helps by tapping into one of the building blocks of the industry.
We talked about how the industry is constantly changing and how important it is to keep up with those chances.
But, there is something about the industry that will never change and it’s that the industry is built on reputation, so make sure your industry reputation shows that you are a professional actor.
That’s something that veteran actors were able to do, even early on in their career.
Even a stellar industry reputation won’t exactly speak for itself so you also have to put some effort into making yourself highly visible to casting directors and industry decision makers by showing up in places where they are already looking for talent.
You don’t have to use the solution I built, but if you want to be able to do that consistently and without you even having to think about it, freeing yourself up to work on the more fun parts of building your career, then you owe it to yourself to at least check it out.
Regardless, remember I’m always only an email or a comment away and I’m happy to help however I can because I truly want to...
See you at the top,
Scott