Acting Careers

If you are serious about pursuing an acting career, sooner or later you will need to have the answers to these and other questions. Check them out and don't be fooled by the ease that you might find in answering the first few questions!

1. Why do you want to become an actor?
2. What will that do for you?
3. How will it make you feel?
4. What kind of actor do you want to become?
5. How far are you really and truely and honestly willing to go for your acting career?
6. Do you know what it's like to work as an actor?
7. Do you know what actors do when they are looking for work or in between jobs?
8. Do you know what kinds of different acting careers you could have?
9. How hard are you willing to work? Honestly.
10. What do you think having an acting career entails?
11. What do you think an actor does day to day, when he's not working?
12. Do you know anything about business? Do you realize how important it is to know how to promote yourself and to be able to get your work seen?
13. Have you taken any acting classes yet?
14. What acting method are you studying?
15. What other acting methods are you aware of?
16. Do you know what the benefits are to taking acting classes? In other words, do you know what they can do for you, other than teaching you how to act?
17. Do you know how you can tell if a class is right for you or not?
18. Do you know how to choose an acting school?
19. Do you know of at least ten different ways that you can promote yourself as an actor?
20. Do you know how to go about finding a talent agent?
21. Do you know what agents look for in an actor?
22. Do you know your type and why knowing that is so important?
23. Do you know how to do a mailing?
24. Do you know how to use post cards?
25. How about head shots? Do you know what the disadvantages are of getting head shots taken before you are ready?
26. Do you know the right questions to ask and what to look for when selecting a head shot photographer?
27. Do you know what the industry formats are for an acting resume?
28. Do you know one of the first places agents and casting directors look when they look at your resume?

If you were further along, I would ask you other questions like:

29. How did you get your agent? In other words, what were the exact steps you took?
30. What do you do while you are waiting for your agent to call you for an audition?
31. Did you ever go through a period where you went on a lot of auditions and didn't get called back very much? If so, what did you do to remedy the situation?

Or

32. How did you choose your monologues?
33. Do you know the most common mistakes actors make when performing a monologue and how to avoid them?

If you start answering those questions, you will be pretty far along to really understanding what an acting career is all about!

Most aspiring actors never make it for several reasons.
1) They believe that the first thing to do is to get headshots, put a résumé together and get an agent. False!

2) They don't have the necessary motivation to do what's necessary to pursue an acting career. They want the glory, but don't want to do the work.

3) They don't have any business skills and what's worse, they don't realize how incredibly important they are.

4) They think that once they get an agent, all they have to do is sit back and answer the phone for auditions. Let me take an historical quote from John F. Kennedy and twist it for the purposes of my communication: "Ask not what your agent can do for you, but what you can do for your agent!"

5) For many, training and going to class isn't important. They are influenced by the people around them(family and friends) who are telling them that they are cute, beautiful, make people laugh, are talented and should go into acting. It's better to have someone tell you that who is really qualified to do so; someone who knows your work, like your teacher for example.

6) They don't have a good financial base set up that will allow them to pursue a career without worrying about how they will make ends meet. They don't understand the concept and the importance of creating streams of passive or residual income to keep you on track in their careers.

7) They don't keep abreast of what's happening in the industry. They don't know who the players are and who casts the types of projects they are interested in.

8) They are not familiar with the concept of type and don't know what their type is. As a consequence, their headshots, résumés and coverletters all give different messages and thus they don't know who the right casting directors and agents to contact.

9) They're not focused. They have no goals and no plan. They believe that a plan or a strategy is just writing some things down on a piece of paper and trying to do them.

10) They are not familiar with themselves. They don't have an objective view of themselves. In an over-saturated market, they don't realize how critically important it is to be able to identify what it is about them that makes them special and unique and then to capitalize on that by finding the RIGHT industry professionals who are interested in that particular trait.

If you have any of those symptoms and you are really serious about becoming an actress, then you must find the motivation deep inside yourself to be able to get the things done that are necessary to be successful. Without that motivation, statistics say that you will not be successful.

Good luck!

Tony

As someone who left a great corporate job (with Nike) to pursue his dream of becoming an actor, author and host, I quickly began to see why many people who want to become actors never make it.

There are some things you definitely need to know if you expect to be successful.

1. Understand what it is you are getting into. Understand what it means to be an actor and not just what you see on television or at the movies. There is much more to it than that. Find out what actors do every day when they are looking for work.

2. Do some self-analysis. Get to know yourself as best you can. Know what it is that you bring to the table. You will need to know that because...

3. ...due to the great competition, you will need to figure out some way to get yourself noticed. You need to capitalize on something special and unique that you have that others don't have. That means you need to develop your creativity.

4. Ask yourself the question, "Did I choose acting or did acting choose me?" If you answer that you chose acting, then my advice is to think again about whether this is really the right thing for you. If on the other hand, acting chose you, because it is something that is in you and that you just can't live without, then go for it!

5. Something that you will have to answer all thoughout your career is, "How far are you willing to go for your career?" What are you willing to do? How much time are you willing to invest? How much are you willing to commit? If you commit to it part-time, you will get part-time quality results.

6. Why is acting so important to you? The more answers you have to that question, the more motivated you will be to get the things done everyday that you need to do to further your career.

7. Get some good training! Don't think that just because you look good, you're pretty, you make people laugh, people tell you that you are talented, etc., etc., that you don't have to take classes. Acting is an art and you need to master it if you want to be successful. One of my acting teachers Bernard Hiller said, "The express elevator to success is broken. From now on, anyone who wants to be a successful actor will have to take the stairs."

8) Be patient. Overnight successes don't exist. It's the media that makes us believe that success happens in an instant. It does happen or very, very, very rare occasions, but most over-night success you hear about have actually been working on their careers for years.

There's more where that came from.

Just remember:

"In order to do something you've never done, you must become someone you've never been."