THE PAINFUL TRUTH:

What Agents Are Really Looking For

Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in energized focus with full involvement in the process of the activity. Your subjective perception of challenges and abilities are more important than you think. Belief in your skills will determine the outcome as much as your ability.

I have nothing negative to say what so ever about taking acting classes… unless the teacher sucks. Every actor needs honest, expert, objective feedback about their work and their ability if they hope to improve their craft. Without it you’ll be like an athlete trying to win the Olympics without a trainer.

Alright, before I launch into this let me be really clear.... acting is exactly like nothing in the world. It is, in my humble opinion, the greatest and yet the most difficult of all the arts. People may differ with me but with more than 20 years in the Entertainment Business under my belt I feel confident saying that very people on this earth can make acting look easy and simple (see my last blog). That said, let’s have a little fun with a few of my favorite comparisons.

If you were with us last blog you got to read about five easy things you can do to ruin your acting career. My hope is that after reading each you did whatever you could to avoid them at all cost. Let’s keep that ball rolling. Here are five more things you can do if you want to ruin your career.

It always makes me chuckle when I hear someone say, “Acting is the easiest job in the world. Anyone can do it.” Obviously, they have no idea what they’re talking about. They haven’t been through the many years of training and endless hours of rehearsal and performance to understand how wrong they are. There are so many different talents an actor needs to master in order to become skilled. Over the past few blogs we’ve discussed several of those talents including script breakdown, emotional control and physical control. Next, I like to discuss the voice.

Every year at about this time there is a significant number of new actors coming to Los Angeles to try their hand at a career in acting. Somehow, just about everyone across the country has heard at one time or another that January is the beginning of pilot season (although that is not necessarily true, things generally don’t really pick up until after Sundance at the end of January). For that reason, I felt it appropriate to make a few lists and talk about the things that I think an actor 1) absolutely must have, 2) probably should have and 3) it would be nice to have if they hope to make it in LA.

There’s the Art of Acting and The Art of Getting Work – they are different. So often actors, especially young actors, are grateful to anyone who gives them the time of day. I’ve been coaching/teaching/directing for years, but I still remember when I started as an actress. I was grateful just to get an appointment with anyone in the business. It took a while to remember that I had something to offer - my talent, my training, my work and that I needed to value it, if I expected anyone else to value it.