How Actors Can Have The Best Pilot Season Ever Without Representation, Part 2

Are you at your Olympic-best and not competing for every role you’re right for this pilot season? Don’t do what every actor does: Don’t blame your reps for not being good enough, and don’t blame your lack of auditions on not having reps at all. 

In my previous article, How Actors Can Have the Best Pilot Season Ever Without Representation, I addressed the false belief that actors need representation to compete for major film and TV roles during pilot season. Having representation is not a guarantee you’ll be going out for every role you’re right for. The bottom line is centered on accountability: In order to have the best possible pilot season, you have to be responsible for it. If you’re not going out for every part you’re suitable for, you need to examine your own actions and choices, and determine how those factors are contributing to a lighter audition load.

The Olympic Level of the Game
If you want the life of an actor who is competing at the professional level and is going out on 30 to 40 auditions per year, you must consistently be acting at your highest level of excellence—what I refer to as the Olympic level. 

That means you’ve dedicated yourself to years of studying your craft. You’ve read all the great books on acting such as the ones written by David Mamet, Michael Chekhov, Uta Hagen, and Constantin Stanislavsky, as your responsibility as a professional. You make it a priority to watch nearly every newly released film. You are up to date on all the major television shows. You’ve made a commitment to watch one old movie a week, in order to better understand the roots of the film industry. You go to the theater regularly as your duty to support the community and to observe theater actors at work. Create a short list offilm or TV projects you feel your personality is best suited to.

It always amazes me to see actors wanting to start auditioning for major feature film and TV roles after only a few months of study as an actor. It’s like one day deciding you absolutely love the tuba, and, after a few months of lessons you decide it’s time to audition for the director of the L.A. Philharmonic. This is a ludicrous idea, but helps to illustrate the point of how absurd and hazardous it can be to try to attempt to audition for major roles before you’re ready. It’s a small industry—it’s easy to see the majority of major casting directors in any given year. If you were pitched for a role you simply weren’t right for OR you weren’t at your absolute best when you went into the casting room, the doors to those offices may close and never open again.

Building and Maintaining Relationships
Because the industry is so small, people tend to favor the people they know and like. Thus, you need to figure out a way to become one of the actors that people in power know and like. This revolves around building and maintaining industry relationships: casting directors, directors, producers, writers, etc. Another effective way to meet those people is at industry events: Going to events such as forums, screenings, and Q&As are going to put you in close proximity with such people. Be friendly and bold: Bring business cards, a smile, and start shaking hands. The SAG-AFTRA Conservatory offers workshops with casting directors, directors, producers, and other industry leaders. When it comes to casting directors, it’s vital you specifically target the ones whose projects are ideal for your personality and acting strengths.

Create an “Accountability Group” of Your Peers
For a profession which relies so heavily on human relationships both creatively and on the business side of things, acting can feel pretty lonely at times—after all, it is just you in the audition room. Creating an actor “accountability group” can make you feel like you have a team behind you and supporting you—it can give you a much needed boost of morale. 

An actor “accountability group" is a group of your peers who meet regularly to hold each other accountable for being proactive in their careers, read scenes, work on auditions, trade industry tips, etc… This makes you feel like your actions (or lack of actions) have someone to answer to, which is good. Such a group can also help you with troubleshooting and brainstorming, which can be helpful if you feel like you’ve hit a brick wall in certain respects with your career.

Wolves survive because they hunt in packs; actors can also benefit from that pack mentality of helping one another survive and thrive. 

Seek Out A Mentor
One of my very talented clients proposed the idea of seeking out an industry mentor...someone working at the top of their game like a major producer, director, celebrity actor, etc. I think it’s an incredible idea as it encourages an actor to bravely pick up a telephone and pitch themselves to an industry professional. And if such a pitch is successful, the mentorship could be life-changing. This successful professional could help show you the ropes and insider secrets that you may have had no idea even existed. This is a person who could truly help open doors for you and help you to build some pretty crucial relationships with others. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

How Actors Can Have The Best Pilot Season Ever Without Representation

Pilot season is just around the corner and you’re still an actor without theatrical representation. Don’t worry! Take a deep breath and relax—you’re going to be fine.

The most contagious disease effecting actors is the belief that signing with an agent or manager guarantees you’ll compete for every role you’re right for. My private clients are divided among actors who compete for 0-6 major auditions per year v.s. actors who compete for 30-40 top-tier auditions per year—that’s a staggering 3-6 auditions per week during peak seasons.

What’s the difference? The actors with the 30-40 auditions are being pitched via telephone followed by a personal email to the casting office. Those only going out for 0-6 per year are only being submitted online via “breakdown services” by their reps. Also, some agents have long-standing relationships with certain casting offices, and the CD will bring in literally whomever that agent submits. 

Fact: less than one percent of agents and managers actively pitch their clients, either via phone or personal email. The reason most reps don’t pitch is because they simply don’t have the relationships or clout with casting directors, or they’re terrified of losing face should they misjudge an actor’s “rightness” for a role. Ask any great agent or manager and they’ll tell you that a rep who isn’t pitching clients should get out of the business. 

Your success in launching your acting career is directly related to how visible you make yourself and to your ability to build and maintain relationships with industry professionals: directors, producers, writers, actors, casting directors, etc. Your results depend on how you build those relationships. 

“I’ve already made it.”

Adopting the attitude “I’ve already made it” instantly tunes you to the level of confidence needed to stand up for yourself and build those crucial industry connections.

It’s important to reject the herd mentality—what every other actor is doing—every step of the way. Sending a press release-style email is miles more effective than a mass postcard or headshot mailing, as it instantly separates you from the herd and gives the illusion that you’ve already made it. People in this business respond to that sort of confidence. If you’ve never written a press release and have no idea what you would put in yours, a quick Google search will give you more than enough guidance. 

Stop waiting for permission to market yourself.

Get in the habit of rejecting the archaic concepts of “niche” and “type” as they only serve to box you in and stifle your originality. Start owning all those awesome things that embody your personality—the crazier and more out there the better! You’ll soon start to define your own type, which transcends any of the “types” already out there. Steve Buscemi is an actor who embraced his unique flavor of quirkiness to create his own tailor-made type. Zooey Deschanel has immortalized Jess on “New Girl” as the charmingly clueless, singing neurotic roommate with the big blue eyes and sexy hair. Who knows if they would have had the success that they’ve had if they had spent years trying to stuff their uniqueness into the box of some preconceived type that the business had already dictated?

This means that for the next audition you get, stop trying to think of how you can cram all your glorious oddities and neuroses into the narrow confines of what you think they want. Instead, give yourself permission to let the bizarreness, ugliness, sexiness, or disarming qualities of you come through, imprinting the character with something priceless. Such courage is indeed worth the effort. 

Before the huge successes of “New Girl” and “(500) Days of Summer” Zooey Deschanel showed up to one of our coaching sessions with a deeply ironic casting breakdown. The breakdown was looking for a “Zooey Deschanel type.” Zooey was between acting jobs and we both laughed at the absurdity of it all. For me, that moment solidified the fact the she had officially made it.

In my career coaching work with actors, I help my clients to reject the lottery mind-set—to see acting success as commensurate with the amount of focused work they put in, rather than just a series of lucky events.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Why You Need To Create Your Own Path To Success As An Actor

Throughout my years as an acting coach, I’ve seen actors attempting to launch A-list careers and achieve major success by trying to fit through the same small door as everyone else—attending cattle call workshops, sending postcards, practicing gimmicky acting techniques taught by Madame Ooh La La, taking non-craft-related personal empowerment classes, etc.

On the one hand, I don’t blame them. Many careers actually have been forged on the formula of: receive audition, perform well at audition, book job, repeat process, get noticed in time. If this approach is working for you, congratulations. Move onwards and upwards, dear friend.

However, if one aspect of this particular formula isn’t helping you, it might be indicative of the fact that you’re embracing too much of the herd mentality. The herd mentality is a term that I use in this business to refer to “widespread beliefs” that permeate throughout the minds and mouths of actors that can actually be crippling and prevent the actor from moving forward. For instance, ideas like, “you need an agent to book work” or “casting directors don’t want to meet actors without credits” or “leading men/ladies have to be traditionally handsome” or “strong characters don’t show vulnerability.” Obviously, the bulk of the ideologies connected to the herd mentality are based on fear. Take the first example. If “you need an agent to book work” is absolutely true, then the actor can stay in a safe zone of inactivity. It’s not up to you to shake the tree, it’s the agent’s job. Therefore, you don’t have to face your fears of what will happen when you pick up the phone or start making some scratches on the old drawing board.

If you accept the idea that “leading men/ladies have to be traditionally handsome,” and your charmingly crooked nose and confetti freckles won’t suffice, then you get to just stay in the safe zone of what you’re used to: character roles. Now I have nothing against character roles –they’re often the more interesting parts, but that’s another article. However, accepting this limiting belief means that you don’t have to jump into the red mist of marketing yourself as a leading man/lady. You don’t have to get leading actor headshots. You don’t have to show up at auditions where all the traditionally attractive actors are and try and compete against them.

There is no one-size-fits-all path to an acting career. Your path to your dreams will be your own—don’t let anyone sell you a system for success that doesn’t come solely from you. You need to be the one swinging the machete and carving the path through the jungle.

The good news is that because there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this conundrum, I can’t instruct you on what to do exactly. It will take some soul searching. What I can tell you to do is first, look at where the failure is, and second, look at where your resistance is.

Try to examine the things in your life that you’re not willing to do right now—given the fact that you haven’t done them yet—and perhaps, examine if the inactivity might be the actual obstacles in your way. These obstacles might just be about pitching yourself to casting directors, writing and performing a one-man show, starting your own web series, or teaching acting to kids. Often when we’re in a situation of failure, we need to look at our own resistance to see what is preventing a solution from coming through.

Consider success in the industry as the ability to get around a brick wall. All the years you’ve spent auditioning and going through the traditional method for success are akin to taking a shovel and attempting to a dig a tunnel around the wall. But it’s not working—and it’s back-breaking work. 

In reality, if you want to get past this brick wall, it might just take gathering the courage to either grab a rope and climb right over it or it may take the courage to pick up a sledgehammer and knock right through it.

In this example, climbing or destroying the wall symbolizes the absolute necessity of forging your own path, and shaking off the herd mentality of “land audition, book job, get noticed.” Success is never handed to anyone and no career was ever forged using someone else’s model.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

How To Find Your Acting Sweet Spot

Your sweet spot is the specific behavior you propel into a character that’s singular to you. Your ability to recognize it and then radiate it to your audience is your launching pad for tangible artistic success. In no way is this to be confused with those annoying shop talk words like “type” or “niche”—it’s behavior so completely unique and precise to you that you can’t help but excel at it. For example, if your agent dismissively labels you as “girl next door” your sweet spot might be: girl next-door-who’s-really-smart-and-really-troubled. Your sweet spot helps you zero in on a deeper level of specificity on what you bring to a role and character.

In previous articles I described the actor’s "tip”—the one-of-a-kind fingerprint [or mark] of personality you leave on your performance. Unlike a “tip,” which is often an unavoidable part of an actor’s personality, a sweet spot is something you can actively cultivate—much like a persona. It’s an exclusive combination of attitudes and behaviors that are distinct to you and that you connect with in a manner that is simply matchless. I described Zooey Deschanel’s rareness as an “…almost impossible balance of sexuality and oddity...She’s an oddball—and she hides none of it in her acting.” It’s her awareness of this rarity and ability to magnify and radiate it when acting, which makes her singular.

The naysayers who grumble, "Oh, this will just narrow your choices and possibilities as an actor" are dead wrong. Identifying, marketing, and targeting your sweet spot roles can give you a firm foothold in an industry thirsty for something we haven’t seen yet—something new! It leads to those breakthrough roles that will ultimately create a platform to prove you can play other character types and genres.

A client of mine who recently launched her career by booking a very popular recurring role on “New Girl” honed her Sweet Spot for years, ultimately arriving at: fragility combined with morose deadpan humor. When she discussed her audition with me, it was clear that she let her sweet spot shine, saying: “It felt easy and fun like it was right in my ‘wheelhouse’…it didn’t feel like I was doing anything.”

Discovering your Sweet Spot starts with recognizing those behaviors and attitudes you emit brighter and sharper than anyone else. It takes some digging to get at. If you take the example of Zooey, she’s essentially saying, “I’m sexy. No, I’m not sexy, I’m weird,” over and over again. This comes from two very real places inside of her that believe exactly that: “Yes, I’m sexy—no wait, no I’m not.”

Zeroing in on your sweet spot is really hard to do because people don’t have the objectivity to see the behaviors, neuroses, and attitudes that make them rare creatures. As human beings we can be so dense to our own qualities—and it’s not our fault. Often all we lack is an outside perspective.

Do some market research! Talk to your friends and family and ask, “So, what’s different about me?” Make a list and look for patterns and see what you gravitate to and see what themes keep coming up.

An Oscar-winning client once confessed to me after wrapping a huge feature film without a new project lined up, “I know this sounds crazy...but I’m terrified I won’t work again.” Your sweet spot helps you work again and again because it creates continuity to your career and a guide for picking good projects.

And just because an actor is famous and working, does not mean that he knows his sweet spot. An actress like Hillary Swank has a sweet spot, but is clearly not aware of it. Her sweet spot definitely involves taking on masculine energies/challenges, and it would behoove her to select parts that include one or both of these aspects to some great or small extent at all times. Thus, it’s easy to see why she shines in something like “Million Dollar Baby,” but not in “P.S. I Love You.”

On the other hand, Philip Seymour Hoffman knows his Sweet Spot in that nearly all of the characters he’s played from the “The Talented Mr. Ripley” to “The Master” have some aspect of sexual deviance and addiction present in them to some extent.

Cultivating your Sweet Spot is especially important and necessary in Los Angeles where leading woman/man supermodel looks and generic personalities are a dime a dozen. It’s more fun and dangerous to be the curiosity in a group of cookie cutter actors, and it will allow you to create a more memorable performance.

You may at that moment feel like a carbon copy of a veritable actor stew. But relax, it’s just an illusion. Your distinct personality will always set you apart!

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Compete For Every Role You're Right For

A good friend once said to me, “What is for you will not go by you.” I deeply believe this to be true, but also realize the opportunities you need to develop your career won’t just fall into your lap—you must actively, aggressively, and strategically seek them out! For actors, this means you must build relationships with casting offices in a smart and sustainable way.

A question I often ask my students and clients is, “Are you competing for every role you’re right for?” The answer is often, “No.”

2013 is proving the busiest year for actors I can remember in regards to work and auditions. Of my 70+ clients booking major film and television work in the last year one third of those actors did it on their own, without the help of an agent or manager.

How can that be?! These actors rejected the mythology that they needed representation to get themselves work.

Why do certain actors compete for every role they’re right for with 40+ major auditions per year while other actors, in the same category, only go out for 0-6 top tier auditions? The 40+ audition-per-year actor is being actively pitched for roles they’re right for, via phone, by their agent or manager directly to casting.

When an actor is truly right for a role, a well-thought-out, well-timed “appropriate pitch” can make all the difference in that actor getting the opportunity to compete for the role.

The vast majority of actors are not being pitched by their representation, they’re being “submitted”—online through Breakdown Services—often times with 600-1200 other actors competing for the same role. If you’re serious about a career in film and television, these Las Vegas slot machine odds are unacceptable. You need to find a way to load the dice in your favor or change the game. This starts by rejecting the "herd mentality" and forging your own path to success.

A very common tale of woe is, “I finally got signed by such and such agent/manager…it’s been 6 months…they’re not getting me out for anything.”

Less than one percent of agents and managers directly pitch their clients to casting. The reason? They don’t have the clout or relationships with major casting directors to feel confident in picking up the phone to pitch their clients for the roles their right for. Other factors come into play, such as uncertainty as to how “right” their client is for a role.

Success in this industry depends on how visible you are. And getting in the room often depends on relationships with casting directors, producers, directors, and anyone else who can give you a shot at a role. Either your reps have those relationships or you must build and maintain them.  

So here are your options:

1. Create your own material! All of my clients who have achieved “celebrity” status ignited their careers by creating their own material. Some examples include: Producing your own play, doing stand-up comedy, singing/songwriting, creating a web series, making YouTube videos, etc. All of these actors achieved acting success by creating a strong platform for themselves in another arena.

2. Send out a newsletter. Create a database of all your industry contacts (directors, producers, actors, casting directors, etc.) and send out a newsletter every few months featuring your recent bookings, personal highlights, and other industry-related accomplishments. This is a unique way to build and maintain your important relationships. 

3. Pitch yourself. If an actor is perfect for a role, a casting director wants to see him/her. There’s a “right way” and a “wrong way” to directly pitch yourself for a role, you’re right for. This is often one of the scariest options for actors, as many actors feel like they don’t have a “right” to use the phone in this manner.

It’s a very small industry. If you (or your reps for that matter) pitch for a role that you are simply not right for, that is the equivalent of wasting the office’s time. There’s a strong chance the office won’t bring you back in, if that is the case.

Make darn sure you’re actually right for that role before pitching yourself.

Your confidence and ability to be “pleasantly persistent” in standing up for yourself is directly related to your success as an actor. In this industry, waiting around for anything to magically fall into your lap is a losing proposition.

Sometimes in being proactive and essentially sticking your neck out for yourself you might burn your hand. But if your career is worth it to you, you have to be willing to do this.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

3 Steps To Booking The Roles You Deserve

I coached 68 clients to book roles in feature films and network TV last year.

This success—not a byproduct of luck or forces of nature—was a direct result of all 68 actors honing specific, crucial elements in their audition performances.

These actors knew that reaching their “booked-role potential” was in part related to their ability to use aspects of their real selves—even if those facets of their personalities were bizarre, ugly, perverse, bitchy, alarming or downright creepy.

As Ron Perlman said, “I've always felt there were aspects of me that were monstrous, and you can either hide from it or confront it, embrace it and understand that those are aspects that make you unique and…that's the very thing that makes you who you are. That's your emotional and spiritual fingerprint.”

I like to call what Perlman is describing as one’s "tip." A tip is the unique fingerprint [or mark] of personality you leave on your performance. Here's how to make your mark on a performance and book the roles you deserve.

1. Figure out what your distinct "tip" is. A "tip" revolves around the idea of something extra you give to your performance without even trying—it’s something they’ve never seen before and didn’t know they wanted. That something extra is YOU, and it’s the elusive something about you that makes it possible for you to be memorable among a throng of actors.

One of my clients has an innate gentleness to everything she does—it’s just a part of who she is and how she has always interacted with the world. Thus, even when she’s reading for the part of a sociopath, she doesn’t try to bury that gentleness. Instead she stamps it on her performance to make it even more disturbing. Another client’s "tip" was simply that he exuded the vibe of a young Willem Dafoe—effortlessly. There was something about him that was always just teetering on the edge of creepy, even when he was just eating a sandwich.

You might not like your "tip," just like the way you might not like the shape of your nose, but it’s yours and it’s unavoidable.

Embracing your tip gives you such a profound advantage because it allows you to put your stamp on the character in a way that no one else possibly can. Bryan Cranston memorably describes auditioning for “Breaking Bad” and wanting to make a formidable impression on the creator, Vince Gilligan. “‘I wanted to go mark Vince,’ Cranston said to the Los Angeles Times in 2011. ‘I wanted to creatively lift my leg on him, and the script, and leave my scent so that he saw me and nobody else doing this.’"

2. Don't act your technique of preparation. When the role has been responsibly coached and prepared, the actual “acting” should feel as easy and effortless as if you were simply playing yourself. This can seem terrifying for two reasons. First, you won’t feel like you’re doing anything, and second, you may not feel you’re interesting enough. However, the end result is your work will appear seamless to the producer and director, and they’ll simply see the character as if he or she was a real person who happened to walk into the audition. That’s magical.

3. Stop trying to guess what “they” want. Imagine how ludicrous it would be if the waiter in a restaurant tried to guess what you felt like ordering? Imagine how even more ludicrous that would be if you didn’t even know what you felt like ordering? Because no matter what the waiter picked, he’d be wrong.

More directly stated, Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

Your job is now to stop guessing and make a strong choice—and make it one you really like. It should be the fun choice, the choice that lights a fire under your ass and the choice that’s a little scary. Not the choice that “seems right.”

What’s certain is that “they” are not looking for a neat presentation of acting training, nor are they looking for a choice made on guesswork.

Whenever we’ve seen amazing performances, the acting techniques that these stellar actors have studied are nowhere to be found. Instead we just have people. New people who have been invented by these actors—characters we call them. All tremendous actors have gone through the task of bringing themselves to the part and taking their training, balling it up, and chucking it out the window.

This article was originally posted on Backstage