The #1 Way To Beat Audition Nerves In Seconds

Everyone seems to have a method or “technique” for telling you how you should battle your audition nerves. It typically involves trying very hard to convince you not to be nervous, or repeating to yourself that you are indeed worthy of success, or that what you’re feeling is perfectly normal and that you should just “use it.” While I agree with the concept of “using it,” it feels like a superficial solution to a much more complex problem. As we’re all different, there is never a one-size-fits-all approach to redirecting and alleviating your nerves.

It is my belief that nerves can be completely obliterated when you are lit up and under the influence of sharp, impactful, and fun emotional choices.

One of my clients is so nervous and terrified when she walks into an audition room that she can feel—and hear—her heart pounding out of her chest. After helping her find what I call her “hook” or “light up” for the scene, I asked how many heartbeats she noticed. The answer was none. That doesn’t mean that her heart wasn’t racing, it’s that she didn’t notice it because she was dialed in. If you’re focused on your nerves, you’re going to feel more nervous.

What do you think would happen to audition nerves if you fell in love before you entered the room? Imagine if you were getting out of your car, walked to the elevator, time stood still, and for a solid 10 seconds the universe blinked in unison with you as you stood and stared at the person who was undoubtedly your star-crossed lover. You would enter the audition room with a far more powerful emotion coursing through your veins, having communed and finally met your soul mate. This emotion, I assure you, would be way more compelling than any simple nerves you might be feeling. Your preparation needs to be like that. When the stakes are high, your preparation has to be tighter, hotter, and stronger so that it can lift you out of the nerves. It becomes your job to discover what lights you up and turns you on about the scene, thus, kicking your nerves off center stage.

I help my clients go into the room and book the role by guiding them to their hottest and most impactful choices; these choices will unequivocally defeat your audition nerves.

If you feel like your preparation is rock solid and that you have a strong hook to launch you into the scene, but when you get to the waiting room of a casting office or a theater and your heart starts racing, you start sweating or you begin to shake, know that’s OK. You can still do a phenomenal job and you can still book the role. Some actors think that any sign of nerves means that it’s all over—it’s not. If your body starts to freak out, that’s fine. Let your body have its freak out. Wherever you are—in the car, on the subway, in the waiting room, walking down the hall to the audition room—tell yourself, “Hey, I’m having a freak-out.” Don’t fight it and don’t act like it’s the end of the world. Freaking out over your freak-out is the worst thing you can do, as you give your nerves more power and more agency. If you can have a sense of humor about it, it can really help take the edge off.    

Remember also that like a first date, an audition begins the moment casting/producers lay eyes on you, which can often be before you step foot in the room. You start assessing your blind date the moment you see him/her, not at the moment he or she starts talking. And just like on a date, you will give someone a break if they don’t look perfect, but if they radiate oodles of confidence, it can actually make them more beautiful! So radiate those oodles of confidence, particularly because there’s often a chance that the casting team might try to chat you up in order to get a sense of you. That is of course the time to let your winning personality shine (though not the time to try to seem like you are attempting to get them to like you). 

Given those circumstances of audition nerves and the actor now faced with the “conversational audition” before any acting takes place, my advice to actors is to just be yourself, but under the influence of an emotional attitude of great power and confidence. Before walking into the audition room, one of my brave clients lights himself up with the attitude, “I’m the fucking solution to your problem.” Another effective trick to lift the nerves out of your body within seconds is to simply say to yourself, “I already did it, and now I get to go back in and do it again.”

As with anything, confidence comes with repeated success, colossal failure, and years of flying hours. Start to adopt the attitude that, “I’ve already made it,” and live every day as if you’re already having the career of your dreams.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Why Extra Work Won’t Jumpstart Your Career

Building and maintaining relationships with producers, directors, writers, and casting directors is the surefire way to carve a path for your career. While working as an extra may give you a sense of working on-set, it is not your “in” to a career. The concept of “getting noticed” is a recipe for disaster, as it’s so passive—it’s putting your success in the hands of a “notice-er.” While we might each know a few stories of extras who became recurring characters on sitcoms, or who ended up delivering lines in major motion pictures, they are by far the minority.

Doing extra work in the hopes of someone noticing your look or your abilities is the opposite of hard work and sharing your talent. You get noticed when you create your own work or add something of value to the equation. Getting noticed is proportionate to the amount of work you put into it.

Back in the day, extra work could be a good path to getting SAG vouchers—nowadays it’s way more effective to create a Web series, or some form of original content. I’m not devaluing extra work; it can be valuable in showing new actors the inner-workings of a professional movie set. However, there’s a dangerous element to it as well. It can be too comfortable and too safe for the developing actor. You don’t want to grow too accustomed to being an extra, and unfortunately far too many actors do.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Tips for Where to Begin Your Acting Career

Find an acting class where you can get up and work every week. Here’s a link to my article “6 Red Flags When Auditing Acting Classes”. At my studio, every actor leaves every class having experienced an undeniable acting breakthrough. 

Reject the herd mentality and stop listening to what other actors are telling you to do. Reject the absurdly stale notions of “type” and “niche,” as they only serve to box you in and stifle your originality. There is no one-size-fits-all path to an important acting career—you must forge your own career path and create your own acting opportunities.

Embrace your personality; it’s your secret weapon and greatest asset as an actor.

See the timeless movies and TV shows that shaped this business. This is a new golden age of TV and you must take the time to watch all the groundbreaking new projects so you can be knowledgeable about where you fit in. 

And stop looking for representation! Most actors think having an agent or manager is a magic pill. It’s not. Having representation can lull you into the false notion that you’re being pitched for every role you’re right for. Trust me, you’re not. Nothing meaningful will ever just fall into your lap. You must be pleasantly persistent and tenacious in always creating your own work and in building and maintaining relationships with industry professionals.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

International Masters for Health Leadership Workshop at McGill University/Montreal

Joseph had the great pleasure to work with participants of the International Masters for Health Leadership (IMHL) program at McGill University in Montreal/Canada. The title of the workshop was "Charismatic Confidence: How to develop impactful attractive confidence within minutes to effect maximum change in your audience."  

Participants work in all manner of health care organizations, including hospitals, community care, public health, government ministries, international  agencies, and foundations.

6 Ways To Make Your Career Go Viral

Actors hear all the time how much harder it is to be an actor in this day and age. There’s a ton of competition and the industry is basically overcrowded. This simply means more people and fewer jobs to go around. The good news is that social media is something that exists today that young actors of the 90s simply didn’t have access to, because it didn’t exist. While social media can be dizzying and overwhelming, it can also allow you to push your career and your brand forward in ways that previous generations were never able to. 

The key is to find your singularity—the thing you do better than anyone else—and to consistently promote that specific flavor and fingerprint of you across all media platforms from blogs to newsletters to videos—any and all content you create. Remember, creating content equals freedom. Rather than seeing content creation as a form of drudgery and another obligation, view it as something that frees you from waiting for the phone to ring and allows you to engage your audience and funnel them into your special world. It empowers you to stop asking for permission to have a career! 

1. Be consistent with your brand online.

• On all social media platforms, your content lives on. Screen it carefully as you would an outside observer and be careful to ensure that your content is reflective of the public version of you. Seldom should your content be about “how we got drunk on Saturday night,” as that’s your personal life and generally boring. It’s also quite derivative as so many young people already have that story to tell.  
• Choose a “mission statement,” or value proposition, for you (your business) and try it out for a few months. If it doesn’t work, you can change it. For example, your mission statement could be “to regale the world with tales of my misadventures in dating.”
• Keep it clear: When presenting yourself to the public, you should be the girl/guy who thinks/does/wants. For example, I’m the coach who has the highest percentage of clients who book in the industry, and I empower actors to get themselves in the room and book the damn role. You might be the girl who wants love but can’t get it, the dirty bearded man-baby who does fart jokes, the conniving socialite alpha girl who takes delicious pleasure in destroying her competition, etc.

2. Not all content is good content.

• Use this opportunity to really introduce yourself as a performer. Internet content lives on, so really think about the message you’re sending. Subpar content (derivative, offensive but not meaningfully so, porn, etc.) can be a detriment to your career rather than a boost forward. 
• No snobbery: Some people do still make a name for themselves with fart jokes and dancing with their puppies in tutus, so don’t feel like your content has to be super high-brow. However, it does have to look good and it does have to be original. 

3. Engaging your audience.

• Social media is the proverbial “water cooler” of our era. At work, the water cooler is for chatting, updates, gossip—basically an exchange of info. Use social media the same way. You need to have dialogue with people on social media, which can allow you to build a following.
• Building a following through sincere dialogue can help enormously in the game of gaining online support for your endeavors. People want to feel invested in you personally as well as your career. 

4. Be in the know.

• I don’t care if you quote Nietzsche in your spare time and if the walls of your apartment are painted black and if the only people who ever really understood you are a bunch of deadbeat poets. It is no longer okay for you not to know what Vine is or to not be on Instagram. You have to be on social media and go aggressive if you want to work in show business. 
• Use Hootsuite to schedule your tweets/statuses for free. These updates should not be perfect. They don’t really matter, so dare to fail on these and test your boundaries. Your “voice” will come.  

5. Roll with the punches.

In life and in show business, there’s a strong expectation that you need to roll with the punches. Social media requires you to roll with the punches to an even greater degree, but all on your terms! This is the time to grow that thick skin and to accept that you’re never going to be perfect. 

• Depend on failure and make mistakes. You’re not always going to say or do the best thing on social media. That’s OK, no one expects you to, and few people are actually doing it themselves.
• Depend on trolls and haters. This can be the hardest issue for actors to grapple with, and can certainly take some adjustment, but the reality is, if everyone likes you, you’re doing something wrong. As Andy Warhol once said, “Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.”
• Even so, make sure you don’t become a hater. You’re too smart and have too much value to join their ranks.

6. Final thoughts. 

• Start slow. Add one thing to your social media list per month and keep growing.
• Know that this is the new normal of show business and it will never stop.
• Know that as you grow, you will have bigger challenges as you have bigger successes.
• In the end, this is work; but you chose this job. Always remember why you wanted to do this job, and give yourself three reasons to love what you’re doing. It’s too easy to get bogged down in the mire of “business,” so if you need to add a dash of color and spice to the mix, do it. Choose fun stamps, listen to music in between phone calls. Make a silly Vine that has nothing to do with “your singularity.” 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

6 Signs You're Ready For Pilot Season

As one of the most competitive acting season approaches, you spend your days preparing mentally, physically, and emotionally. Here are six signs you’re ready for pilot season.

1. You don’t buy into the myth of representation. You’re not lulled into a false sense of security that your agent or manager will pitch you for every role you’re right for. The responsibility of getting into the room is your burden alone. You know how to pitch yourself for every role you’re right for and you don’t blame your overwhelmed reps with their often overly full rosters for not getting you into the room. 

2. You’re a worthy opponent. This is the Olympic level of the game. You must be at your absolute best before going into major casting offices, otherwise you risk closing more doors than you open. To stay competitive, you must get a vigorous acting workout every week. I cannot stress the importance of a small class where you work every week! At my studio, every student leaves every class having experienced an undeniable acting breakthrough, or they don’t sit down! 

It’s also important to have a clear context for the work you bring into class. Ideally the pieces you devote your time to should not be just for the bubble of the class: it should have a clear context (film, TV, or theater) and purpose (scene study, refine audition technique, practice cold-reading, fine-tune a workshop piece). 

3. You don’t fight your personality, you embrace it. You’ve long stopped trying to guess what “they” are looking for. You know that it’s your job to assume you are what they are looking for. You’ve done the work and have brought yourself to the piece with fun and impactful choices.

4. You’ve got a backbone of steel. This business is so tough, it’s practically a war zone. If you’re really, truly ready for pilot season, you’re able to shrug off the near-misses, almost-bookings, and toxic industry members with grace and aplomb. Being pinned or put on hold for a major role and then not booking it happens to actors in this business every goddamn day. The real professionals shake it off and resume their place in the chain-gang. Nor does some poisonous casting director rattle you or some eye-rolling producer who yawns through your audition. You don’t take any of the garbage seriously or personally because you know your survival in this business depends on it. 

5. You’re a walking encyclopedia. You realize that part of your responsibility as a professional actor means being acquainted with the style, tone, and expectations of the different networks. You understand that you could take a single scene and do it 12 different ways for 12 different networks. You know which networks prefer actor performances that are more grounded, and which prefer more character-y reads. You know which networks like comedic performances that are more “up” and which like those that are more “thrown away.” You have this knowledge hardwired to your brain like the last four digits of your social security and you are able to adapt at the snap of one’s fingers. 

6. You’ve got a sense of perspective. At the end of the day, the cards are going to fall where they’re going to fall. You understand that as professional, talented, and deserving as you may be, you might not end up attached to a pilot when all is said and done. And even if you are one of the lucky few who books a pilot, you understand that its success and longevity is largely out of your hands. Whatever happens, you get that there is only a finite amount of what you can control, and you’re at peace with that. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage