Tips for Determining Your ‘Brand’

Photo Source: Jesse Balgley

The best way to determine your brand is through a combination of soul-searching and market research. Do this the old-fashioned way by looking in the mirror with a pen and paper handy and make a list of words and phrases that come to mind. These could be traditionally descriptive adjectives such as impish, weaselly, ordinary-looking, trustworthy, squidgy, or random phrases like “Get off my lawn,” or “I’ll cut you.” 

From your list, start building a greater sense of what you have to consistently offer the industry. Use your pen and paper for this part of the exercise, finishing the sentence, “I’m the ____ who ____.” For instance,this could be “I’m the sweet-faced guy who gets kicked around.” “I’m the ivy-league lawbreaker who eats Vicodin for breakfast.” Often your brand is connected to your acting “sweet spot” and it’s worth exploring them both—here’s my article on the subject: “How To Find Your Acting Sweet Spot.” 

The final step in determining your own personal brand revolves around reaching out to your closest friends and asking them for adjectives and phrases that describe you. Most importantly, give your friends permission to not be complimentary. In my career coaching program, I help actors discover their acting “singularity”—the exclusive combination of attitudes and behaviors that make them an original.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Stop Waiting For Your Real Life To Begin

L.A. is a tough town to live in. Show business is a tough as fangs business to work in. We know that. But one aspect that makes both of these arenas particularly difficult is the fact that this city has a Never-never-land element to it—one where actors refuse to be happy or financially responsible in the now, but chronically push such elements off into the future when they’ve achieved some tabloid-worthy success. 

Below is some of the most classic shit actors say that gets in their way and some of the most destructive. If you can overcome it, you’ll be happier than you ever imagined.

“If I get this job, I’ll never ask for anything else…”
“If I book a ___, I’ll know I’ve made it!”
“I’ll be happy once I’m a series regular.” 
“I’ll start saving money once I’m making six figures.”

It’s really great and important to have such goals, but if your goals start getting in the way of your day-to-day happiness and your ability to act like a human being by being present in your daily life, your goals have now become obstacles. 

How to make your ambition your friend and not your enemy. Essentially, you need to put your ambition in check, be happy now, and stop hedging all of your happiness on outside forces that you can’t control. 

How many times have you let the entire day pass you by as you waited for your phone to ring to find out if you got that part, that call-back, that agent, or manager?

You are at the mercy of so many external factors as an actor. An unfathomable amount of decisions are out of your control. Despite your very best efforts to book a role, you might be too short, too blonde, or not a close enough relative to the producer. Many key details that stand between you and your desired outcome are out of your hands and it can leave you feeling very unsteady. 

You have a responsibility to take control of your inner world. Not to bemoan how unfair the industry is or to push your happiness to some pie-in-the-sky day. Your job is to be centered. How? Stop waiting for your “real life” to begin and enjoy, relish in, find all the peace and pride in the life you are living in, right now.

Take a break and enjoy the sunset. Take time to fall in love and have your heart broken and to very creatively plot revenge on that jerkface. Being happy now is your responsibility as an artist. We forget that. 

Ambition is the obsession with the end result. Tenacity and grit is the moment by moment. While ambition may have planted the seed of where you’d like to go, you don’t let it drive you there—you don’t hand over the responsibly. Ambition will eat you alive. Center yourself so that your ambition doesn’t take over the show.

Easier said than done? Whether you’re a beginner or an Academy Award winner, the same series of questions plague us all. What if I fail? What if I never work again? What if I made the wrong choice to work on this or that film and it ruins my brand? What will happen to my career now that I’m aging, now that I’m larger, now that it has been three years since I’ve been on a series…? Believe it or not, there is no top of the mountain, there will always be peaks and there will always be valleys.

As Julianne Moore memorably said at the SAG Awards this year, “As an actor, you’re always surprised when things work out.” This means that even established, lauded, and award-winning actors experience a profound sense of what-ifs and wrenching amounts of uncertainty—particularly if that’s something Moore felt compelled to say on the red carpet. 

One of my clients is currently in the process of creating an original series for HBO. As exciting as this sounds, he is absolutely terrified. He feels that it could all go away in the blink of an eye. He’s right. It could. He’s also always extremely grateful and excited, as this is a huge career milestone. The lesson to be learned is that once one mountain is conquered, the view unfolds before you with a vast valley of new mountains which all need to be conquered.  

What you have control over. You have control over delivering the best performance you possibly can. I help my clients book their roles by making fun and impactful choices in the room. Wherever you are in your career, love what you are doing. Wherever you aim to end up, be grateful for where you are at and what you have right now. 

We often hear amazing performers recount their experience of their best performances as such: “I genuinely can’t remember what happened on stage, I was completely lost in the moment. I’m so glad you enjoyed the performance.” They were living in their performance as it happened. Chances are, they weren’t 20 minutes ahead of themselves, removing their make-up in the dressing room and planning what to make for dinner. They weren’t thinking to themselves as they recited “To Be or Not to Be…,” “Yeah, this speech is gonna win me that Tony award…I wonder what I should wear…” The future doesn’t belong to any of us. All you have is this moment.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

When Is It OK to Turn Down a Role?

Photo Source: Jesse Balgley

There’s a pressure on actors to accept every piece of work offered to them, particularly when they’re just starting out. All work is viewed as a “résumé builder” and an opportunity for much-needed experience. However, just as you wouldn’t go out on a date with every single person that asked you, you should exhibit a certain level of particularity when it comes to the acting jobs you accept.

While I discuss this topic at length in the article “Permission to Say No,” a good rule of thumb is whether the job causes more damage than potential good: If the job could damage your brand or your soul, don’t accept it. For example, if it would chip away at your soul to play a topless waitress in an edgy indie that might play at major festivals, don’t do it. You’re going to have to live with your soul for a long time. Don’t let the potential promise of festivals and the pressure to be “brave” as an actor push you past what your gut and spirit say you’re truly not comfortable with and which violate your brand.

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Be a Blank Canvas

Photo Source: Shutterstock

In life, you truly don’t know what the person you’re talking to is going to say or do. You can achieve this dynamic on stage or on screen as well. Some actors protest and say that the script prevents that sense of wonder and spontaneity, but I disagree. If you really are in the moment, emotionally full but allowing yourself to be a blank canvas which responds truthfully to what’s happening before you, you really will respond in an organic manner as if you don’t know what you’re partner is going to say or do.  

This article was originally posted on Backstage

How To Keep Your Acting 'Real'

I once overheard an indie film director confess that when he’s casting for a role, he’s looking for “someone to save my ass.” Judging from everything I know about casting and the industry, this is definitely true. At the same time, one of the most effective things you can do as an actor is in an alternate arena: Be so real that your partner, audience, casting director, director, producer, etc., can't tell whether you're acting or really talking as yourself. Cultivating such a level of “realness” is so scary-awesome, as it creates a seamless performance and it gives the appearance that you are speaking with no trace of acting. This is one of the greatest gifts that you can give to the entire production, as it causes the directors, writers, and producers to look at you with a sense of wonder and gives your performance a mild tinge of danger.  

As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, the difference between “good” and “great” acting is the actor who starts every scene lit up and emotionally full, instead of empty and having to warm up as they go. This creates a strong platform from whichto take the jump into the red mist and be the actor who acts in a way that seems so natural it doesn’t reek of the stench of acting technique or preparation. A great example of this is the opening scene of the Oscar-winning film “Birdman.” The film begins with a group of actors sitting around a table on a stage, seemingly having a discussion. As the conversation progresses and the camera moves, we realize they’re actually having a table read and acting dialogue from a play. This example so vividly demonstrates the elegance and ease that truly seamless acting can present: It can look startlingly real.   

Blank Canvas
After all preparation and seeds of character have been planted inside the actor and that initial first-moment emotional “light up” has been sparked, the bravest “act” an actor can do is to be a “blank canvas” and exist moment-by-moment, just like life! 

In life, you truly don’t know what the person you’re talking to is going to say or do. You can achieve this dynamic on stage or on screen as well. Some actors protest and say that the script prevents that sense of wonder and spontaneity, but I disagree. If you really are in the moment, emotionally full but allowing yourself to be a blank canvas which responds truthfully to what’s happening before you, you really will respond in an organic manner as if you don’t know what you’re partner is going to say or do. As Joaquin Phoenix explained to the journalist Elvis Mitchell in an article for Interview Magazine, he wants his experiences onscreen to feel so real (and presumably uncertain), that they feel like life. “Without fail, if I ever go onto a scene and say, ‘I’ve fucking got it,’ then it’s the worst thing in the world. I think you’re just looking for life… I don’t want to nail it. I want to go into the courtroom and feel like I might lose the case. I want it to be scary—and it still is.” This quote aptly summarizes how, by allowing yourself to live moment by moment in the scene, you can create a combined sense of fear, uncertainty, and the unknown—all of which are so captivating to watch.

Exercise: Keeping It Real
Call a friend, family member, or acquaintance and let them know you’re going to play a little game as you have the phone conversation. The game is that you’re going to interject lines of dialogue into the conversation but you’re not going to tell them when you’re doing it. The challenge is to see if the person on the other line can tell when you’re reading the text and when you’re really speaking to them. The person you’re talking to only has to engage in the conversation with you, and call bullshit when they see it, or if something seems like interjected dialogue (from your script or play) or simply inauthentic. I guarantee this session will make you more aware of when you’re being real and fully engaged with emotional fullness and when you’re not. 

This article was originally posted on Backstage

Do Actors Need College Degrees?

Photo Source: Jesse Balgley

Yes, you can definitely forge a successful, thriving career as an actor without a degree in theater—much the same as you can become a successful filmmaker without going to film school, or be a successful writer without a BA or MFA in creative writing. Institutions often struggle to bridge the gap between classic theater training and technique and preparing the actor for the styles and demands of an ever-changing film and TV industry. The trained actor will find they need to supplement their training with classes in multi- and single-camera sitcom technique, motion capture, self-taping, cold-reading, etc., in order to be competitive at the Olympic level of the industry. 

That said, a theater degree is a truly special experience during one’s collegiate years, and is one which I would never trade for anything. It can offer a strong foundation, solid work ethic, and give precious hands-on experience in a fun and challenging environment with talented, like-minded individuals—people who can offer invaluable support and collaboration as you grow as an artist.

This article was originally posted on Backstage