The Many Hats Of An Actor

For me, one of the pluses of being an actor is the variety. I don't just mean the variety of roles an actor will play throughout their career, although that is certainly a plus in itself. The variety I'm speaking of, today, is all the various hats an actor will wear. Actors will audition, will act on set once they have been cast in a role, will spend time marketing themselves to the powers that be in the acting world and, in general, will wear a number of different hats in their pursuit of the lightening in a bottle we all lump under the general term of "acting".

And so it was that while only a few weeks ago I found myself being an acting coach, as I conducted a couple of cold reading workshops, more recently I spent three days in Los Angeles wearing my acting student hat.

From living in LA, I made, and still maintain, good contacts there which I used to set up the schedule for my trip. Of course sometimes things don't always go as planned and I had to make some last minute adjustments to my LA schedule.

I was originally scheduled to attend a cold reading workshop of Craig Campobsso's in Burbank. Craig is a well known LA casting director who among his many accomplishments was nominated for an emmy for his casting work on the TV drama, "Picket Fences". Craig holds these cold reading workshops almost every Sunday, but as luck would have it, the particular one for which I was scheduled was cancelled. So, shifting gears, I took a private acting lesson from Craig. He's a very personable man, and the lesson was not only great fun, but very productive.

I also took a two hour lesson from my long time acting coach in Hollywood. Until now, I have refrained from naming him, but have decided to do so in this blog entry. My Hollywood acting coach is Glenn F. Haines. He coaches everyone from unknowns to name actors. His services are greatly in demand. and I am quite fortunate to have him as my acting coach. In a lesson or workshop he is never easy, and demands that you give your best and then give a little more. He pushes you and expects you to push yourself. He too, is a very nice man, but that never gets in his way when he pointedly needs to tell you what you did wrong or right, why this happened, and if what you did was wrong, what you need to do to correct it. His coaching is most certainly not for the faint hearted, but is definitely for those who want to continue to improve as an actor.

Glenn makes occasional trips to Seattle (where he used to live and where I met him) and if you can catch him on one of those trip and take an acting lesson from him, you will be a better actor after the lesson than you were before.

Finally, I attended a casting director's cold reading workshop which was held at Actors West in Thousand Oaks. This workshop was conducted by Allen Hooper, who casts the TV show, "Modern Family". Allen is personable, quite witty, and the workshop was a nice event with which to finish off my LA trip. There we 24 actors in attendance, most with one or more (a couple with a lot more) credits in network and cable TV shows, films, and commercials. Besides working with a top flight casting director like Allen, working with talented professional actors is also a benefit when attending an LA casting director workshop.

I returned home this past Tuesday, and am looking forward to my next trip to LA in a few months.

So, from actor to acting coach, and back to actor (and all the other stops in between) I am constantly reminded of just how fortunate I am (as are all actors) to have the opportunity to be in this wonderful business.

Until next time...................

A Tale of Two Auditions

Auditions are to actors what job interviews are to the rest of the working world. Of course there are differences, as auditions usually only last five to ten minutes, and there are many more each year (hopefully) than there are job interviews for workers in other fields. In essence, actors are always looking for their next job, even if they are currently working in film, television, or commercials. It is the nature of what we do.

Some actors literally loath auditions as they make them feel uncomfortable, while others neither hate or love auditions, and just figure they are a vital part of the business they are in. A third, and admittedly smaller, groups of actors actually like and enjoy auditions. I fall into that last group and freely admit there are other actors who look at me like I am a Martian when I say that, and I might as well have just told them I enjoy root canals. Still, love them or hate them, auditions are a part of being an actor.

There are many things an actor can control during an audition, but also there are a number of things totally out of an actors control. Knowledgeable people in the business say you should worry about what you can control, and not the rest. Fairly good advice for life, too, I suppose.

Recently I had two auditions with quite different results, even though both auditions went well. When an actor leaves an audition, they know if they did well.

First, I auditioned for a corporate/industrial film in Portland. The audition went longer than most (some 15 minutes) and I handled everything they threw at me well. Since then I also auditioned for another corporate/industrial film in Seattle, and again, the audition went well. I was equally pleased with both auditions.

I was cast in the film in Portland, but not the one in Seattle. I have been around in acting long enough to know that I will probably never actually now why I was not cast in one, and cast in the other. I have learned to accept the fact that I will probably never learn this and subscribe to the wise saying about worrying only about what you can control.

In both cases, I could have been cast or not cast because I did or did not have just the right look for which they were looking. Other than good grooming, we have no control over how we look. Perhaps I wasn't cast in the Seattle film because, as well as I did in the audition, another actor had an even better audition. If you can run the hundred yard dash in 9.8 seconds, you will win a lot of races until you go up against a runner who can run it in 9.7. That's life. Perhaps I reminded the audition person of someone they didn't like. That very thing once happened to an old acting coach of mine who reminded the film's director so much of his ex mother in law, he didn't want to be in the same room with her.

My point is this. If you can walk away from an audition feeling good about how you did, that is the very best result you can hope for. When that happens you have controlled all you could about the audition. What should an actor do after an audition regardless of how they think it went. If you learned something in the audition that will help you in future auditions, that's great. Otherwise forget it and move on. If they are interested in you they know where to find you or your agent. That audition is over and it is time for the actor to look forward, not backward.

I'm off this afternoon for LA for a series of casting director workshops and private lesson. I'll talk with you when I return.............