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...................