| EXCERPT FROM: CHAPTER 1: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS What is your type? Are you unbelievably beautiful? (Hollywood is oversaturated with beautiful people by the way). Are you extremely talented like Billy Bob Thorton or Meryl Streep? Do you make everyone in the room laugh uncontrollably? Are you the hot, sexy girl every boy wants? Maybe you’re the studly, heroic guy that saves the damsel in distress? Possibly the badass CIA operative? The evil mob boss? The serial killer? The hot girl’s plump best friend? The funny fat guy? The skanky biker chick? The nerdy librarian with glasses, who’s really kind of attractive? The hardcore ex con? The stern, sadistic high school principal? What is your type? Get the picture? And contrary to what you may think, you cannot be "several types." You will be one for now. Here is a good exercise to find out your best type... EXCERPT FROM: CHAPTER 2: MOVING TO LOS ANGELES The valley has some relatively good, safe areas. The rents can be somewhat high, but again, you want to reside in as safe a neighborhood as possible. The 101 and 405 are your two main freeways. But if you can handle the heat, the valley is a great place to live. Nearby studios are Warner Brothers, and Disney in Burbank; Universal Studios in Universal City; CBS in Studio City; and Santa Clarita Studios in Valencia up the 405. Word to the wise, apartments north of Riverside Dr. begin to deteriorate a tad. Also, avoid Van Nuys, as there is a lot of gang activity. The far west valley such as Woodland Hills and far east Valley like Pasadena, I strongly discourage. They are too far away to be serious about acting. But should you chose the valley to reside, don’t forget to make sure you have air conditioning! EXCERPT FROM: CHAPTER 3: ARRIVAL City streets can be lots of fun, too. Victory Blvd. in the valley goes east to west. But once you reach Burbank, it suddenly goes north and south. Robertson Blvd. borders the city of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. So on one side of the street, the addresses are in the 100’s. On the other side of the street, the addresses are in the 1000’s. Cahuenga travels north and south through North Hollywood and Universal City, but when it intersects into Ventura Blvd., it stops. Then a couple of miles down Ventura Blvd., it randomly turns into Cahuenga again through the Hollywood Bowl Pass down into Hollywood and beyond. Santa Monica Blvd. transverses 3 cities: Los Angeles and Beverly Hills where the addresses are sequential. However, when you get to Santa Monica city, the addresses change again. Bottom line is, know where you're going before you go! EXCERPT FROM: CHAPTER 4: FINDING YOUR DAY JOB & STARTING A NEW LIFE The best and hardest job to get is waiting tables. Yes, I said the hardest. That’s because everyone in town wants to be an actor. You’ll want to work the night shift, because again, Hollywood works during the day. Not the night. So even though I refer to “day job”, you don’t really want to be working during the day. “Day job” is just a colloquial term for your period before becoming a working actor. If you work at a restaurant or bar, try not to work too late, because you’ll want to be getting up early to pursue your career. But there are other options than working the traditional waiter job... EXCERPT FROM: CHAPTER 5: HEADSHOTS This must be the very first thing you do in order to pursue your career. Acting for film and television is a visual medium. How you look is vitally important. People need to have a visual record of you. This is the first thing to do, because no agent, manager, or casting director is going to take your call, or call you in without a headshot. There may be an exception to this because of nepotism, but the first thing they will ask when you walk into the office is, “Did you bring me a headshot?” Avoid the embarrassment and looking like an amateur, and make sure you have your professional headshot in hand. If you brought headshots out with you from your hometown, most likely they are not going to be up to snuff. What the community theatre director raved about in Hometown, USA, or your mom or college acting teacher liked, will most likely will not be Hollywood industry standard. Later on, I will give you the names of some top notch photographers to get you the proper headshots... EXCERPT FROM: CHAPTER 9: THEATRICAL AGENT Your theatrical agency is for getting work in television, film, industrials, webisodes, and theatre. To have a working career as a professional actor you will need a legitimate agent to represent you as their client to casting directors and other sources of potential work. There are some management companies that will suffice, but we’ll cover that topic later. The ideal time to search for an agent is April to June, but agents are “always on the lookout for new talent” as the saying goes. Equally, “we’re not looking at anyone right now” is heard just as much, if not more. It is important to know that mid-January through mid-April is pilot season, and unless the major networks are looking for you, you’re not going to have much success getting a good agency. So that might be a good time to make the initial move out here to Los Angeles. Then after a couple of months when you’ve established your new life, you’ll be just in time to get started pursuing your career. EXCERPTS FROM: CHAPTER 14: THE PRE READ FOR TV AND FILM Play/rehearse the scene the way YOU see it. If you’re way off, or they want to see something else, don’t worry, they will indeed tell you. In my early years, I used to spend a lot of time racking my brains over trying to figure out what they wanted to see. Then back in the late 1990’s, I had 5 plays that I wrote, produced. I sat in on four of them for the casting sessions, as I also directed those four. It was then that I realized when I wrote the characters in the play, I had in mind what they would look like, sound like, and act like. All I had to do was watch a bunch of actors and actresses come through the door, until I saw that character! That’s mostly how casting happens. They already have in mind what they’re looking for. So if you’re not it, you’re not it. There’s nothing you can do about it, so you shouldn’t stress over it. However, sometimes you might be the lucky candidate for "going in a different direction", or you may even get a "Watch and Advise" for a future job... AUDITION DO’S AND DON’TS An actor I knew brought this huge knife into the audition with him. In one of the scenes we were auditioning with, the character pulls out a knife, and threatens the hero. So what did he do? You got it. He pulled the knife out in the audition. When I went in to read for the casting director, someone I had read for a few times, I asked about the other actor pulling the knife. His exact words were, “I’m never having him, again.” Do not take any weapons, real or fake into theatrical auditions. The exception might be... EXCERPT FROM: Chapter 19: BECOMING A WORKING ACTOR After I did “The Redemption” aka “Kickboxer 5”, I was immediately offered three more starring roles in straight to video martial arts films. I said no to all of them, because I didn’t want to make that my career. Occasionally at this point in my career, having done major guest stars on television, some casting director will still try to get me in for a small co-star role. I almost always pass on the offer. The reason is you want to move forward with your career so that you can make more money, and land larger roles. If you take every single job that comes your way, you don’t progress. I’ve seen actors on jobs that do this. They’ve made a “career” of doing anything that comes to them, and they still drive a beat up old car, and live in a low rent apartment. You don’t want to be like that. EXCERPT FROM: CHAPTER 23: ROCK BOTTOM You go in on auditions, and you’re told how wonderful you are, but you don’t get hired. Then when you see who was hired, it makes no sense to you. An example was a pilot I went in for last year. The breakdown described the guy as having a shaved head, white supremacist, muscular, a cold blooded killer, tattoos. He breaks out of prison going on a killing spree taking out everyone who put him behind bars. This is the kind of role that I’ ve done repeatedly, and TV casting directors know me for it. So I go in straight to producers on a Thursday morning. The Los Angeles studio loves me, the director up in Toronto loves me, but the network in New York and some of the producers on location have some reservations. So who do they take for the white supremacist, tattooed cold blooded killer? Some pretty boy Latino guy out of Canada, who has about 8 credits. This business can drive you to the brink, if you let it. |
| Below are several excerpts from my program: Being a Working Actor by a Real Working Actor |
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| Playing commando for the SyFy Channel. |
| How's this for a day job? Doing a 2 story head first highfall at Universal Studios in the now defunct WILD WEST STUNT SHOW. |
| A headshot used occasionally for the tough detective roles. |
| As "Rosen", Eric Robert's bad mercenary in DEPTH CHARGE. I was hired directly off my audition tape. |
| Typical 2:00 L.A. traffic on a Thursday afternoon. Doesn't anybody work here? |
| Went in for a major supporting role on DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, and got offered a small role instead. But had to take it to keep people happy. |
