Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Truth or Encouragement?

I have always tried to tell the truth to those who seek out my guidance on acting as a career. I have been accused of being less than encouraging and therefore heartless when I tell youngsters who are obviously just dreaming that they are not going to be on Disney and they should come back to reality and perhaps see if they are talented enough to seek a career as an actor as an adult. There is another advisor of aspiring actors that I know that believes all those who dream of being actors should try their damnedest to be one. Here's the problem. By advising the untalented to seek careers is a waste of time and effort and money. It is in the end cruel and heartless to encourage someone to do something at which they will fail. I believe it takes extra ordinary natual talent, a special personality, tons of experience, and know how about the acting business to attempt to become a proessional actor. I teach my advisees how to tell if they have the talent and in my book, The Tao of Acting, I set forth the personality qualities they must have. I always encourage them to keep acting, not to go through long periods of inactivity even if they have to do amateur plays. And finally, I provide them with information on how to network and how to get an agent and how to audition so they can move forward, What they must never do is sit around and wait for the career to come to them. Because that will never happen. They have to go out every day and make some sort of step forward if they are going to succeed. Now once I am mentoring an actor and as long as he or she continues to move forward with their career, I will continue to mentor them. But I really don't like to be a nag and I much perfer the actor to do the work that is necessary without me telling them over and over again, what they should do. Now that's the truth and if is is not encouraging, too bad. There are too damn many people trying to become actors anyway.

2 comments:

  1. Keep speaking the truth.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Love posts like this! everyone needs a reality check every once in a while, hey, even I do!

    ReplyDelete