There’s a well-known actor saying that goes, “Nobody’s casting in your living room.”  In essence?  Get off your butt, and get out to auditions, because you can’t just dream a career into existence while you lie on your couch.  (That is, unless you live with a casting director.)  You have to develop the courage to walk out your door every day and try to book work.  However…you can’t get the work, unless you live in an office.

Okay, obviously, I don’t mean that you should actually sleep in an office building.  (That’d be weird.)  But you do need to have a space set up that is conducive to all the paperwork you have to do to propel your career forward.  I didn’t realize until well into my career that a large portion of my job was about the paperwork.  (Ugh!  Paperwork!  Where’s Ibsen?  Where’s Shaw?  Where’s Mamet, for goodness’ sake?!  I want to work in the theater, in movies and television, not dilly-dally with paper!  Well…tough.)  You got a lot of work to do, and you need a safe space to do it.  You’ve got casting notices to submit to, cover letters to write. Read More

I am the youngest of three children, all of whom have made their careers in the entertainment business, and our shared childhood is pretty indicative of the choices we’ve subsequently made as professional performers.  My sister, the oldest, directed my brother and I in every version of “Cinderella” she could brainstorm and film on my mother’s old camcorder, including “Cinderella: The Musical,” “Cinderella: The One-Woman Old-Time Vaudeville Revue,” “Cinderella: The Claymation Tragedy,” and, last but not least, “Cinderella: The Stop-Motion Melodrama Starring Barbie.”  My brother wrote and performed all the music.  I was lights, props, costumer, and, when I was allowed to act, diva extraordinaire.  (I liked to keep my sister on her toes with my obnoxious yet witty ad-libs.)  Challenging and ridiculous as the process was, Do-It-Yourself  filmmaking (as well as DIY theater production, DIY neighborhood newspapers, and DIY cover performances of Barbra Streisand’s “Hello Dolly!” done entirely on roller-skates) taught me an invaluable lesson: DO IT YOURSELF.  In between community theater projects?  School’s out for the summer and no creative outlet?  No one casting in your cul-de-sac?  Make your own! Read More

ACTING 123
by
LINDA STUART

I learned from a top acting teacher that an aspiring actor must take a minimum of 3 actions per day, every day, to advance his or her career. It could be emailing 3 pictures and resumes. It could be making 3 cold calls. It could be setting up 3 auditions. If you don’t take at least 3 critical actions per day to help yourself as an actor, you are severely undermining your career.

Not everyone is born Kate Hudson, Goldie Hawn’s daughter, who hit big-screen stardom at a very early age.

Other young screen stars today – Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Nikki Reed, Amanda Seyfried, and Ellen Page – are more the rarity than the norm.

So, you’ve got to work your career. If you don’t have an agent or manager, if you’re not in SAG or Actors’ Equity, you mustn’t let a day go by without aggressively tackling these obstacles.
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