debor009

It’s ironic that you can move to a city of 12 million people and feel absolutely alone, but you can.  Sure, you can go to actor networking events, union workshops, and acting classes and meet fellow struggling actors (the city is overrun with them!), but if you’re looking for close friends to have fun with, people in the same hugely competitive business may not make logical soul mates. Plus crazy schedules can make it hard to connect outside of classes and auditions. When I tell an actor friend "Let's get together for lunch!" I invariably have to preface it with "What does your schedule look like?" Bumping into someone’s shopping cart at the supermarket could have you mistaken for a stalker, and I’ve watched (and appeared in) enough Investigation Discovery crime shows to know that you don’t look for friends in bars. (A couple vacationing at the beach a couple of years ago did that and didn’t survive the night!) The best bet for finding friends (not to mention p...

I always have a book or two in my bag so that down times on set are never wasted. Meryl Streep knits. Stallone writes screenplays. I read. Everyone does something. Recently I had the pleasure of reading producer/screenwriter Phil Rosenthal 's book  You're Lucky You're Funny , a smart and hilarious page-turner about the creation of the hit comedy Everybody Loves Raymond . Included are lots of advice about acting, writing, navigating the sometimes shark-infested waters of Hollywood, and a great piece of advice on editing, which I decided to share here because I had a conversation on this very thing with a young filmmaker a few days ago. Editing dialog in a film should serve as a guide to the audience on the emotional subtext of what is being said. I called it "including the reaction." Rosenthal calls it "clarity" and "letting it land." He said it better than I did. Here it is: "Clarity. At any point along the way the clarity can be muddled, ...

Oscar-winning actor David Niven came to Hollywood in the 1930s. Before breaking into speaking roles (his skill at socializing with big name stars helped) he signed with Central Casting and worked as what was then called an Extra (now called Background) in such films as Mutiny on the Bounty . It's worth noting what that experience was like before actors unionized. Here's an excerpt from Niven's 1975 memoir, Bring on the Empty Horses : "It was grim. The wage for a crowd extra fell below $3 a day, and Central Casting reported that, including the highest paid of their 18,000, fewer than 60 extras were earning more than $2,000 a year; the rest were averaging less than $500. "Most of us were forced to take part-time jobs and we became carhops, manual laborers, shop assistants, janitors, or waitresses; I worked on a fishing boat. Many went on relief. "The lucky ones among us who received studio calls were expected to report for work at 6 a.m., to accept inedible mea...