debor009

I'm a firm believer in learning something from those who are successful at doing it. ("Those who can, do," as the saying goes.) Actor autobiographies are tremendous resources of information on how an actor achieved success, as are the many bon mots that turn up in actor interviews posted online. Very often, or so it seems to me, the breakthrough occurred not with some change in technique but with a simple change in the actor's way of thinking, as multiple Emmy-winning actor Bryan Cranston demonstrates in this slyly recorded snippet posted on YouTube. Going into an audition to "do" a job rather than "get" a job can take a lot of pressure off of your performance and enable you to "let it go" when you finish the audition. By the way, motivational coach/speaker Evan Carmichael posts the "Top 10 rules for Success" for various actors, which always have some positive takeaway. Here's what he posted for Cranston. It's well wort...

Our local actors group had an online discussion recently of ways to gather your clips together for your demo reel, a topic I’ve touched on before and worth repeating as young filmmakers especially frequently seem to have something “better to do” than get clips out to their cast. If the film or TV project you appeared in is somewhere online, there are online services that can get the clip for you. Actors have used ripit.me or clipgrab.org, which has a program for both Mac and Windows. Expect to pay a small fee however. If the project is posted to YouTube, you can easily download the whole thing to your desktop by simply replacing the “www.” in the url with “ss” (without the dot). This will redirect you to Savefrom.net, where you can click on "download video in browser" (look on the lower right third of the screen) and select the video quality you prefer. Done in less than a minute and free. If the film/TV project itself isn’t posted to YouTube, see if you can at least find the...

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...

Many actors try to gain insight into the character they are playing by writing reams of backstory and character description. For me, being a triple Aries and terribly anxious to get on with things, that approach is a struggle. Here are David Mamet's thoughts on understanding and developing a scene that I've found very helpful in adding immediacy and specificity to my role. In fact, I printed this out and carry it in my wallet because it's especially useful for cold reads.

I don’t think one can work in film without being in love with the movies: their long and glorious history, the trends and techniques that create them, and the actors and actresses – great stars and contract players – who bring them to life. Since starting down this crazy path as an actress, my shelves have become filled with books about the film industry and the availability of many wonderful old books on Amazon, some of them out of print, means that I always have one in my bag to pick up between scenes or devour in my easy chair during those weeks between jobs. I’ve just acquired two by American journalist and author Otto Friedrich : City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940’s and Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920’s , the second of which provides back story on many of the European actors, writers, and filmmakers who fled to Hollywood prior to the second World War. Friedrich is a terrific writer who captures the big picture and then enriches it with the storie...

All actors, at one time or other in their careers, experience the frustration of finding themselves relegated to one or two types of roles, with no opportunities to show their skills playing anything else. An actress friend, for example, said she felt she could play a lawyer, but she’s always being cast as blue collar, "lady plumber" types. When that happens, we’re frequently told to produce our own films, which means writing a script, assembling a cast and crew, finding locations, setting up a schedule, feeding everyone, and – even on a micro budget – coming up with many thousands of dollars to pay for it all.  Then the months of waiting for editing, promotions, and the cost of submitting to festivals. A few weeks ago, I got the idea that since an actor only needs 30 seconds of footage to show what they can do, it might be possible for two actors to shoot and edit a small scene themselves, with minimal set up, and then mine it for clips. Having some experience in directing a...