{"id":1682,"date":"2022-06-30T20:37:21","date_gmt":"2022-06-30T20:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.actorbusiness.com\/?p=1682"},"modified":"2022-09-09T02:17:47","modified_gmt":"2022-09-09T02:17:47","slug":"acting-career-coaching-you-are-a-product","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.actorbusiness.com\/acting-career-coaching-you-are-a-product\/","title":{"rendered":"Acting Career Coaching: You are a Product!"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"1682\" class=\"elementor elementor-1682\" data-elementor-post-type=\"post\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-9b0cd66 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"9b0cd66\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-70665af\" data-id=\"70665af\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-034d774 elementor-widget elementor-widget-heading\" data-id=\"034d774\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"heading.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<style>\/*! elementor - v3.21.0 - 30-04-2024 *\/\n.elementor-heading-title{padding:0;margin:0;line-height:1}.elementor-widget-heading .elementor-heading-title[class*=elementor-size-]>a{color:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit}.elementor-widget-heading .elementor-heading-title.elementor-size-small{font-size:15px}.elementor-widget-heading .elementor-heading-title.elementor-size-medium{font-size:19px}.elementor-widget-heading .elementor-heading-title.elementor-size-large{font-size:29px}.elementor-widget-heading .elementor-heading-title.elementor-size-xl{font-size:39px}.elementor-widget-heading .elementor-heading-title.elementor-size-xxl{font-size:59px}<\/style><h2 class=\"elementor-heading-title elementor-size-default\"><b><i style=\"\">You Are a Product!<\/i><\/b><\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-8edbfac elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"8edbfac\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<style>\/*! elementor - v3.21.0 - 30-04-2024 *\/\n.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-stacked .elementor-drop-cap{background-color:#69727d;color:#fff}.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-framed .elementor-drop-cap{color:#69727d;border:3px solid;background-color:transparent}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap{margin-top:8px}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap-letter{width:1em;height:1em}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap{float:left;text-align:center;line-height:1;font-size:50px}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap-letter{display:inline-block}<\/style>\t\t\t\t<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">For sale.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Yes, you are.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">If you have decided you want to make money as an actor, get hired as a performer and be paid for it, then you are officially a product.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">On a shelf waiting to be pulled and placed in a cart and ready for check-out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">So let me break this down a little more clearly with some context.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">And this is the part of Hollywood that has just never bothered me. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">I\u2019ve said it before. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">I\u2019m a commodity and I learned this long before I came to Hollywood. I learned it in a smaller market. &#8212; and just because it was smaller didn\u2019t mean I was going to book every \u201cmale\u201d role that came in to my agent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Not at all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Sure my rep might have submitted me to a few more categories just to see how I\u2019d be received, but I wasn\u2019t right for everything.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">The bottom line is, if you&#8217;re auditioning for \u201con camera\u201d or \u201con stage,\u201d then the reality is your body &#8212; your physical being &#8212; is a huge part of the equation and it makes up your product.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">And this exactly how I want you to look at yourself because you&#8217;re a product for sale.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">You just happen to be a person.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Admit it. We get caught up being frustrated by this business, by stereotypes and by being judged by what we look like. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Well, I&#8217;m being really sincere with you when I tell you that if you&#8217;re going to be frustrated, depressed or upset by the fact that casting wants&nbsp; &#8220;40&#8217;s, very athletic&#8221; and you are &#8220;40&#8217;s, athletic,&#8221; then you might be overestimating your type or fundamentally don&#8217;t understand the difference on the two samples above.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">The cold, hard reality is that the old cliche: &#8220;Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,&#8221; is now something a little different for Hollywood.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">&#8220;Casting is in the eye of the employer.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">And I&#8217;m not even talking about the casting director.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">I&#8217;m talking about the directors of films.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">I&#8217;m talking about the producers and show runners in television.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">I&#8217;m talking about the ad agency and the client in commercials, the people paying the freight.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">You don\u2019t get to decide whether or not you&#8217;re the physical type that they want in their show. That&#8217;s their right.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">You may be \u201cleading actor\u201d to someone else, but you may not be &#8220;leading&#8221; in for whatever show\/episode you&#8217;re auditioning. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Sure, people back home may think you&#8217;re really pretty but people out here, the decision-makers, they have a different opinion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">That&#8217;s part of the problem many have when trying to understand Hollywood. Somebody may think that you&#8217;re a &#8220;character look,&#8221; but you&#8217;re just not &#8220;character-enough.&#8221; <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\"><i><b>Sigh&#8230; <\/b><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">So much of how you&#8217;re viewed as a product does come down to your physical exterior &#8212; your outside. Conversely, your art, your craft, your talents\/skill is what&#8217;s on the inside. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">That&#8217;s the juice. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">And it&#8217;s what you get a chance to show when you get in the room.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">But before we can get into the room, a lot of what gets you called in is your face and your body type. And it&#8217;s all relative to the project and its surroundings which you don&#8217;t have control of.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Understand the following: <i><u>No matter what anybody says to you, you&#8217;re always going to be the right type because you&#8217;re just the right type. <\/u><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">That doesn&#8217;t mean we always need your type. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\"><b>Read that again.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Now just know that when you look in a full-length mirror, there is somebody in your city that is pretty close to your type. And of course there&#8217;s a whole lot more in the larger, more competitive markets.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">And guess what&#8230;?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\"><b><i>THEY&#8217;RE WORKING!<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">There is always somebody that is your type who&#8217;s being sought out and who&#8217;s actually working. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">This is your very simple encouragement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Yes, you need to take care of yourself, present well and all that sort of stuff. But the bottom line is, I would rather you focus less on what your type is and more on a good headshot, industry knowledge and the castable realities of your type <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">and by making sure you&#8217;re a damn good actor!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Because when it&#8217;s all said and done, what I also want you to know about the product is the following.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\"><b><i>Your essence.&nbsp;<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt; color: var( --e-global-color-text );\">It&#8217;s the center point in your chest. What makes you &#8212; <i>you!&nbsp;<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: var( --e-global-color-text ); font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Granted, we all sort of idle at a different pitch. We tend to call it personalities. Some people are more shy, more outspoken, etc.&nbsp; Your general personality emanates out of you because that&#8217;s the center of you &#8212; your essence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">I&#8217;m not telling you that you can&#8217;t stretch artistically. Hell, some actors have won Academy Awards doing that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">For now, the truth of the matter is that in film and television most of the time you&#8217;re going to get hired for the stuff where you make us believe you and your character share your natural essence.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">I say it all the time. A really bad guy on a soap opera doesn&#8217;t look like a bad guy on a primetime television drama. And neither of those actors\/characters may look like the really bad guy in a feature film.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">It&#8217;s just different.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Things get cast differently because of the medium, the tone of the project and the surrounding cast.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Once you realize all this, it&#8217;s no different.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">For example, how many kinds of hamburgers are made in the world? Regardless, the foundation of it is still a burger just like the foundation of you is your essence and what you look like.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">But casting is way more than just a face.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">It&#8217;s everything. It&#8217;s exterior information. It&#8217;s the project. It&#8217;s the cast. At the end of the day, your job is to make sure that your craft, the thespian inside you is awesome, brilliant, fabulous.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\"><b><i>So that you&#8217;re always doing a good job with the show part of show business when you get an opportunity.&nbsp;<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">And that you work on self-promotion beyond your representation to make sure that you create opportunities for you &#8212;the product. You need to create product awareness in your marketplace so that they know you&#8217;re there and can consider you for auditions.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">But please understand, there are so many factors that are involved in why you get called in on any given day for any given project, that you need not preoccupy yourself with &#8220;why&#8221; but focus on the process. Get in the cart, get to the checkout stand, get scanned and be on your way.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">And this is why we go on as actors.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Hopefully in our lives we understand ourselves well enough to know that, that when we truly find what we think we want, that we actually know that. It&#8217;s fulfilling emotionally and spiritually. And at times that comes with the proverbial &#8220;booking&#8221; phone call. EXCITING!!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">But leading up to that, do understand that casting doesn&#8217;t see that many people. In fact, like dating, they give themselves a chance to go on a speed date with 15-20 people in an afternoon.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Well, if you did that, you would naturally pare it down to two or three that you&#8217;d want to see for a second date, which we&#8217;d call in this business a callback.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">That&#8217;s what you would naturally do if you did that. And it wouldn&#8217;t necessarily always be based on the same type.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">But there would be some consistent things within that that would be common and similar for each person that you called back. Just as my general philosophy about this profession as a product has always been to make sure I do intelligent promotion and then make sure that when I have an audition that I go in and that I&#8217;m as terrific as I can possibly be, because those two things I can control.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\"><b><i>I cannot control whether or not I get cast, which is why you cannot under any circumstances take casting personally.<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">You&#8217;re a product for sale. You&#8217;re unique, you&#8217;re wonderful. You&#8217;re only like you. But there are a zillion factors as to why we do or don&#8217;t need you on a given day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica; font-size: 14pt;\">Remember acting is a wonderful, wonderful art. But the second you think about wanting to have some stardom or success or make some money at it, it becomes a business&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What do you mean I&#8217;m a &#8220;product?&#8221; I&#8217;m more than that. I&#8217;m a person&#8230; an actor. Here let me show you&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":57,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actorbusiness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actorbusiness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actorbusiness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actorbusiness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actorbusiness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1682"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.actorbusiness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1852,"href":"https:\/\/www.actorbusiness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions\/1852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actorbusiness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actorbusiness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actorbusiness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actorbusiness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}