Briony Rawle
You’d think that with all the advice that actors are offered all the time, it’d be a pretty easy ride. Whenever I tell a non-actor that I’m an actor, they usually assume (correctly, as I’m serving them in a pub), that I’m a struggling actor and that they should offer any tips they can think of to help me out. “Have you tried writing to agents to see if they’ll represent you?” “My mum’s friend started out at the RSC, maybe you could try them?” “Elstree Studios are just down the road, maybe you could just pop in one day?”
This comes from a lovely warm place and I’m always grateful for it, in the same way that I love my mum for being genuinely convinced that I’m cool and pretty enough to pull off the shiny silver jumpsuit she got me for Christmas last year. Misguided, but very touching. However, even when you get advice from people within the industry, it’s often just as useless as the advice I get from my pub regulars because in the acting world, there is no correct answer.
For example, I mentioned in my previous blog that many new actors work as extras or even runners on film sets because they’ve been told it’s a good way to “get a foot in the door”. This, in my opinion, is exploitative crap, born of the mythical Hollywood canard of “being spotted”. You’ll be sitting in your period costume, way out of shot, playing Angry Birds and eating a ham sandwich from the catering van, and the director will suddenly demand, “Who is that extra? She is exquisite, I must have her for the sequel!” This happens about as often as the unicorn derby. It’s starry-eyed balderdash.
I have given up on indiscriminately gobbling up every scrap of advice from industry insiders that I can get my hands on, because no-one has the right answer and so you end up continually trying to decide which of two totally opposite instructions to follow. Get black and white headshots, agents like things old-fashioned. Definitely go for colour shots so they can see your red hair. Never email, always write a proper letter. Never send them post, they haven’t got time to wrestle open your scented envelope and appreciate your calligraphy. Do lots of unpaid work. Never work unpaid. Join Equity. Shun Equity. Panto is great for your CV. Whatever you do, DON’T DO PANTO. This Kafka-esque farce of skewed dogma leaves you with the bizarre idea that casting professionals are cranky, attention-deficit baby dragons, who might gurgle with glee at your CV as it lands on their desk and then burn you to a cinder for using the wrong font.
Of course, there are some things you can do that are a pretty safe bet: joining all the casting websites, going to casting workshops, seeing plays, buying plays, going to classes at the Actor’s Centre, getting new headshots every five minutes. The problem is that all of these things cost you money that you don’t have because you can’t get work, so you have to be selective.
The industry is an enigmatic, shape-shifting mystery land, where day is night and night is day, and even the keepers of the secrets don’t know what those secrets are because the secrets don’t exist. So don’t hassle yourself with trying to do it all, and make your own mind up about what’s best for you. And if all else fails, hang around the Spotlight offices looking like a lead protagonist and thumbing conspicuously through your Equity diary. Someone’s bound to spot you eventually.
Photo by Flickr user Rob Boudon under a Creative Commons licence.