Starting a Career in the Acting Biz..

Question

I am 15, so I truly do understand that I have a 1 in a million of actually breaking into this business. But I am desperate to try. I thought you had to get an agent, then they sent you out to auditions. But my father told me its the other way around, you nail and audition, then you get an agent. He said an agent won't just take you on if you say your good, you have to prove it.

Now, as you may have guessed I am massively confused and would like some advise. (:

Please & Thank You.

Answer 1

You would be surprised (or maybe not) at how many young people say almost the exact same things in the same way. As a matter of fact, all you have to do is a search here on YahooAnswers and you will find tons of questions just like this and tons of answers as well.

Sometimes I'm torn between telling people who ask these questions to start by getting some training and telling them to just go get a head shot and go to some casting website and start submitting. But reason wins over me and I have to tell you that if you really want to be an actor, you should first put your big rush to do it to the side and slow down. Build your base first. The competition is fierce and if you don’t prepare yourself really well, you will become just another statistic of the many who WANTED TO, but never made it.

I even created a new video on my site on the exact same topic: The reasons why most aspiring actors never make it.

You might have heard in school when you talked about Abraham Lincoln, that he is the author of a famous quote. He said, "If I had three hours to chop down a tree, I would use the first hour to sharpen the axe."

If you don't sharpen your axe first, there will inevitably be a time when you will have to stop chopping and sharpen it, so you might as well do it now.

What does that mean? Get some acting training. Find a good school and a good teacher to help you learn how to act. Start taking drama classes in school and doing school plays. Just do some things that will help you to learn how to act.

While you are doing that, try and understand what it really means to be an actor, what actors do...really while they are trying to get work, how little money most actors make, why actors struggle to make ends meet and how successful actors are able to continuously get work. You need to learn business skills, networking skills, communication skills and a lot more.

When you decide to become an actor, you are making a decision to run your own business. Now I know you are young, but if you can start to grasp these concepts now, you will position yourself ahead of your competition. You might need some help on that last one about business, but if you talk to successful actors, you will learn what I mean. For example, you need to be good at making contacts with the right people. There are ways to do that and ways not to do it.

On the other hand if all you ever aspire to is to work background work or be an extra on Disney or something like that, then don't worry too much about all that stuff I just said and just go and try and get extra work. That's fairly easy to get considering that the majority of all acting work is background work and smaller roles anyway.

But you have to know that if you really want to make a big splash as an actor, sooner or later you will need some real experience and some real good training, because that's what the really good actors have and if you want to compete with them, you will need it too. Extra work is great in my opinion at the very beginning just to start and see how things are on set and how real actors prepare and perform and to see how set directions are given, but it will not make your career and if you do it too much, some say that it will damage your chances of having a real career. Some industry professionals discourage it for those who really want to pursue a serious acting career.

The thing is, you can do both if you want. You can go to school, take acting classes and still work as an extra or even try to do some community theatre while you are learning the craft.

At any rate, have a look at this page on my website for aspiring actors. It has 23 links to pages that have to do with starting your acting career.

You'll find a lot of helpful information there that will make you think about how you can get your acting career started including steps to get started, 17 things you can do fairly soon to start getting work, ways to promote yourself, how to get the money together to fund your career, how to get an agent, 29 ways to promote yourself to get noticed and why acting school is so important. http://www.actingcareerstartup.com/teen_...

Good luck!

Tony