Most anyone who had the opportunity to learn something about acting when they were a kid would agree: there is no experience in the world that can match it. For helping a youngster gain confidence, meet new friends, learn valuable ...
Auditions are a mysterious beast. If you talk with any five casting directors, you’ll get five different takes on what makes a great audition: It’s a job interview. Be professional. No, it’s more like joining a family. Be warm. No, ...
“What I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.” – Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills in “Taken” (2009) When ...
If there’s one thing that becomes abundantly clear after you’ve been around the acting business for a while it’s that no two roads are identical. Everyone from MFAs to people who stumbled into the business after giving a best-man speech ...
We’re all aware of the great collaborations that seem to crop up again and again when it comes to acting, directing, and creating in general: Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart, Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. ...
Every one of us who is a professional or aspiring actor has had those auditions where we just felt off. You can do everything perfectly in technical terms – rehearse, get a good night’s sleep, get there early and be ...
We all know the feeling. Every actor who has ever set foot on stage or stood in front of a camera, no matter how big a star they are, no matter how talented they are, every single one of us ...
“Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.” – Ray Bradbury It’s difficult to explain to one’s non-actor friends just what a weird tight-wire act we ...
“I’d love to be a diva. But I’d then have to send so many apology notes for my abhorrent behavior.” –Amy Adams We talk all the time about what we are striving toward as actors and performers, how to present ...
There is a great deal of mystery that goes into the process of acting, a great deal of unknowable connection and subjective emotions and hard-to-explain technique that can often be seen, but which are difficult to quantify. All this, as ...
There’s nothing like that feeling when you walk out of an audition feeling great, knowing in your bones that you killed it. You remembered the lines, you were funny and charming with the casting team, they laughed at your stupid ...
Technology is king, let’s face it. And barring some massive disaster that launches us all into some Mad Max-type post-apocalyptic dystopia in which we can’t access our Instagram accounts (my GOD, think of the CHILDREN!) tech is here to stay. ...
“I remember that Jack Lemmon, who is one of my favorite actors of all time, says that the day he stops being nervous is the day he should leave the business.” –Kim Basinger Let’s be honest: acting is a very ...
“I had to stop going to auditions thinking, ‘Oh, I hope they like me.’ I had to go in thinking I was the answer to their problem.” –George Clooney If there’s one thing the internet of actors isn’t lacking, it’s ...
It’s sometimes hard to believe, but in acting, as in life, we are often our own worst enemy. But how could that be possible? Why on earth would we not want ourselves to succeed? It’s our success after all… The ...
As challenging as it can sometimes be to make a living by acting, you have to admit this is a great time to be in the business. There are more channels, more web-based television and film production, more online opportunities, ...
Let’s face it, the world we live in is hyper-connected through social media. And barring disaster, that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. There’s no avoiding it: from politics to social justice movements to finding lost children to selling your stuff ...
Some people strive to be different. We all had that one friend in school: they make a great effort to buck current trends, they go out of their way to dress aggressively weird, they pretend not to know anything about ...
Over the course of a couple of decades in casting in L.A., Dea Vise has seen a lot of things–including some things that would curl your hair, as the saying goes. But Vise says if she had to distill one ...
As a single mom of an 8-month-old girl, independent casting director Neely Gurman has just a quick moment to chat via phone from her Woodland Hills home as her daughter takes a rare nap. “She’s hyper,” Gurman said. “She works ...