Actors – a Reality Check
Actors – a Reality Check
Claudia (name changed) almost bankrupted herself taking every acting course she could find in her dream to become an actor.
“I did Shakespeare, acting for the camera, audition technique, everything from Stanislavski to Meisner to Practical Aesthetics to whatever you want! I did weekend courses, part-time courses, and for a time I even had a private teacher.”
For almost three years Claudia followed her dream of becoming a professional full-time actor.
“Because I was working [in a call centre] I could only take weekend and evening courses. I love acting and I love learning so it seemed the right thing to do.”
Two years ago, however, Claudia got an unwelcome reality check.
She was due to travel up to her parents’ for her mother’s 60th birthday when she discovered her credit card was maxed out and she didn’t have the money for the train fare.
“I had to ask my dad to lend me the money. I was so embarrassed and felt very guilty. How did I end up in that situation?”
Remorseful, but determined to find out, Claudia asked her father – an accountant – to sit down with her and go through her spending. They were shocked to find that over the previous 3 years she had spent almost €17,000 on acting courses.
“When he then asked me what my acting had earned, I had to admit it was just a few hundred euros.”
Despite all her training as an actor, Claudia was simply not getting the work to justify it.
“I knew I could act and I knew I loved it, but I also realised I couldn’t carry on like that. The courses were killing me financially.”
It’s easy to spend when you want to learn how to act. There are hundreds of different kinds of acting courses available and prices run from a couple of hundred euros for a weekend course right up to tens of thousands for a 3-year degree course.
“I took one course where I paid €300 for a weekend with a casting agent learning audition technique. To be honest I didn’t learn anything new but I justified the cost by saying to myself that the agent would remember me and I might get an audition from her in the future. I never did.”
After a subdued weekend with her parents, Claudia returned home. But with a plan.
“I was determined to do something about it. I was paying out thousands of euros to improve my skills but then not getting the chance to actually act!”
The truth is that almost all training available to actors is about how to act with almost nothing on how to get you into the audition room or on set in the first place.
And that is perhaps the most important skill an actor needs: the skill of finding work.
A quick poll amongst actors we know suggests that whilst the reality is that actors might spend 5% of their time actually acting and on set, and about 10% of their time auditioning, the majority of their time is spent looking for work: checking online posts, networking with others, getting involved in the acting meta-scene to get their face known, and so on.
Determined not to give up on her dream Claudia shifted her focus from acting skills to job finding skills.
“I basically had to teach myself how to find work. I read everything I could find on the subject, I talked to everyone I knew. Instead of spending my weekend at acting school, I spent it on the internet looking for work, preparing my materials and so on.”
There’s no point in being the most talented, highly trained, actor in the world if you don’t get a chance to show off that talent and training.
“Those acting classes taught me almost nothing about how to find an agent; actually I am really embarrassed by some of the approaches I used to begin with. But then I learned more and after a couple of months or so I found an agent. And then a year later I found myself a good agent.”
Claudia is working fairly consistently now. She isn’t yet a full-time actor but she has gone part time at the call centre and has managed to pay off her credit card. She has several films under her belt and had a couple of small roles on tv. Her IMDB profile is growing.
“In all the courses I took I was never taught about the business of acting. For example, I never even thought about doing voiceovers; that’s something I’ve learned about on my own.”
Does she regret spending all that money on acting courses?
“Yes and no. I had a good time and learnt a lot. But in the end what I was learning I was never putting to good use. I wish at least one of the courses had covered the right way to use social networking to find work; or how to approach a film production directly; or how to find work on IMDB and the internet. The actor training I received was amazing, but it was a long way from the reality of being an actor.”
