Larry Garrison - Breaking into Acting For Dummies

Business managers (who are usually accountants) offer financial planning advice and handle the actor’s money by investing it (hopefully wisely), saving enough for the actor’s retirement, and making sure that all the actor’s bills are paid on time, so the actor can focus on acting.

Both a personal and business manager can perform invaluable services, such as helping you find an agent or helping you decide when to dump your current agent and who to choose as a new agent.

Be careful when you give control of your money to another person. Unscrupulous business managers often steal millions from their clients before their theft is discovered (if ever). In general, keeping control over your own money is a good idea.

The ultimate job of an actor is to perform onstage or in front of a camera. Sounds easy, right? It can be, but performing is only part of the actor’s job. Some of the other tasks that all actors must master include

Studying and improving their acting skills

Figuring out how to market themselves

Knowing how to audition

Being able to act reliably and consistently

To even get a chance to perform, an actor first needs to learn the craft of acting, which can mean taking acting workshops, improv classes, voice lessons, or hiring an acting coach. An actor must be able to improve his or her acting skills so well that acting appears flawless and natural even though it may be artificial and rehearsed.

Of course, developing the best acting skills in the world is useless if nobody knows you exist, so the second job of an actor is figuring out the business of acting, which involves reading trade papers to find out about possible acting roles, contacting agents and convincing them to sign you on as a client, promoting yourself, and auditioning in front of casting directors over and over again until finally landing a role.

After an actor gets a role, the final job of the actor is to show up on time, perform, and listen to the director. As an actor, you bring a script to life and turn stage directions and dialogue into the illusion of a compelling story that others will want to watch.

When one acting job is over, your job as an actor starts all over again with taking classes, marketing yourself, and (hopefully) landing another role, so you can keep learning and gaining valuable experience as an actor.

Knowing how to act is just one part of becoming an actor. If you don’t know how to act or you don’t improve as an actor, you may never land a role. Likewise, all the acting talent in the world is useless if you don’t market yourself to the people who can hire you.

Besides knowing how to act, as an actor, you should also develop these additional work habits:

Be on time

Be prepared

Be reliable

Be easy to work with

Learn different accents

Study different skills such as karate, singing, dancing, and so on (refer to Chapter 6)

Be willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done

Show business has no set rules. You can break every rule in show business and still succeed. Likewise, you may follow the best advice and guidelines from the experts and yet never succeed at all. The best way to increase your odds of success is by possessing etiquette and professionalism. Etiquette means that you treat everyone with the proper amount of courtesy and respect. Professionalism means that you do your job as efficiently as possible to the best of your ability at all times.

Because so many studios, producers, and directors exploited the desperation of actors in the early days of show business, actors banded together and formed unions to protect themselves. The various actors’ unions have increased pay for actors (including lucrative residual payments — also known as royalties — for reruns and broadcasts in different countries), protected actors’ rights to work in clean and sanitary working conditions, restricted the time limits that actors can be expected to work each day, provided legal counsel, and even offered health and retirement plans.

Although a union’s main job is to protect your rights and ensure that you’re paid fairly, unions also offer a variety of other services that can make your quest for an acting career much simpler. Many unions offer seminars and workshops to help their members find work; they maintain bulletin boards where actors can post classified advertisements, buying or selling various items or advertising the availability of rooms or apartments; and they furnish libraries where members can borrow and study scripts. As a union member, you may qualify for a whole range of additional benefits, including credit union membership, health insurance, pension plans, and even access to a retirement home. Be sure to find these things out when you’re applying for membership and take advantage of whatever services your union offers.

If you’re just getting started in acting, you may not want to join any union right away because joining the union effectively eliminates you from working on non-union productions. As a beginner, you may want to get experience working in the more numerous (but lower paying) non-union productions first. You don’t have to join a union to work as an actor, but the highest-paying and most prestigious acting roles almost always go to union members, so when you’ve reached a point where you can vie for those roles, joining a union is a wise thing to do. Ultimately your goal is to get into the union.

Be prepared — when you decide to join a union, the cost to join may be fairly expensive. Also, after joining a union, you must pay dues regularly (probably semi-annually), but the regular dues are much less expensive than the initial union membership dues.

If you are aware of a union production that’s breaking a union rule, call the union (even if you’re not a union member) and ask them to investigate this problem. The unions are your friends, so treat them with respect and don’t be afraid to ask for their help at any time during your acting career.

The two most popular actors’ unions, which we discuss in the following sections, are

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA)

Actors’ Equity Association (AEA, also known as Equity)

Working at a union’s office, either as a volunteer or paid employee, is an excellent way to meet actors, writers, casting directors, and producers.

The Screen Actors Guild ( www.sagaftra.org ) covers actors primarily involved in films (both commercial films, industrial films and television). In addition, SAG also maintains a list of agencies that have agreed to follow SAG guidelines for working with actors. Check the website for the latest requirements to join.