Category: auditions

How to gain Acting Success like Edie Falco | Answers for Actors

My partner, the agency owner, represented an actress who for fourteen years was known as ‘the downtown girl’. What’s that descriptive translate to? It meant that for more than a decade she did non-paying showcases, off-off Broadway plays in hovels and other venues while working multiple civilian jobs including waitress. Then mid-way into her second decade…

Paul Russell
Photo Credit: JackMenashe.com

In a recent Access to Agents class two students complained that they’d been in the business for “too long” without results. The first whiner’s tour of duty? Two years. My inner Harvey Fierstein voice graveled, “Oh, honey you’re barely an embryo.” The second impatient “Why-has-nothing-happened-for-me-yet?” actor bemoaned that she was in the business “three months” and that jobs had yet to materialize.

Oh, sweetie…you ain’t even swimming yet in entertainment’s coin purse.

For anyone who enters our highly competitive, crowded-as-a-C Train-at-5 PM-business thinking, “Oh…I’ll just give this a year or two and if nothing happens I’ll move on” do yourself and your serious minded peers squeezed about you a generous favor…move on…now. Ain’t much gonna happen in a year or two. Even cow intestine slurping, reality show contestants who glut our screens now find that that former shot-put placement to celebrity lands with a short slung thud.

And if it’s celebrity you’re seeking…oooh baby…you’ve got a long Disney E-Ticket attraction line of waiting. No Fast Pass lanes for anyone. And if you get to the front of that line, the ride may be broken beyond repair.

My partner, the agency owner, represented a now famous actress who for fourteen years was known as ‘a downtown actress:’ i.e. for more than a decade she performed in many little-to-no pay showcases and off-off Broadway plays in downtown Manhattan hovels while working multiple civilian jobs including waitress. Mid-way into her second acting decade a contact she made by networking downtown asked her for her favor to participate in a table reading of his new play. Neither the actress nor the playwright was widely known beyond the borders of New York’s entertainment industry. The play was eventually given a production downtown at a well-known theater’s village venue. The play and cast became a ‘must-see.’ Cast, crew and set were trundled to the theater company’s then uptown Times Square house. Greater success and exposure ensued. Nearly overnight many New Yorkers and visiting tourists became aware of the artists who had been toiling diligently—enduring many Ramen noodle nights—during their career for a period most civilians would consider, “Too long for too little return.”

But even during the play’s uptown hyperactive marquee exposure many civilians from Hollywood to Hell’s Kitchen, and a portion of the entertainment industry didn’t know the names of playwright Warren Leight and actress Edie Falco of Roundabout’s premiere of Side Man.  Now you do. How did Edie Falco become a name actors and civilians associate with success?

HBO executives took notice of Ms. Falco in Side Man and cast her in The Sopranos which led to her subsequent self-sustaining acting career. That success built on a foundation of Ms. Falco’s talent, patience, dedication, more patience, plus a Hudson River-sized channeling of luck via people championing her while she labored as a downtown actress for fourteen years.

Blog_AMIYB_BookCover_SideBarThe pace to a self-sustaining acting career varies. More often than not the journey for actors being able to ‘do what they love’ and nothing else without financial worry is a curving pot-holed course of great distance traveled until smooth straightway is rode.

Time. Give it generously to yourself. Embrace the journey—ruts and rolls included.

Patience. Determination. More patience. A dash more of determination. That’s how success is achieved: however you define your success.

It’s the persistent drip that cracks the stone.

My Best,
Paul

Paul Russell’s career as a casting director, director, acting teacher and former actor has spanned nearly thirty years. He has worked on projects for major film studios, television networks, and Broadway. Paul has taught the business of acting and audition technique at NYU and has spoken at universities including Yale, Temple and the University of the Arts. He is the author of ACTING: Make It Your Business – How to Avoid Mistakes and Achieve Success as a Working Actor. For more information, please visit www.PaulRussell.net.

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Why Non-union Actors Should Submit for Union Projects | Answers for Actors

That little dissuader by AEA is keeping non-union actors from doing what they need to do as actors; seek work to pay bills. Not very nice is it considering all AEA members were once themselves non-union. And I have never once known of a casting director who demands union cards to be flashed preceding auditions by appointment. We seek talent not plastic identification cards.

Paul Russell
Photo Credit: JackMenashe.com

True or false?

Excluding cattle calls (open calls, ECCs, EPAs) only union actors can audition, and be hired, for union projects.

Survey says…? False.

Big-time false.

A non-union actor can audition for and be hired for a union project. And depending on the project plus governing union the actor can easily be hired either as union or non-union.

“Really?” you ask?

Yes, really.

The myth that non-union actors are barred from principal casting consideration for union projects originates from a non-union actor’s misconception of the audition process. But the non-union actor is not alone in perpetuating this myth. Casting notices for productions governed by Actors’ Equity Association spread the fiction as well.

Trade publications often list union notices under a banner for the correlating union (SAG-AFTRA and AEA). At the end of most AEA casting notices is a reference similar to: “Always bring your Equity Membership Card to auditions.” or more ominously prohibiting “Seeking Equity ONLY for these auditions.” Once a non-union actor sees such they think, “I’m not wanted or allowed to attend that audition.”

Wrong.

Want to know who places that little membership tag onto a casting director’s breakdown?

The union. Even when those union auditions are by appointment only, solely set-up by the casting office. That potential tag dissuader added by the union is prompting non-union actors from doing what they need to do as actors; seek work to pay bills.

I have never once known of a casting director who demands union cards to be flashed preceding auditions-by-appointment. We seek talent not membership identification.

A casting director holding auditions-by-appointment for a union project can call-in whomever the hell they want. Got that? If not…let’s try this again but with an expansion…

A, director, producer, writer, casting director or anyone hiring for a union project and holding auditions-by-appointment can call-in whomever the hell they want. I could call in a non-union dog for a human union role if I was so insane (but I’d lose my producer client quick).

Side Bar: Non-union actors attending union “open calls” (ECCs & EPAs) is an entirely different matter as covered in ACTING: Make It Your Business. (And by-the-the-by AEA audition administrators hate—they get very perturbed—when I reference an EPA or ECC as an ‘open call.’ For many casting directors when we’re not calling in actors for an appointment; the auditions are then an ‘open call.’)

So when you, as the non-union job seeker, see a casting notice for a union project which is having auditions-by-appointment do not, repeat, DO NOT, hobble your career ambitions by ignoring that casting notice. Submit yourself. If the project is having an EPA, ECC or what-ever-the-acronym-for-an-open-call: Submit yourself. Get the land-mail and/or e-mail contacts for the casting office and place yourself into consideration. Casting offices, like mine, do not post all information publicly about our projects. Casting offices often post publicly only what unions require of our clients or to expand the talent outreach beyond talent agencies and managers. If a casting office is holding an open call there’s a high probability they’re also holding auditions-by-appointment.

If you doubt a non-union actor can audition for a union project that has on its union-tagged casting notice “Only seeking union members?”, I have many previously non-union actors turned union via my casting union projects you may want to meet.

Never curtail your ambitions; too many other people will restrain your ambitions for you. Go after every audition for which you’re a match to what is being sought; be it union on non-union.

My Best,
Paul

AMIYB_AmazonRead advice from legendary talent agents,
plus Hollywood & Broadway actors in Paul Russell’s Best-Selling Book ACTING: Make It Your Business!

Paul Russell’s career as a casting director, director, acting teacher and former actor has spanned nearly thirty years. He has worked on projects for major film studios, television networks, and Broadway. Paul has taught the business of acting and audition technique at NYU and has spoken at universities including Yale, Temple and the University of the Arts. He writes a column for Back Stage and is the author of ACTING: Make It Your Business – How to Avoid Mistakes and Achieve Success as a Working Actor. For more information, please visit www.PaulRussell.net.

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