There is one simple, defining factor that separates a good actor from a great actor.

Passion.

Talent is wonderful and a necessity but some of the most talented people I’ve known have fallen by the wayside, dropping into other, more comfortable jobs.  This isn’t a judgement, it’s simple fact.  This job is hard.  You have to be exceptional.  You have to need to do this job.

One of the greatest pieces of advice given to me while in college at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy (www.amda.edu) was, “Do not give yourself a Plan B.” 

If you give yourself a Plan B, you will definitively take your Plan B, because this life is simply too difficult.

So, here’s our checklist: 

1)  Headshots - Check.

2)  Training - Check.

3)  Representation - Check.

Great.

Now what?

As a young actor you simply cannot just sit around waiting for the phone to ring.  If you do, you’re dead in the water.  YES, your agent will get you auditions, you will go to them, rock them and book or not book the work, but if you’re waiting for other people to determine the momentum of your career, how can you expect momentum to be maintained?

The goal should be to keep yourself busy enough to not notice when you’ve gone a couple weeks without an audition.  Opportunity comes to those digging every second of every day to find every little nugget of work they can possibly find and you will be shocked at just what opportunities will come your way when you’re moving forward relentlessly.

So here’s our “What’s Next?” checklist:

1)  If you’re not working, BE IN CLASS.  Acting is a muscle.  No ballet dancer would ever sit on a couch for 6 months, bartending at night without doing any physical activity and expect themselves to rock an audition for the New York City Ballet.  Yet, actors, for some reason feel they can just…not do it and be totally 100 percent just as good as they were when they were acting every day.  This simply isn’t true.  Don’t let your inner actor become a 600 pound fat guy.  On the day of the audition, you will blow it if you’re not sharp and consistently honed.  This is just common sense.  (A good place to start is www.armstrongactingstudios.com)

2)  FIND YOUR OWN WORK.  There are quite literally thousands of young industry professionals out there.  All of them making their own art.  Young filmmakers (from students to indie houses) would KILL for amazing talent.  If you think something is below you, look at a script for a Mac and Cheese commercial V.S. a well crafted Student Film and ask yourself where the real challenge lies.  Get yourself on camera as MUCH AS YOU CAN.  It builds your confidence, craft and resume and it shows us that you’re relentless, that you will work if we hire you or not.  That’s the actor I want in my film.  Forge your own relationships, meet up and comers, rise together.   (Note:  Commercials are an integral part of the acting trade, I’m not knocking them, just saying…you know…they’re not Shakespeare.)

3)  CREATE YOUR OWN WORK.  Do you write?  No?  WRITE!  If you try writing and you truthfully can’t, find someone who can.  If you’re not making your own work, more than likely you will not work consistently as a new actor.  This can be anything from short films to volgs to web series to indie feature.  Create.  What is an artist who doesn’t create? 

4)  Stay in good physical shape.  Don’t wait for the call to come in that says “Athletic Build” in the breakdown.  Put good shit in your body, work out at least 4 times a week.  It’s a visual medium.  Many actors (myself included) have been lured into the restaurant life of making a bunch of cash, spending that cash on booze after your shift, making more cash and three months later having a “Beer Layer”.  Don’t fall into the trap.  Stay active and stay out of the Restaurant Suck.  (Note:  For fitness advice see:  www.myodesign.com)

5)  Surround yourself with forward moving people.  Your friends all not auditioning and spending a lot of time bitching about it?  If you’re surrounded by them you are them.  How’s it working out?

6)  Read Scripts.  They’re your job.  You not reading scripts is like a chef not going grocery shopping.  Learn how they work, learn what makes them good and what makes them bad.  STUDY YOUR ART.  (For a wealth of all things screenplay check out:  www.script-o-rama.com, www.imsdb.com)

7)  WATCH MOVIES.  So many actors don’t go see great films.  This is like a football player not watching game tape.  Literally ALL the secrets of the people being paid millions of dollars to do this are up there for you to learn 35 feet tall!  Typically I see each film I go to more than once, and I bring a notepad and my iPhone (to light my notebook), taking notes on performance, story, screen craft, structure of shot, I even time scenes to see when writers are putting key moments in comparison to baser elements of the scene for the purpose of mapping out more interesting journeys in my scripts and auditions.

8)  If you get rejected get back up on your feet immediately.  Somehow, somewhere there’s an actor pulling him or herself up by their boot straps.  Be that actor.

9)  Get to know yourself.  It’s not just about craft.  You need to know how YOU relate to your work, which you can’t do if you don’t understand yourself.  Spend time alone, walk, write, read, draw and invest in yourself.  The better you understand you the more specifically you will come to life in your material.

10)  Be the hardest working actor you know.  If you find someone who’s working harder, you have to up your game.  Pure and simple.

Bottom line:  If you feel like you’re not doing enough, it’s not the Industry’s fault.  It can’t be.  If it is, your fate is totally out of your hands and you might as well give up.  Yes, there are things that are out of your control, so LET THEM BE, focus on what is, be a shark, never stop moving.

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As always, thanks for the read.  Please follow, share on Facebook, Tweet and otherwise spread the word if you’re digging this blog.

Emotion is the great white whale of the acting world.  I find a lot of actors live in constant fear of it.  They get a piece of text that involves extreme emotional connection and instantly they seize up, convinced that they won’t be able to access the level of connection they know is necessary to effectively interpret the role.

Here’s the thing:

Emotion is to Acting what Sweat is to Working Out.

A lot of my students have heard me say this many, many times.  But you don’t enter into a workout freaking out, exclaiming, “I just don’t know!  I don’t know if I’m going to be able to sweat!  I know I sweated on the way here, it was pretty hot, but now?  When it matters?  I just don’t know if I can perspire!”  You simply lift heavy shit and sweat happens.

But this is EXACTLY what actors are doing when they enter into an audition saying to themselves, “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to emotionally connect.  I don’t know if I can do it.  I know I’ve felt before, hell, I felt ALL OVER my living room in rehearsal, but now?  I just don’t know if I can feel things.”

Emotion is a byproduct of circumstance.  Circumstance is determined by what I define as “The Current State Of Natural”.

“Natural” is a dangerous word.  Too many people in our industry use it to describe conversational.  Many actors, when getting the redirect “Ok, but can you make it more natural?” simply try to make their speech less affected and try to, in general, speak words without investment.  This proves absolutley nothing other than the fact that you can speak and not fall over at the same time.  Congrats, you’re a kindergarten graduate.

“Natural” is a very different thing pending on the circumstance.  Natural when storming the beaches of Normandy in WWII is a very different definition of Natural than say, proposing to your long time girlfriend.  Neither of them are particularly unaffected, they’re simply affected by the specific relationship dynamics, stimulus, objectives and needs within a scene.

Too many actors look at emotion as the base of a scene as opposed to a product.  Something happens to us, we feel something which causes us to do something.  It’s in the doing that emotional connection in born. 

Where auditions go south in a big way is when all actors are worried about is feeling.  We’ve all heard these auditions from waiting rooms.  They’re loud, they’re messy and on camera they look like absolute shit.  We can never forget that Film and Television is a VISUAL medium.  If all you’re doing is playing emotion, 9 times out of 10, you’re looking utterly ridiculous, and even if the emotion is genuine, we’re not going to cast you because no one is going to want to watch you. 

General Rule:  Our job isn’t therapy, it’s entertainment.  Leave that shit at home.  Emotion is a tool, a surgical blade, not a blunt instrument.  Anything other than that is masturbation, and masturbation feels great for you but it’s a fucking mess for everybody else.

The next time you’re worried you won’t be able to connect emotionally to a scene, break it down into its core components.  Truly define your character and who everyone even mentioned in the scene is to you, establish exactly what you want out of the scene, figure out what gets in your way, connect to your reader and mercilessly go after your objective.  If you do this, if you are truly invested in your scene, I promise you, emotion will happen.  How could it not?

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Thanks as always for the read.  If you found this article useful please comment, re-blog, tweet, facebook and spread the word. 

Ok.

So, you’ve spent months hounding your agent, checking www.castingworkbook.com relentlessly for breakdowns, poking and prodding industry friends and contacts and now you’ve got your first major audition for a series or feature film…what do you do to prep for it?

Upon polling hundreds of actors on what their “Preparation Process” is, in general I’ve found the answer to be “A bunch of question marks floating randomly in the air.” 

Nothing quite matches the fresh panic of getting ten pages of dialogue to prepare at midnight for a ten AM audition the next day.  So much of the young actor’s process often revolves around panic.  We get material and we stare at it asking “How the hell can I figure this whole thing out in 16 hours?”  We panic like we panicked in 8th grade when we left our spelling units to 9:00 PM on a Sunday night and had to stay awake until 3:00 AM cursing our English teachers for being such grammar Nazi’s. 

When you get your material follow some of these guidelines:

1)  Don’t panic.  Accept that you’re not going to get a lot of sleep and remind yourself that being tired isn’t like being hit by a car.  You’ll live.  For inspiration, spend 5 minutes reading what Navy Seals go through in training, we can withstand a lot (I’m serious).

2)  Read through the material and make a realistic page count of what you have to legitimately memorize.  More often than not, 10 pages of sides is really 6-7 with everything that’s crossed out and in FYI form.

3)  READ EVERYTHING.  Everything you need to know about the character is IN THE TEXT.  It might not be written like “HEY?  ACTOR!  Over here!  This is all the obvious shit about the character.  Isn’t this easy!”  It’s in how the character behaves, how the other characters behave and react in relation to your character.  Don’t waste time making up outlandish justifications on why the character is doing what they do, work to find The Actual Interpretation Of The Truth Of The Text.  Remember, 9 out of 10 actors don’t give bad auditions, they just give the exact same one.

4)  Speak your preparation out loud.  Be that crazy person your neighbors think has multiple personalities.  Sometimes it’s not easy to develop an emotional connection to the written homework you’re doing.  Homework isn’t about page count, it’s about effectiveness.  Spending 5 minutes speaking your way through a relationship with another character will accomplish more than 30 minutes of point form or paragraph notes.  AS AN EXERCISE:  Try recording yourself talking for five minutes about your favorite memory of your mother.  Watch the ease of emotional connection and the effortlessness of your transitions.

5)  DO NOT TRY TO GET IT “Right”.  There’s no right and wrong with this, only more or less interesting choices.

6)  Memorization isn’t the devil.  Ten bucks says you still have the Pythagorean Theorem memorized and that shit was in high school.  The brain is an amazing thing.  Trust it.

7)  Work to find the objective of the scene.  At www.armstrongactingstudios.com we call this the “Point/Goal”.  DO NOT just look at what your character gets at the end of the scene and say “Oh!  That thing!  That’s what I wanted!  Sweet!”  Seldom in life do we get what we want and when we do, we almost NEVER get it in the WAY that we wanted it.  This is where scenes start getting interesting.  Also, always remember that the other character has a goal just as specific as you do and they’re relentlessly trying to make your not achieve yours.

8)  Speak your lines out loud.  You’d be surprised how much this will help your memorization process.  You’d also be surprised how many actors go into an audition having never spoken their lines aloud to anyone.

9)  Get your work up on camera before you go into a room.  It’s often a good idea to get a coaching before going into a major audition, but if you can’t, at least try to record your stuff at home or with a friend.  How we feel our work is translating is often completely removed from how it actually reads on camera.  The camera is a fickle (and amazing) bitch, the only way to really learn it is to get in front of it.  SIDEBAR:  It has always been a pet peeve of mine that there are film and television training facilities that don’t actually get you on camera.  It just doesn’t make sense.

10)  On the day, focus.  Your mantra shouldn’t be “Please hire me.  I’m trying desperately not to fuck up.”  but “This is my work and I’m excited to show it to you.”  Auditioning is your job.  Breathe and do your job like it’s not going to punch you in the face at the end of the day.

In the end, remember it’s about working effectively.  Work until the work is done.  Always.  Sometimes this will be a couple of hours, sometimes it will be 12-15.  Trust me when I say that putting up an amazing audition, one that you’re legitimately proud of is more than worth the time it takes to get it where it needs to be. 

And always, always remember that the work is fun.  There’s a reason you didn’t become an accountant. 

I’ve been blessed in my life with having some truly amazing teachers.  More than that, I’m fortunate to have learned valuable lessons from all of the bad teachers I’ve had as well, even if it’s only a crash course in exactly what I never want to become.

As you grow and develop as an actor, you’ll be confronted with a plethora of information.  It’s a never ending process, you stop learning as an actor when you die.  Keeping with the theme of The Actor’s Rucksack, I’ve been looking back on my life in New York (where I attended The American Musical and Dramatic Academy:  www.amda.edu) when I was 18-21.

I moved to New York from Camrose, Alberta, a small town (population 16,000) about an hour south of Edmonton.  Quite literally, I wrote my last biology exam and 18 hours later was on a plane, touching down at LaGuardia.  I was young, I was driven and I was determined to be a sponge in every facet of my life.  

Being young is both a blessing and a curse.  You’re capable of doing anything, truly, your dreams are massive and if you firmly plant them in your being as attainable goals, you’ll relentlessly achieve them, so long as you harness your energy in a productive way.  The “curse” side of it is that you develop a finite idea of what you’re going to become and how you’re going to get there.  

For me, this was personified in my runs around Central Park.  I would run from the 72nd Street Entrance, all the way around to Columbus Circle and back to my dorm on 71st and Broadway.  Around the halfway point, beyond fail, I would repeat a mantra in my head, pace for pace, bleeding it with the rhythm of my run:

“I will be famous by 21.”

It wasn’t the mantra itself that was limiting (though, I didn’t actually book my first major feature until 22, and wouldn’t classify myself as famous in any way…yet), it was the force with which I said it.  It left no room for variance, I had a singular goal, I had a definition of a man I was three years away from being and until I became THAT man, I was incapable of doing my best work, or taking true ownership of my life.  I began living my life for an ideal, an archetype of who my 18 year old self though my 21 year old self should be.  The problem with this is that, even though my 18 year old self would never admit it, he didn’t really know shit about shit.  The World worlds up, and we’re defined by how we react it, and by and large my 18 year old self had had a pretty easy go of things.

In order to properly explain this article I have to introduce you to two of my greatest teachers:

Dean Armstrong (www.armstrongactingstudios.com)

And:

Colin Campbell (http://myodesign.com/)

Now, up until these gents, I’ve had some wonderful teachers.  I’ve been taught craft by some of the best in the business, and the craft I’ve learned from Dean has been far and away the most applicable and effective in the actual on screen medium I’ve ever encountered, but oddly enough, dear actors, the lessons on craft you learn are only a portion of where you’re going.

If you want to become a truly great actor, you must work to truly understand yourself.

It took me a long time to finally learn this lesson, but I look at the lives that Dean and Colin have led and slowly I start to piece together my next stage of life and development.  

Both of these men are Jacks of All Trades.  Dean is an actor, producer, acting coach, on set coach, screen test adviser and mentor to literally thousands of actors in the city.  Colin is a Strength and Wellness coach, he works tirelessly to dispel the harmful falsehoods of the Personal Training industry and help people rebuild themselves from both a physical and mental standpoint.  They’re both building empires and they’re building them on pillars that are truly, morally rooted in the soundest belief that if you’re invested in helping people, truly helping people, you will find fulfillment in your life morally, intellectually, emotionally and financially. 

Herein lies my lesson:

Until I met these gents, I was determined to become a person I didn’t feel I was, and I felt that true success wouldn’t come to me until I had manifested this useless archetype, this relic of how my 18 year old self saw the world.  In observing and being around people like Dean and Colin, people who believe in their vision and explore ALL avenues to realize it, I’ve been blessed to finally understand that you are already the person you’re trying to become, that person is an ever evolving being, and they are ALWAYS as strong as you need them to be.  Holding onto a fixed idea of the evolution of yourself will only hinder your journey. 

A very good friend of mine, and a very talented actor in the city, Carrie-Lynn Neales said to me once, “You’re working so hard to be this person you already are.”

When she told me that, years ago, I wasn’t ready to hear it, but since embracing it the opportunities and developments in my life have become truly staggering, at times almost overwhelmingly so.  

So if I could run alongside that 18 year old version of me, here’s what I’d say:

“Bring yourself to your work.  You’re already where you need to be and that is what people will want to see.  You will always be growing and learning. Yes, there’s somewhere to go, but you’re also somewhere now.”

Don’t force it, don’t try to cosmically take the weight of the world on your shoulders, develop, grow and find joy in your process.  Relentlessly go after your goals, but understand that there are ever evolving roads to them.  Move forward always, at whatever pace you can, even if it’s a crawl, but do so knowing that you are only ever limited by how you view yourself.

As always, thanks for the read, if you’re enjoying The Actor’s Rucksack follow me here on Tumblr and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ActorsRucksack and spread the word.  Retweet, Click that “Share” button on Facebook and get the word out. 

No one you have ever admired consistently sleeps till noon.  Being exhausted can be an asset, it puts you a breath away from your emotional core. 

Work hard and earn your sleep.  The Day doesn’t happen to You, You happen to The Day.

In Toronto, when you audition for an on screen project, be memorized.

So many actors will tell you:

“No.  Go in with your script.  They want to see if you can take direction.  If you’re fully memorized they’ll think you’re stuck in what you’ve rehearsed.”

The next time someone tells you that, verbally pimp slap them.

We’re going to break this down with a simple Flow Chart of Common Sense:

Actor Books Movie ——->  Actor Memorizes Text ——->  Actor Goes on Set ——->  Actor Delivers Text In Performance ——->  Director Directs ——->  Actor Takes Direction Despite Being Memorized ——->  The Scene Gets Put In The Movie ——->  Fame, Glory…ect. ——->  Repeat As Needed.

If you can’t be directable and be off book at the same time, it’s not the text’s fault, it’s not the director’s fault, it’s not the producer’s fault, it’s your fault.  You fucked up.  You’re doing it wrong.

You MUST be flexible within your choices, but you must be memorized.

“But Doug!” You might say, “I just bring my sides in with me and I never look at them.  They’re my security blanket!”

What does that tell me?  It tells me you need a security blanket.  I’m going to hire someone who doesn’t.  I wouldn’t hire a seven year old with a pink blankie as a linebacker, I’m sure as hell not hiring you.  If you’re on camera, be camera ready.

If you go up on your text, call “Line”.  Do so without fear or shame and without breaking the intensity and momentum of the scene.  An audition isn’t a memorization test (though, you should be memorized).  We know you just got this material, if you give the best performance of the day, totally blowing us away but mess up one line, we’re not going to say, “Wow!  That was amazing!  You’re everything we ever wanted for this part!  But this person over here sucked ass and remembered all the words…so we’re going to go with them.” 

As per usual, use common sense.  If something sounds like it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t.  On the other side of the table we don’t want to have to work with you to get your performance perfect on the day, we want you to kill it without us, we want you to be the best possible actor for the part before we even have to give a note because movies cost a lot of money.  No one in the casting process is looking for an actor we have to talk through every moment.  Come in, be memorized, make strong choices and commit.  We can play and develop from there.

Your Mantra should be:  “This is my work and I’m excited to show it to you.”

Take ownership of your work.

Screenwriters LOVE the exclamation mark.  Specifically bad television screenwriters.  Try it, pick up a script for a failed NBC sitcom and keep a running tally of how many “!’s” “!!’s” “!!!’s” or even worse “!!?’s” there are. 

Bad writers ALWAYS believe what their characters are saying is more epic than it is.  When they’re adding a gajillion exclamation marks at the end of simple sentences, really what they’re saying is, “HEY!  Look at me!  I’m awesome!  This is important!  Don’t fuck this up!” or, in a simpler translation, “Hey!  Don’t suck at acting!”

Exclamation marks mean intensity.  But we experience intensity in very different ways depending on the circumstance. 

Compare the following excerpts from a script with the exact same line, but with different locations.

EXT - African Watering Hole - Day

ERIC, an American Tourist from Ohio bends down to drink from the watering hole.  A lion riding a crocodile waits, just out of his view.  His friend, JOHN sees the lion riding a crocodile.

                                                      JOHN

                                                Eric!  Run!

Eric runs away to the lion and crocodile’s dismay.

INT - Cave - Night

ERIC and JOHN have wandered into a cave full of sleeping Cheetahs.  If they make to much noise they’ll for totes die.  John looks to Eric.

                                                   JOHN

                                              Eric!  Run!

They stealthily maneuver their way out of the sleeping cheetah cave of death.

When it comes to the exclamation mark, use common sense (a recurring theme of the Actor’s Rucksack).  I know this seems silly, but you’d be surprised just how many actors go into auditions yelling like crazy people when it makes absolutely no sense for them to do so, saying to me “Yeah, but, the writer wrote it that way…”. 

Always ask yourself the question: 

“If I handed this script into my 8th grade English teacher, would they pimp slap me in the face with a dictionary?”

If the answer to that question is yes, grain of salt that bitch.

Today I had the rare pleasure of having dinner with my immensely talented and incredibly kind friend Lisa Berry. 

If you don’t know her, you should, she’s just about the hardest working actor in the city.  Her journey has been one of relentless training, dedication, self discipline and forward momentum even through the darkest of times.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2484864/

http://www.lisaberrylive.com/

She is, in short, the Bee’s Knees.  I’ve had the pleasure of working with her as a coach, as a friend, and I have every intention in the near future of having her work on set of one of my films.

She is, among many things, immensely fit.  Today, she and I caught up on a lot of things (She’s a recurring on Combat Hospital and is developing and writing a very, very exciting series.  Seriously, lightning in a bottle stuff.) but one of the mutual things we caught up on was as much pertinent to life as it was industry.  Fitness. 

She’s been a relentless trainer for a long time (far longer than I), and she told me that whenever she’s asked how she keeps the dedication to stay fit (and she’s asked often) she says, without fail, every time, “Because of 911.”

A ballsy statement to be sure.

She elaborated, “Seriously.  Remember how all of those people, in an urban, cultural center had to literally run for their lives?  Life happens, The World happens and disasters happen.  I don’t want to be that person, on a ledge that’s crumbling holding my best friend’s wrist and letting it slip because I don’t have the upper body strength to hold on.  I stay fit so I can have the backs of myself, and every one of the people I care about around me.”

In an industry where we’re constantly bombarded with aesthetic, worse, vain reasons to be fit, I think this is a fantastic way to look at things.  So, if you’re reading this right now, raise a toast to Lisa Berry.  I’m certain she’ll make more appearances in the Actor’s Rucksack, because, quite simply, she’s already the actor many of us want to become and a good, kind and noble role model is hard to come by.

http://myodesign.com/

Chuck Palahniuk said it best in his novel Fight Club with:  “We are a generation of men raised by women.”

Truer words were never spoke.  Call it a generalization, but if Marlon Brando met 85% of the male actors I work with born after 1980 he’d punch them all in the face. 

It’s an inherently difficult concept, balancing the sensitive nature of our emotional process and the utter necessity of representing a strong, masculine presence on camera and on stage.  The Male Actor is asked to both “feel deeply” and “rise above”, but more than that, he’s asked to visually represent what our society deems a “Modern Man” to look like. 

I find, by and large, young male actors of my generation (born after 1980) can be classified into two separate archetypes:

1)  The “Nice Guy”

2)  The “Bucket of Douche”

The “Nice Guy” is the poet.  He feels deeply, he lives near tears, he observes humanity, dissects it’s tragedies and triumphs and by and large separates himself from it.  He watches the folly of other actors around him as they fall, again and again for the “Bucket of Douche” archetype.  He’s a shoulder to cry on, he’s a kind word in a hale-storm of self image issues, he listens, he writes you into projects and he will never, ever rise above enough to legitimately, directly tell you how he feels or ask you for what he wants.  He’s incapable of taking ownership of his work and life because he apologizes for his existence (whether he realizes it or not) with every single breath he takes and in every second he spends on camera or on stage.  The “Nice Guy” doesn’t happen to life, life happens to him.

The “Bucket of Douche” is hair gel.  He’s loud, he’s crass and he’s arrogant.  His arrogance is not a by-product of ability, or belief that he’s capable of anything.  Quite the contrary, his arrogance is the direct result of his deepest insecurity, the very insecurity that almost 100% of actors share; the sneaking suspicion that, perhaps, everything we’re doing is bullshit.  He’s loud, overly physical and exactly as transparent as his counterpoint, the “Nice Guy”.  The “Bucket of Douche” will step on you to get ahead, but he’ll also forget that grudges are made easily and can be carried a long way. 

Here’s the thing though:  They are both exactly as weak as the other.

The finest male actors I know can be described as a third archetype: 

The “Gentleman”.

The word “Gentleman” has become a relic, a ghost of another time.  A time when men wore suits, drank Manhattan’s, smoked cigarettes and stood up when a lady left the table.  The definition of “Gentleman” is:  A chivalrous, courteous, or honorable man.  

The word I want to focus on most here is “Honorable”. 

The key to being a man and representing it in your work as an actor is what I call Realization of Consequence.  It’s having the foresight to look at the decisions you’re making, understanding fully the consequences your actions may have and making the choice anyway because it is the right choice for you.  If you can look at your life, your career and your level of ownership over material through those eyes, you will walk into every audition, rehearsal and performance with the confidence, respect, daring and class that will make you the envy of every actor around you.  But most importantly, it will make you elastic, it will make you a sponge.  It allows you to own your choices and your presence while accepting other people’s artistic ideas and opinions from a position of respect and collaboration without compromising the key truths in yourself that were the birthplace of your choices to begin with.

So, here is what I’m calling The Male Actor’s Kit Bag:  Essential items and character traits for the working Male Actor.

1)  A tailored black and gray suit.  2 buttons please, the 90’s are gone, please let them be.  Never underestimate what the feel of a well tailored jacket will do for your posture and presence.  A good jacket changes you, makes you more.  Think of a suit as a suit of armor.  If you’re auditioning with one, you’re going into battle, and trust me, you don’t want to go into battle wearing chainmail you picked up at Value Village.

2)  3 tailored button down shirts.  We should be able to see your physique.  You’re not a fat accountant, don’t dress like one to auditions.  Easy on patterns please, but don’t be afraid of colors that go beyond the “Vaguely Light And Inoffensive Blue” every actor seems to be so fond of.

3)  A well fitting tee shirt in the following colors:  Black, white, gray, blue and another soft color of your choice.  Again, we should be able to see your physique.

4)  A strong and lean physique.  Your body is your resume.  You’re not required to be a steroid jockey, but it is expected that you keep yourself lean and defined.  You should never find yourself in the position where if you have to take off your shirt for a role you’d be self conscious about it.  GENERAL RULE:  If you’re spending more money per month on alcohol and eating shit restaurant food than you are on body maintenance and exercise, you’re fucking up.  For further information on this please contact Colin Campbell at the following link:  http://myodesign.com/

5)  A pair of well fitting, boot cut dark denim jeans.  Don’t buy these from Wall Mart, they will be your best friend, you wouldn’t pick up a best friend from a low grade crack den.

6)  A decent pair of dress shoes, boots and sneakers.  Keep the flash to the minimum, but choose something that reflects your personality.

7)  A gray tie and a black tie.  Keep the patterns to a minimum.

8)  A vest, not a sweater vest, but a proper, button up vest.  This will be your best friend when auditioning for anything set Pre-1960.

9)  A cologne your 12 year old self wouldn’t buy.  When you smell like a man, you feel like a man.  I recommend Tuscan Leather by Tom Ford.

10)  A well fitting and broken in leather jacket.  This will serve you to no end.

Gentlemen.  Take ownership of your masculinity.  Hold doors, pull out chairs, speak with respect and dignity, approach your life and work with a clear head and with a keen eye for the outcome of your actions.  Figure out what masculinity is to you, every Male Actor will bring something different and unique into how he holds himself.  Bring that level of ownership into your homework, then look at the actual truth of the character and build their insecurities and flaws working from that blueprint. 

BOTTOM LINE:  No writer looks at a male character in a project they’re working on and says to themselves, “How can I make this man as much of an unlikable, weak and whiny little twit as possible?”  Even if a character is weak, he’s aware of it, and in turn he’s aware of what he wishes he were but isn’t.  Male characters are flawed, but they are men.  So are you.  Stop apologizing for it.

Required Reading:

Up Next:  Taking ownership of The Feminine.  Stay tuned and thanks for the read.

“Common Sense”

Two words that not a lot of Actors or Artists are particularly familiar with. 

There’s literally an ocean of information and advice out there for aspiring and working actors in film, television and theatre and through my travels as an actor, screenwriter, independent film producer and acting coach over the past decade I’ve taken all the information I’ve been bombarded with and asked myself one simple question:

If I had to take everything I’ve been taught, the sum total of all that I know about craft, industry, work ethic and lifestyle then put it into a leather rucksack and hand it off to my 16 year old self, what would it contain?

This is the concept behind The Actor’s Rucksack. 

It’s time to once and for all debunk old myths about technique, auditions, script memorization, hair, makeup, wardrobe, survival jobs, fitness, screenwriting, on set and on stage responsibilities, producers, casting directors, agents, bitter friends and competition.

From now on, we work under the idea that if anyone giving you advice is spending more time working as a bartender than on their craft, the advice isn’t worth taking.  From now on, you don’t take the advice of anyone less intelligent or hardworking as you.  

Actors spend 95% of their lives working relentlessly to get good at their jobs, then as soon as an opportunity comes along they immediately doubt their ability to perform even the most basic functions of their craft.  

This stops now.  Welcome to the Actor’s Rucksack.  Stay tuned for future articles.