Tag Archives: Actorprenur

Stupid Things People Write In Acting Casting Breakdowns

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Stupid Things People Write In Acting Casting Breakdowns, acting, auditions, castings, acting advice, acting book, casting breakdowns Ah, casting breakdowns, audition notices. Whatever you want to call them, they sure can frustrate. An actor will generally spend more time applying for acting roles than acting or even attending auditions. Acting is a game of numbers and applying to casting calls can be soul destroying indeed. Especially when they include any of the criteria below. Luckily I can find the humour in it. Like my dad says, ‘If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.’

 

Must be able to convey emotion. Jeez, that will be hard, it’s not that actors are trained in conveying emotion or anything.

We want real people, not actors. Really? Then why advertise on an ACTING JOB SITE. Idiot.

Nudity is required. All of the time but generally only for women.

Payment for lead actor only. Great, everyone else can just live on fresh air and pay their rent with fairy dust. That’ll work.

Female wanted. Character name: “The Girl”. Because in real life women are not known by their names, only by their gender. Oh, and they are ‘girl’ no matter how old they are apparently. Which is fine, because most of the people behind these castings want an 18-year-old. I wrote an article on this problem in the acting industry here.

Must be able to act. Really?

For women: Must be slim. Because a persons body mass impacts directly on their acting talent apparently.

For women: Must have long hair: Read: must be fuckable. So many castings just suit a stereotypical male ideal of female beauty. It is so sad

No acting experience needed. Because why hire actual actors when you can just hire someone off the street? It is not like we are trained professionals or anything.

 

These came just off the top of my head. I will continue to write about silly things in casting breakdowns in the hope that they improve somehow. Please add your own casting breakdown fails below or email them to frost magazine@gmail.com and I will include them in the next post. Let’s try and change the industry, even if we have to use tiny baby steps.

 

If you are an actor then check out my book How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur. It is available in print and in all eBook formats on both Smashwords and Amazon. 

 

 

 

 

Top Schools ‘Too Dominant’ In Acting

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Sir Peter Bazalgette, the chairman of Arts Council England, has said that the British film and TV industries are ‘too dominated’ by actors who have gone to private schools and that state school pupils have too few opportunities to have a career in the arts.

He told the Sheffield Doc/Fest: “I personally don’t see why all the male actors getting Baftas should come from Eton, Good for them, and great actors, but why should they all come from Eton?”

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Damien Lewis went to Eton.

 

Actors who went to Eton include Damian Lewis, Dominic West, Tom Hiddleston and Eddie Redmayne. Actors who went to other private schools include Rory Kinnear, who went to St Paul’s, Benedict Cumberbatch, who went to Harrow and Hugh Bonneville, who attended Sherborne.

 

12 Years A Slave actor Chiwetel Ejiofor went to Dulwich College – where Sir Peter went to school.

 

“Seven per cent of the population go to private schools, and in those private schools they get an absolutely, crackingly good education in the performing and visual arts. Ninety-three per cent don’t go to those private schools and, in some state schools, people get a wonderful education in visual and performing arts as well. But in quite a lot of them they don’t.

 

Visual performing arts have been marginalised in some areas in the curriculum as the curriculum becomes more instrumentalist and focused on what’s known as the Stem agenda – science, technology, engineering and maths. If there is one message, we say Steam, not Stem – put the ‘a’ for arts in.”

 

Dame Helen Mirren also recently warned that acting was becoming the “prerogative only of kids who have money”.

 

Check out Frost editor, Catherine Balavage’s, new book, How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming An Actorprenur, which tells you how to become an actor, no matter what your background.

 

What do you think?