People talk about knowing your “type” and your “brand” so often in this town. But what if you’re all: WTF does that even MEAN? Calm down, I’ll explain.
It is what it sounds like — type is basically what you can play, what your general ‘you’ is or can be. It’s not going to be far from your natural self because, let’s face it, YOU are the easiest thing for you to play. …Which means it’s incredibly important for you to be honest about who you are and what’s going on inside of you. Still confused? Let’s do a typing exercise!
Write down ten adjectives to describe yourself — who you think you are. And seriously, dig deep: don’t jot down who you WANT to be. Jot down who you ARE. You can work on being a better person later this is just about what’s easily accessible and in your range. Examples: smart, witty, sarcastic, dry, type-A, funny, manipulative, cruel, quirky, bubbly…
You get the idea. Now email a few friends (ones who know you really well and ones who know you kinda well) and ask them to do the same thing. Next, go outside and ask five (or more!) people to give you two quick words to describe what kind of person they think you are or could be. (Don’t worry too much about getting the exact number of people — it doesn’t matter. It’s great to have more variants to compare data, but it’s not the end of the world if you only have two friends or one stranger.) At this point, you’ll have your list, your friends’ lists, and total strangers’ lists.
Lay all the lists out and start highlighting the adjectives that match — if multiple people see you as ‘funny’, you are probably able to play ‘funny’. If just one person saw you as ‘vindictive’ that might very well be in you and within your range but it’s not going to be THE thing you want to focus on when you’re presenting yourself to the industry.
Important caution! Don’t get lost in the ‘ego’ of being an actor; knowing your type is just a tool and, like any other tool, it’s something you use when you need to and ignore when you don’t. And know that you aren’t just ONE thing; there’s a whole host of ranges within your general type and there’s nothing stopping you from being multiple types.
So now that you have an idea of your type, you want to figure out how to market it — or what it means for you. Let’s, for the sake of discussion, use me. My type tends to be ‘girl-next-door’ or ‘quirky smart girl!’. For comedy and commercials, that’s pretty cut-and-dry: I have a headshot with a nerdy T-shirt and a lot of “adorablenesses” in my others. For drama, you want to kind of pull that archetype further; it’s the girlfriend or the object of interest who maybe gets hurt. Match your pictures to your type and I guarantee you’ll get “wow! great picture!” every time you meet someone. Match your reel to that type (and I’ve used clips on my website organized by ‘type’) and you have a good package to present to agents and managers.
Types open doors. That’s it. Open a dialogue by saying: this is what I play and I know it and here are examples of how I would market myself. It helps your representation because it makes their job easier to have you on the same page (and working toward the same goal). It doesn’t define you as a person, but it makes your job just a little bit more clear: stay true to your type and start booking!