To live an actor’s life, you must not only be flexible in your day-to-day schedule, but also enjoy that unpredictable lifestyle. It has to be in your DNA. You have to be one of those people who will get bored and restless when in the same situation for a little too long. Yes, this is one of those areas that being the kid who was told to “settle down” will be to your benefit. Why?!? Because every single day is not like the day before and you have to be able to roll with it or it will send you screaming into grad school so you can find a stable career.
When I was temping, every agency I worked in would award me “temp of the month”. Not because I was the best temp out there. Granted I always came in on time with an upbeat personality, which I know every office appreciated. But more than that, I was the one who loved to be called at seven in the morning and asked, “Can you get across town by eight thirty to cover one day at [said office]”. Yes. I was your girl. I loved the idea of not knowing where I was going, whom I was going to meet and what surprises the day would hold for me. The phone call I never wanted was “We have a six month job for you in a great office in [said location]”. I worked just as much as the “stable” person but I did it in a way that suited my DNA, which likes to run free and have different experiences. Even if it’s as simple as where I get my coffee in the morning. This has served me well and has probably been the thing that has kept me in the game for this long.
When I looked around at my peers dropping off the radar, it wasn’t always because they weren’t getting booked. In fact, a lot of them were booking at a steady pace. Often times, the reasons I would hear were, “I hate driving all over town for auditions”, “I’m tired of not knowing where my next paycheck is coming from”, “I don’t want to work survival jobs anymore” and so on. There are a lot of hard working actors out there who are tolerating the lifestyle and I give them kudos. For me, I actually like the lifestyle. My mind is stimulated by the fact that in a few months, I may be working on material on a stage, or a set, or a location with a group of people I have never met before, or with some I have and better yet, some I love. That maybe next spring, I’ll be in NY working on a play, or maybe next fall I’ll get on a pilot and on and on. So if you have this “personality” this will help you not lose your mind in a business that has no foreseeable structure.
Here’s the catch… I am a stable, grounded, well thought out person who just happens to have some gypsy in her soul. I have always taken care of myself in all sorts of situations because of my ability to quickly adapt. And alongside my acting life; I always treated my “living life” like another person in the story. Many years ago, I began to look at how “stable people” lived and planned for the future and I would do the same thing as if I was working at a law firm. Retirement, insurance, savings etc. I made my “living life” one of the priorities in the story. I don’t mind being a gypsy and living on noodles for eleven weeks while doing summer stock for very low pay, only because I made sure by careful planning I had my life to come back to. For myself, I am not going to deliver a great audition if I don’t have a home or a car. Now, I’ve been in all of these situations but when I was, they were short lived and always with the plan in motion to get right back on track.
Be flexible when things get tight, but don’t romanticize the notion of being a starving actor, because honestly there is NOTHING ROMANTIC about it. If you lose your car because it all fell apart at once, your priority for the next few months is to figure out any way you can to get a car. And in the meantime, become an expert in the metro system. It’s going to suck, but that’s where the flexibility comes in. See it as an adventure and not a lifestyle. By the time it’s more than you can take, you will have worked out a way to get into your new ride (even if it’s twelve years old). Honestly, in today’s economy I feel like everyone lives like an actor. The guy working at 7-11 has a master’s degree and the older man at Starbucks used to be a CEO. When the economy crashed, I never felt a thing, because I have been living and thriving in an uncertain economy since I was 17. For most of the country, it was having to choose between coffee and gas in the car. For me, it was just Monday.
So put your “living life” on your agenda because it is just as important as acting classes and new headshots. It is part of being successful. It is the foundation of who you are and who you are is the product. Make sure the product is taken care of!