Auditions

Oh, I know, it seems simple. Learn your lines, turn up (on time), be good and go home. List of things not to do: be late, argue, insult anyone, be bad, overstay your welcome. I know this and yet...

All the tricks your psyche plays to help prop up your fragile ego, manifest when an audition looms. Think they're looking for a sexy girl for the part and don't believe you're up to it? Put on a big jumper and feign outrage at any suggestion to remove it. Think the part requires too little of your intelligence? Do some research and tell the director the script is historically inaccurate. Worried you might get the part and not be able to do it well? Sabotage the entire meeting with a character assassination of the producer's best friend. All this I have done and more. So many meetings, so few callbacks.

Of course, a lot of the time, you might not be right for the part and there is not a lot you can do about that. But quite often, with all the preparation involved in casting, the actors auditioning are both physically suitable and perfectly capable of doing the part, it is that something extra that the director is looking for. And the process can be odd. You might have to improvise with the assistant director. Or perform the most intimate moments with an actor already cast. Or learn a two-page speech and sit outside the casting room while all the other actors perform it ahead of you, audibly. You might be shouted at for over preparation or under preparation. You might get the casting director on a bad day when she cries through the meeting, or pets her many cats, or takes a phone call and indicates you should carry on with the deathbed scene. The director might want your life story or they might not shake hands with you for fear of germs. They might mouth all your dialogue as they watch you through the monitor or put their head on the table and offer a running commentary. You just never know what is going to happen after you have rung that doorbell.

Thinking about it, I guess it is kind of fun. After all, it is just a trailer for coming attractions; a small slice of what life would be on set or stage with any of the above.

Reality Bites

How to distinguish between what you can do and what you get paid to pretend to do? After two years playing a doctor on Heartbeat and one year visiting a hospital on Holby City, I just about learned to take a pulse and remembered to put the stethoscope in my ears before trying to listen to a patient's chest (by patient, I mean an actor pretending to be a patient, this is where the confusion starts). But mostly I had to be able to talk the talk, that's the important bit, especially in an emergency situation, of which there weren't too many in fantasy 1960's rural Yorkshire. Nevertheless, confidence in medical technicalities and language is a sort of learned skill. And I got used to taking control when another character was feeling poorly, to being the health detective when a symptom was mentioned, and generally the fount of medical knowledge. While in reality I am only equipped with a Biology 'O'-level and a tendency to pass out when I give blood.

Still, my experience at pretending to be a doctor means that I am sometimes asked if I will attend in a medical situation or give medical advice to passers by. That is a confusion on the part of a viewer. Worse, is what I might kindly call a 'learned behaviour' where I actually think that I am a doctor and proceed to offer some sort of medical advice in the mistaken belief that I am helping. After a few minutes of this, the helpfully advised one may rightly ask, 'Are you a doctor?' and it is only then, and reluctantly, that I will admit that not only am I very much not a doctor but that I am making it all up.

And being a doctor is only the tip of the iceberg of delusion. I also believe I can speak other languages (A Time of Indifference), save marriages (Law and Order), get people out of jail (Hustle), play the piano (Little Dorrit, A Summer Story, almost anything where I wear a corset) and run a country estate (Land Girls but ditto about the corset). That is, I have an underlying sense that I know how to do these things and occasionally attempt them, only to be confronted with the realisation, more or less swiftly depending on the event, that I am able to do none of them. I can spend my days, instead of feeling okay about my luck in getting paid to pretend to be qualified, constantly being reminded that I have very few special skills (see separate post) and virtually no practical qualifications. It can be demoralising.

The net effect is that it can be hard to believe that I am ever actually doing something and not just pretending to do it. The paradigm is teaching an acting class where I find myself feeling as though I am pretending to be a teacher who's trying to teach people to pretend. But perhaps the greatest casualty (not Casualty in which I am a patient not a doctor) is the nagging sense of unreality about existing at all, a general sense that all situations are contrived, all clothes a costume, all behaviour a performance. My partner certainly has her suspicions that I am not altogether attached to the world. 'It's not funny, it's your life' she reminds me when I seem particularly disconnected. Harsh words, perhaps, but necessary. For how can you possibly 'seize the day' when you are dreaming of a different day in a different body possibly on a different planet certainly in a different reality? Often, she is the only one who can tell that I am only pretending that my feet are on the ground. I have to concentrate.

Although, I'm pretty sure I could do a serviceable tracheotomy with the right biro. I learned it from Mia Farrow ( The Haunting of Julia ).

Really.

Agents

This is a good flavour of the LA agent/client relationship written by TV actor Richard Ruccolo. Tongue in cheek, of course.

Identity

At the end of a play's run, usually on a Saturday night, the entire production is packed away. All the cast and crew say their goodbyes and rush off back to their families. By Monday nothing remains of the show except for a small shadow cast on the brow of the company at about 7 o'clock, when each member realises they don't have to go to work that night.

In film and television, it is different. Actors come and go; only a few remain for the last day's shooting. The intense bond created during filming loosens its grip more gradually since the production is still a work in progress. Editing, post-synching, music, special effects, are yet to play their part. There will be private screenings and eventually release dates and airings, more opportunities to revisit the show. Above all with film there will always be a record of the event so that in some sense you are never truly finished; you will continue playing those scenes in perpetuity. But unlike Wilde's Dorian Gray, you will be deteriorating while your portrait remains unchanged.

Of course, we all have photographs that can haunt us with their candid reflection of our young and innocent selves. That is not unique to performers. What really confronts the performer is more one of identity itself. In most of their better photographs and in all of their recorded work, the actor will be playing someone else, the memories and associations of those photographs connect to a character. The pictures that survive in the public domain will be of an actor in underpants while an alien licks their face/hands on cheeks in horror at the realisation that your parents have left you behind for Christmas/standing on a railway platform in an oversized hat waiting for daddy. Now those images endure. The question is, who are you when you are not in character?

It's not an issue that should trouble anyone else, but for the actor it is of no little importance. Being 'between jobs' may be of longer or shorter durations for different actors but at some point all will hopefully return to a room you call your own, possibly to share with another living creature (wife/boyfriend/pot-bellied pig) and to interact with companions who have known you at least since before your last movie. It is hard not to mind that no one has shown any interest in announcing your arrival in the kitchen when you walk in (especially not with a Motorola) or laid out your clothes for you/applied your make-up/arranged your hair. There may not even be anyone to make you breakfast. As you stumble around the room trying to remember where you keep the coffee mugs, you are bound to wonder, who are you? And indeed, what do you look like?

It might seem a good idea to get back to your default personality and to make a start on that with your personal appearance. This might be as simple as going back to wearing your own clothes, putting on your wedding ring, washing off make-up and hair products. But it may involve longer term changes and a few decisions.

Some actors are particularly fond of wigs and certainly, when it comes to the end of a job, your own natural hair will be there waiting for you, grateful to feel the wind in its strands and the sun on its follicles. Most of us adapt our own hair for a role which might mean that it has been cut or coloured, or both. Colour can take a while to change, bleaching out red toned hair dyes is a slow process, putting colour back into bleached hair, a delicate one. Growing out a cut is clearly just a matter of time but if it has been left to grow over the course of a job, such as a costume drama where ringlets and bonnets are the order of the day, then it will be ready for a good chop.

There may be weight to lose or gain, fitness regimes to be resumed or abandoned, nails to grow or cut, skin to be tanned or tended. All these personal details have been in the domain of the character; the property of the production. Victorian ladies do not sit in the sun, Noel Coward heroines always have red nails, bathing beauties are suitably depilated. It may well be that these regimes coincide with your own aesthetic but in any event it is not your choice, while you are working that is the way you must look. Every time you finish a job you must re-establish what you look like as yourself. If you don't even try then you are admitting that there is not really that much of a self to go back to. You exist entirely in limbo.

When I was a teenager, a particularly formidable English teacher decided I needed some words of wisdom. She was worried I was taking my acting work too much to heart. After a long chat she appeared to give up and lifting her not inconsiderable self from the armchair she turned to me with a frown, 'But where is Sophie?' she asked and seeing I was not entirely sure, repeated the question as she headed back to the staff room, 'Where is Sophie?'

And whenever a make-up artist looks especially aggrieved at my several tattoos, I remember the formidable lady in tweed and her prescient question and I am grateful for the knowledge that those few square inches are definitely and undoubtedly me.

Location

Rare is the job that doesn't require an actor to leave home for most of the week, perhaps for several months.  Many British actors live in London but films and television shows only use the film studios on big budget or long running productions and the streets of London itself can be expensive places in which to film. Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and obviously Cardiff are regularly used location cities but most of the actors who could claim them as their birth places have moved to London to look for work. There is, of course, plenty of theatre in London but the majority of plays go on tour or are funded by regional theatres. Voice overs usually record in town and some audio books are even being recorded by actors in their house, a lonely arrangement in what was already a pretty isolated occupation. For the most part though, actors are on the road. What follows is a small guide to what they will need to pack.

Dressing Gown
On set or in your dressing room, this is an essential garment. You will need it while you are in the hair and make-up chair so that you don't ruin the hours of artistry when you take your t-shirt off/put your costume on. You will need it when you are eating your breakfast/lunch/dinner, which three meals are nearly all consumed at work when you are filming. You will need it when you have to run to the tiny toilet two floors below your dressing room in the theatre and you will need it when you are crying/fooling around/sleeping in your caravan between takes.
My own dressing gown is plain white and covers all sizes of costume. Whilst wearing it I resemble nothing so much as a decently medicated lunatic. If the coat fits.
It has to be said that men don't embrace the dressing-gown culture quite so readily and perhaps that is as well. They often make do with item number two...

A Big Coat
Like the dressing gown, this is sometimes supplied by the wardrobe department. But it doesn't hurt to have one packed and it is less fun being warm when you have the name of the production spray painted ten inches long in florescent green across your back.
The days that a coat is not required on location can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Theatres are often kept at refridgerated temperatures, the British countryside likewise. Although I have to confess that on my last tour it was mentioned (by some of my colleagues a little less than thrilled at the prospect of another week spent in shared accommodation with the heating on every night) that I would only ever be truly warm on the surface of the sun, long days, night shoots and wildly inappropriate costumes all mean that a lovely big coat is often the ultimate comfort.

A Hobby
Books, newspapers, crosswords and knitting are all useful activities when standing by. During filming, the location will probably be in a field/quarry/abandoned hospital. Electricity will be provided by generators and there won't be any spare sockets for your iPhone/laptop/Playstation unless you are in a special relationship with the Facilities manager.
You will need a hobby without batteries (special relationship aside), preferrably something that is easy to pick up and put down without too much preparation or distress. In particular, the hobby must make no noise or require too much concentration but be engaging enough to stop the actor from planning a revolution/wandering off/being fired.
See Accomplishments for advice about which hobbies not to bring.

Coffee or other drugs
Most of us have some special titbit that keeps us going for the day. For advice on how to get by without the more destructive addictions, please see your sponsor. For the legal highs, the trick is to be prepared. Make sure you have your supply of cigarettes/candy bars/spirolina in an accessible form, close to hand. There are never any shops near your location, it's like a rule.
For many of us, a good cup of coffee can make all the difference and yet it is the one beverage that is surprisingly difficult to access once away from the main drag. Giant canteens of hot water poured into styrofoam cups of instant granules don't quite cut it. Carrying around a glass cafetiere is not practical and for those with a serious coffee habit and a big budget, that espresso machine is going to need a power supply.
The answer? A coffee flask or mug with a built-in plunger. But of course, I hear you cry, I'll dig mine out from the back of the kitchen. They do exist. If I carried advertisements, I would endorse the brands, but as it is I can only say that there are two manufacturers that I know of that make these products and both are great. Keep a small bag with said mug and ground coffee ready to pack at a moment's notice. With my fresh cup of coffee, I am ready for the make-up chair at 6 am or the evening audience at 6 pm.

So we have sweets, costumes and games. All very helpful in making the day run a little bit smoother, all more than slightly childish. It has probably occurred to you that none of these things are exactly life-saving and certainly none of them are necessary for the job. And that is the point really. The only thing necessary for you to do the job is you. It's quite old fashioned; no equipment, no special tools, the dressing gown is about as far as it goes. But you might as well be comfy.

Line learning

It is a minor complaint amongst actors, a tiny grain of sand in the oyster of love for the audience, that the aspect of a performance that draws the most comment is often the feat of memory involved in line learning. 'Really?' thinks the actor, 'that was what you guys were focused on when I was out there getting my heart/arm/back broken? But that is just a result of physical repetition, a small tool in my technical armory. I feel so unappreciated and misunderstood'.

I exaggerate, but only slightly (see FAQs). It is true that anyone watching a play is bound to be impressed by the apparently smooth way in which the actors leap around the text, with iambic pentameter or Pinteresque pauses, seemingly holding the entire play in their heads. And it is also true that most actors regard learning the lines as the first stage of the process; it is not until they have committed the text to memory that they can truly discover the performance they want to give. But this is the ideal and the reality, for most actors, is somewhat different.

Of course, the challenge of learning the lines varies from job to job. If you are working in film, the dialogue is often sparse, it is a visual medium and it is often only in one or two scenes that the lead actors will be required to learn anything particularly epic (speeches that frequently fall into the 'I had a puppy' category as defined by David Mamet). The film actor still has to learn lines, but the trick for them will be to play with the form and make it their own, so that the audience will hardly notice that what is being spoken was scripted. This is not a question of changing the words, but of breathing the character's life into them, although famously the scriptwriter has more liberty taken with their work than the playwright.
Also, the pace of filmmaking is glacially slow, two or three pages of script, on average, a day. So there is plenty of time to get familiar with the dialogue.

In television, you will often be working within a genre. There may be technical language to get grips with, such as medical or police jargon that needs to flow seamlessly. The pace is faster and if you are the lead in an ongoing series, time will have to be spent at the end of every long shooting day, learning the next day's lines. But that will be usually be it; about five to ten pages a day, unless it is a soap and then you enter a different realm. Soaps often get filmed in blocks, with colour-coded teams shooting each week and actors going from set to set for various episodes. They may have six episodes in their head at any one time, more if they have to do reshoots or pick ups. But the lines will be scene length, a few pages long. The actors do not need to learn whole episodes at a time.

Then there is theatre, where the actor actually does need to learn their entire part during the rehearsal period. Some actors like to get to grips with the lines before they start rehearsing but this is often not practical for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they may not be cast until quite late and secondly, because learning the lines completely out of context is quite odd, like memorising random items on a conveyor belt. When the movements of your character and the faces of the other actors become known, then the lines start to make sense. For this reason some actors deliberately try not to learn their part before they have thoroughly explored the play in rehearsal; they want the lines to be integral to the interpretation of the character.

So, what about the actual learning? I'm putting off the explanation because it is frankly not very exciting. There are some variations in technique, for example many actors are dyslexic and will record their lines (how much easier now we are digital), and then listen to them or record the other character's lines and fill in their own according to their taste. Some actors like to write out their part by hand as they become more familiar with the words, because the physical act of writing the lines down helps to strengthen the memory.

But the main way of learning lines is plain old repetition. You get familiar with the words when you start rehearsing and then you go over them in the evening, covering your part and stumbling through, asking whoever will help to listen to you and then repeating them to yourself incessantly as you go about your day. Driving is a great time to do lines. Lines tend to make themselves known when you are sleeping as well (preferably not while at the wheel), swimming around your subconscious in a disturbing fashion. Suddenly, everything that you hear reminds you of your play and your friends and family become almost as crazy as you, as you chant bits and pieces from forthcoming attractions in a demented frenzy.

And then there is the learning of everyone else's lines as well. Not their entire part, more the beginning and the ends, well, you want to leave yourself some surprises when they chat away while you listen night after night for the next several months. But you'll need to know the starts and stops because basically, that's where you come in. You cannot, unfortunately, say all your lines in one go. You have to know where they fit in with all the others. And your colleagues don't always make it easy for you. They may take a lot longer than you to learn their own lines, (they may never quite know them) leaving you to figure out if they finished speaking or have a little bit more to say or if they're ever going to mention that bit about the wardrobe that you're supposed to ask them about next. But if there's a big pause in the middle of the scene while you wonder whose turn it is to go next, it's usually yours.

I wish it wasn't so prosaic. I wish there was some cunning trick, a shortcut that the Magic Circle of Equity members revealed to the novice before their first night, or even after just for kicks. I don't think most audiences watch a play in the hope that some spectacular mishap will occur, although I have been told often enough that 'audiences love that sort of thing' when I have been responsible for some extraordinary disaster. Actually, audiences rarely notice when things do go a bit wrong. Not horribly wrong like when you might be left alone on stage while your fellow actor screams obscenities into the wings before deciding to return. Just for instance. That, they do tend to notice. But minor mishaps, like skipping ahead an act before realising and then running through the missing pages in your head while carrying on with the play. Mostly, they don't notice that.

This is why the 'actor's nightmare' is not just a cliché. We really do wake up screaming about having to go on without knowing the lines. The feeling is so completely terrible, so sweat soakingly, heart poundingly, panic inducing, that even though there is absolutely no obvious way to do it, every time we start a job we eject large quantities of essential data, (how to file tax returns/recognise family members/tie shoelaces) and shove the whole play into our heads. It's not life saving neurosurgery, or going down a mine, but it is quite tricky. And yet, we still get ever so slightly, very respectfully, affronted when that is the only thing asked of us after a show. Silly really.

Contracts

Contracts for actors are initially a verbal agreement. At this stage, the project, role, dates and money will be known, everything else is still to be discussed. If the discussions break down then the contract won't proceed and either party can walk away in good conscience. But the verbal agreement holds against say, a better offer coming along, in the case of an actor, or a better actor coming along, in the case of the producers. If anybody walks away under those circumstances, a row is ignited which can only be extinguished with quantities of money.
The producers have the advantage in this situation for two reasons. Firstly, they chose the actor, usually under circumstances over which they had entire control. They will have had a good long think about who they wanted and have cast the best actor they could within their budget. It is rarely the case that the budget suddenly increases at the last minute and they can fire their poorly paid first choice and employ a better-paid A-list first choice. Secondly, if it does happen then they have the budget to pay the fired actor's entire fee.
Actors, on the other hand, don't know what work choices they may have to make within any given period. They will take a job and hope they made the right choice. If they get it wrong, they cannot afford to pay for the entire production in order to get out of their commitment and you can be fairly sure that they will be sued.

Of course, this is all quite unusual. If the contract has been verbally agreed, then that is often a done deal and the rest is detail. But the detail is telling and on bigger productions, with bigger stars there are a lot of details. Billing, for instance, can be crucial and complicated with left-hand/right-hand positioning and higher/lower considerations on the posters. Stars will often prefer not to be billed at all for a cameo rather than be placed far down on the list. Theatrical productions and television series will usually bill actors in alphabetical order or order of appearance and that solves a lot of problems. Arguments can still occur over who goes first amongst the leading cast and there is little quarter given since the positioning reflects the current standing of the actor within their profession.
Other ongoing contractual obligations will cover accommodation, both on set and off, and crucially, transport. On one film that I took part in while still a teenager, my agent had not arranged any transport for me while the other actor's agents had stipulated cars, at least to and from the station. The studio was a long way from any public transport, we were filming in winter and often we did not finish shooting until seven or eight in the evening after a six am start. The assistant directors would try and arrange a lift for me, but it was out of the goodness of their hearts and their hearts were often busy bursting as they comforted yet another one of the company members who had been fired that day. It was not a happy shoot. One of the other actors took me to one side after she had seen me hanging around the AD's office yet again trying to get home. "Always sort out the transport, darling" she said in the sort of tone reserved for a particularly trying child, "Tell your agent next time." I was completely terrified and the incident made an indelible impression on me but I'm sorry to say that I never did get to grips with contract negotiations.
When my partner recently signed her own work contract for a respectable job, she took some time deliberating over certain clauses. Curious, I took out the last contract I had a copy of and compared some of the wording. When I got to Paragraph Four, I gave up. Her contract referred to some of the job requirements expected of her. So did mine. I paraphrase, "The artist will engage in such nude scenes as have been agreed in the script. Should a body double be required, the artist will be informed." I couldn't even decide which would be worse, filming the nude scenes or being told they'd rather have a body double. Turns out it's better not to read the contract at all.