Boze Hadleigh - An Actor Succeeds: Tips, Secrets & Advice on Auditioning, Connection, Coping & Thriving in & Out of Hollywood

Other books by Boze Hadleigh

Broadway Babylon

Celluloid Gaze

Hollywood Gays

Celebrity Feuds!

Mexicos Most Wanted

Celebrity Diss and Tell

Copyright 2014 by Boze Hadleigh

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published in 2014 by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books
An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation
7777 West Bluemound Road
Milwaukee, WI 53213

Trade Book Division Editorial Offices
33 Plymouth St., Montclair, NJ 07042

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Michael Kellner

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-87910-888-5

www.applausebooks.com

To Ronnie

I tell the newer actors to be starstruck in the smart way: if stardom comes your way, its a bonus; but if not, you still have the pleasure of doing what you love. MERYL STREEP

Fame is a double-edged sword. But real success is a lifelong satisfaction nobody can take away from you. MARLON BRANDO

The world is a stage, yes. The trick, though, is to get paid and praised for the acting you do. ARTHUR MILLER

Contents

Most special thanks to Ronald Boze Stockwell and Linda Fresia. And to John Cerullo, Bernadette Malavarca, Jaime Nelson, Wes Seeley, Mary Vandenberg, and the whole Applause team. Also Harry Benshoff, E. J. Fleming, Cris Franco, Lorri Jean, Max Ksenjak, Darrin Nogales, Chad Oberhausen, Shaun Pelofsky, Dale Reynolds, Anne Salvatore, Peter Shelley, Howard Smith and David Wright, Mary Stark, Don Weise, and Wendy Westgate.

Aristotle said theater is medicine. He meant acting, for back then, theater was all of actingprofessional acting, as opposed to the acting we each do most every day of our lives. Acting can be a tonic for those who go to see it or press a button to see it. Like books (though seldom as in-depth), movies, programs, and plays can transport us to other places, yield new experiences and insights, raise questions, stir emotions, and move our hearts.

Acting is also medicine for the actor. Everyones heard about actors sustaining high fevers or injuries who went on with the show, gave the audience their moneys worth, and only felt pain after the performance. Proving how much of suffering, and transcending it, is in the mind. Acting, too, is in the mindan imaginative, focused mind that delves into a given characters identity and circumstances.

More than a few actors enter the field to become other people. Whether to expand themselves, provide emotional outlets, or try and escape themselves, playing someone else may be therapeutic, uninhibiting, exploratory, or just plain fun. Plus you get paid for it! Of course, some acting involves more of a stretch, and some actors stretch more than others. But few actors today, including above-the-title ones, are content to dwell in the cult of personality, as did so many golden-age movie stars.

Playing heroes, antiheroes, and villains, people like and unlike oneself, is a welcome challenge for most performers. But getting hired to do so is the quandary in todays so-competitive, overcrowded market. The lure of fame and fortune draws an increasing percentage of the population, often with no qualification besides looks or drive, to Hollywood and sometimes New York, since theater is no longer the unquestioned training ground for tomorrows names.

Make no mistake: looks are often still a qualification. At first. Once the first bloom of youth fades, personality and talent are required. The latter becomes crucial if one wants to stay in the game. A heartening fact for the committed actor is that within five years, most newbieson either coast and in betweendrop out. The biz is just too difficult for them, or things didnt happen quickly enough.

Acting classes and film schools usually teach the basics but tend to leave out most of the practical, elusive advice and tips that can make a new actors post-class, beyond-school life much easier. For an acting career entails not just your character interacting with other characters, its you, the job-hungry actor (or the actor wanting to be hired more often), learning to deal with the myriad necessary peoplemost of them not actors!in the industry.

The following one thousand or so secrets, tips, and pieces of adviceculled from hundreds of books, memoirs, and articles (mostly but not all in English); from television, the Internet, and radio; and from classes, lectures, personal interviews, correspondence, and clippings galoreshould provide new and not-so-new actors with useful information that (particularly for younger actors) might otherwise take years to find out, sometimes the hard way.

May the enclosed deliver an occasional grin or chuckleafter all, acting professionally is tougher than it looks, and getting work is even harder. More crucially, may it help you to audition, connect, work, and cope more successfully. To paraphrase Stanislavskis classic text An Actor Prepares , may this book help the actor reading it prepare for success....

September 12, 2013
Beverly Hills, California

1

I hate to say this, but if you can convincingly tell a lie, you can act. SANFORD MEISNER, acting coach

I was kind of shocked when someone told me the ancient Greeks had the same word for liar as for actor. Then I thought about it... it makes sense! LUCY LIU

Long ago I told a harmless lieyou know, to spare someones feelings. And you know how some people say you can always tell if a persons lying, cause he wont look you in the eye? Untrue! Thats when I started realizing I had the makings of a thespian. JOHNNY DEPP

Theres that lyric [Stephen] Sondheim wrote about an actress who felt she should have gone to an acting school, but somebody said, Shes sincere. Theres a lot to that... I think it was George Burns who said if you can fake sincerity, you can make it in show business. CAROL BURNETT

I was thrust into my profession without any training whatsoever.... So one day I said to Jimmy Cagney, Jimmy, what is acting? and he said, I dont know. All I can tell you is, whatever you say, mean it, and I thought that was marvelous counsel. OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND, two-time Oscar winner

If you can prevaricate while looking somebody in the eye, you can move on to become an actor. Acting requires believability, which many people have, but also engaging themnot avoiding looking them in the eye. Whether flirting or lying or confessing, an actor must fully engage with the other character and, thereby, with each individual audience member. Sir MICHAEL REDGRAVE

Sir Laurence Olivier was directing Marilyn Monroe in The Prince and the Showgirl . He thought her performance was nothing, that she was hardly acting, unlike him, with his big voice and gestures. But when he saw the rushes, he realized she would steal the film. Her face and what it quietly yet powerfully expressed made her performance more vivid and interesting. He was the better stage actor, but she was the better movie actor. CLAUDE CHAGRIN, French mime

Two prototypes, when it comes to female movie stars: a Liz Taylor, whos usually not smiling, and a Marilyn Monroe, who usually is. The former lasts longer, but the latter is better loved and remembered. JOHN SPRINGER, publicist

Some performers are smarter than they seem, in particular the smart cookies who play dumb blondes. I had the pleasure of working more than once with the charming and highly intelligent Judy Holliday. One time, her mother was visiting the set, and Judy admitted that she hadnt begun speaking until a very late age. How old was I when I started talking, Mom?