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Hope in an Actor’s Life!
In the entertainment business, uncertainty and
hopelessness is the elephant in the room. Hopelessness and despair are a daily
battle for everyone of us actors. I include myself, because I am also an actor
trying to make it here in L.A.
There are so many opportunities here that your
life can change tomorrow. Tomorrow! And I have seen it.
My next-door neighbor who I have known for 15
years, is in his 50’s and he just landed his first regular role on a TV show
last month. And his advice is… don’t stop. Don’t give up hope. Keep going and
it will work out.
But he is the exception, not the rule. But the
one thing that I have noticed is that he was always hopeful about his future.
He was always working at his craft. And this dedication constantly brought
jobs, in both TV and Commercials. Now he has a family and a house to keep up…so
this was always his reality check. These were the very things that gave him
hope and drive to continue in the face of overwhelming odds.
Professor Fred Luthans, management professor specializing in Organizational Behavior
has an approach that he calls (POB) Positive Organizational
Behavior. The goal of POB, which can work very well with actors/actresses is
to:
1. Shift the emphasis away
from what is wrong with people to what is right with people.
2. Focus on one’s strengths,
as opposed to beating yourself up due to perceived weaknesses or screw-ups.
3. Be interested and
increase your resilience, as opposed to ones vulnerabilities.
4. Concern yourself with
enhancing and growing one’s wellness, prosperity and the good life, as opposed
to going into the dark side.
Luthans and his colleagues have identified
four qualities as the critical component in Positive Organizational Behavior.
A. Self efficacy: having confidence
to take on and put in the necessary effort to succeed at challenging tasks
B. Optimism: making a positive attribution
and expectation about succeeding now and in the future
C. Hope: persevering toward goals
and, when necessary, redirecting paths to goals in order to succeed
D. Resilience: when beset by problems
and adversity, sustaining and bouncing back and even beyond to attain success.
Making the leap to POB can have a remarkable
impact on how we do business as actors. It pulls the intense focus away from
under-performing, and it puts the attention instead on high performance… asking
“how can we create more of this?”
Psychologists associate
these four qualities with higher performance, commitment, and satisfaction. I
think one of the most interesting and exciting things about these four
qualities is that they are malleable and open to improvement when incorporated
into ones life on a day-to-day basis.
How would this apply to actors? Well, I
think that as actors, most of us were never taught these basic qualities. When,
or even if, we went to college, we were more interested in stage combat, or
vocal training, or how to delve into a character and make it real. Or just
getting on stage and acting in front of an audience. But for me, the good news
here is that if these qualities are “open to improvement” then we can learn
these and get better at them with practice.
Instead of drifting into alcohol or drugs or
any other thing we use to mask our disappointment and pain of my rejection or
unemployment… I am going to surround myself with friends and family. Or I am
going to make my own film. Or write my own script. Or join an acting class to
constantly hone my craft for when that day does come.
There is an important distinction to be made
here: It is the division between hope and wishing.
Those that are hopeful are actively trying to
find the best path of action to take while delving into the daily obstacles.
However, research has shown that
many of those who have “hope” are in reality only wishfully thinking and
passively going through the motions, as if they are in denial about their
actual circumstances.
So, How
Long Does An Actor Stay Hopeful?
This is
a very personal decision that every single one of us who aspire to be a working
or successful actor must make some day. The only way to know if you’re on
course is to perform a reality check every five years. That way, you can see if
you’re making any real progress. And by progress, I mean genuine evidence
you’re moving forward. That evidence can be in the form of:
• You get
representation from an established agent
• You
start getting cast in acting jobs…commercials, theater roles, TV and film
• Callbacks
on mainstream projects
• You
receive several rave reviews from known critics for your work
In
other words, there has to be irrefutable proof that you have the skill and
ability to achieve a long-term career as an actor. If none of those elements
are present, you can try waiting another five years for the next reality check,
but it would be a mistake to go further than that.
As for
my next door neighbor, or a couple of well-known actors in their 50’s that got
their big breaks late in life - Richard Jenkins and Michael Emerson, please
understand those guys were working actors known to the casting community before
they made it big. And Louie C.K. from the show “LOUIE” was a respected comic
who kept building on his accomplishments. If any of them did a reality check
after five years, I’m sure they would’ve seen the kind of progress I’m talking
about.
Charles
Grodin, a wonderful actor best known to me for his fabulous performance in
“Midnight Run” said it best: “Reach for it, but don’t fall off the edge of the
world. I wish you could all get what you want, but there’s nothing as valuable
as a useful happy life, and rumor has it there are some people who have
achieved that who aren’t actors."
John Montana
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches
in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”–
Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)
About our guest blogger
John
Montana is an actor living with his wife in L.A. and has begun to make short
films. His most recent film, “Hungry” has been accepted into 24 film festivals
all over the world. Check out his short films at No Title Production Films.
1 comment:
Love this!
Denise
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