← One Broke Actress
One Broke Actress
how to build an acting career | ACTOR TIPS ON NOT GIVING UP, BUILDING A CAREER, AND THE ARTIST LIFE
00:30:08
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
Sam Valentine
Fast Forward Productions. The women are speaking. What's up, guys? Welcome back to the One Broke Actress podcast. An honest account of actor life, plus a few lessons I learned in the process. I am your host, Sam Valentine, and this is the season finale episode of 2024. Yes, you heard that correctly. This is the last episode of 2024. Because I want to take some time and reflect. I want to look over the pod podcast season. I want to see what you guys are actually asking for. I want to look at YouTube. I want to look at Instagram. I want to. Like, this is the beauty of running your own business, is that I don't have any paid sponsors. I have to do anything for the next couple of weeks so I can take the time and actually reflect on things. This is something I wish that all of us were encouraged to do more often, was to take a beat and think about things before the next year. I think we all tend to do this in that weird week between Christmas and New Year's, but I'd like to do it sooner than that and I'd like to give myself some time to process things. So I'm kind of figuring out what next year looks like. I think the acting industry is going to be so different. I think it's going to be a bit of a ride. I think that in interesting and sometimes scary times, really good art is made. Fortunately, unfortunately, however you want to look at that. And we are approaching a whole whole new couple of years. So I for one, am going to rest, recharge, and plan and see what I need to do to take care of myself and you guys next year. Because I want to be busy with acting. So much so that I have to just do a ton of Patreon and bonus subscriber podcasts about how I'm keeping up with everything. I really think that's what it's going to look like. So that being said, I am not taking a pause on the subscriber and bonus podcast. So. So if you want to keep this in your feed, if you want to keep getting new episodes from me, and if you want them to be a little bit more personal, the Patreon and bonus podcasts are on Apple. If you are on an Apple podcast app right now in the top banner of this podcast, you can click subscribe. It is a whopping $4 a month, ladies and gentlemen. It is the same episodes that we put on Patreon. And I go really in depth in those in personal stuff. I talked really personally about how I signed with my manager. I talked about having a really bad day of jealousy and comparison and how I got over it. I share more in depth pieces and every single episode I have a Q and A specifically from you guys who are the listeners of the episodes. Honestly, it's one of the easiest ways to get direct info from me. So if you want to support this podcast, if you want to continuously have podcasts in your inbox, we cover a litany of things in there. I for one would highly recommend you subscribe. I am going to try my best to keep the price the same, but you can also lock in a year right now and pay like 40 bucks on Patreon. It's pretty sick. The deal, I think. I think the same thing is on Apple. You'd think I'd know these things, but I do not. So they run their whole internal system. So check those out. That is a really, really, really good way to continue to get content from me and support this podcast, which in turn helps me give you more things. Speaking of giving you things, I am about to get into one of the most important episodes I think I could put out there. I put out a very similar episode a couple of years ago. I think it hits different right now and so I really want to get into it from today's perspective from where we are right now. I am recording this on Monday, November 11th. It is 11:11 and I want to put out some good stuff into the world. I want to put out some joy, I want to put out some hope. And I want you guys to hear truly how I picture this career. A lot of you come to me and say really kind things like you're so positive. How do you stay so positive? How do you have such a good head on your shoulders for this business? How do you maintain? Well, first of all, I have very bad days. If you are in the bonus podcasts, you know that I recorded one of those bad days for you more than once now. So you've seen in depth what that looks like. But also my view on the long game of this business and what it looks like to build longevity in a career helps me get through those bad days. It helps me keep going. It helps me justify the work that is asked of us and I think it will help you too. And then in the end of today's podcast, I'm also gonna tell you about my teaspoon of which I think that we could all use right now. So let's get into it. What I mean when I say the long game of an acting career? I. I first want to talk about why I'm talking about this. Why does it matter? I know that we all just, like, want to book a job or you want to get an agent or you want to get a fucking audition. I get it. I hear you. Like, I fucking hear you. But I have been so inspired by the actors I have talked to who have continued to work in this business continually. And to me, that is the ultimate goal. I want to be able to do this art form for the next 50, 60, 70 years. And I want to be, like, carried off of a set because I really want to be here working. I really find so much joy in this business. Some days yes, some days no. But this is our passion, right? If you're listening to this podcast, this is probably something that is your passion too. And we want to just keep doing it. It's something we would probably do for free. Some of us do do it for free sometimes. I can't wait for you to join the union when you don't have to do it for free anymore. Unless you really want to. By the way, the only reason that I say you should work for free is if you are getting experience, if you are building a network, if you really love the story, or if you're getting a lot of joy. Four reasons to work for free. The fifth reason is money. And you're not working for free, then okay. But I also wanted to talk about this because once I adopted this mindset of this long game. So when people hear the term long game in terms of an acting career, they often think it means, like, mapping out a big career, like building from co star to guest star to series regular. And then does indie film to studio film. And small roles lead to bigger roles. And this agent leads to that agent and this manager and that manager. And it's like, it's like we're building this big whiteboard of, like, everything's a ladder and a step and da, da, da. And short. Yes, that's kind of part of it. Although I would argue that trying to map out your career in advance is near impossible. I think that we can have a generalized idea, but we'll get to that in a bit. There's also something that you do as you build a career with your team. Like seeing the big picture of where you're going, what you want to accomplish. But when I say long game, what I mean is breaking it down into three specific things that we're really going to dive into. And those things are, number one, maintaining the love of the work. And we'll get into why this is easier said than done in just a second. Number two, the ability to pursue the work continuously. And number three, acceptance of the. The process and release of expectations. I promise you, I'm going to give you tangible takeaways. Those of you who just wanted to turn this off because it felt a little too intangible, little woo woo, stick with me. Listen, there's a chance, okay, that I could look back at this podcast in five to 10 years and be like, that girl had no idea what she was talking about. She had no idea. Sam of 2024 had no idea what the fuck she was talking about. Sure, okay? But 13 years into this career and almost 10 years of interviewing people now, I can tell you that there are some solid through lines here, okay? So while that is an option, I don't think it's actually the truth. So we're gonna get our minds right. We're gonna set ourselves up for success. And today we are going to roll with my expectations of those three things, and we're gonna get deeper into each of them. First things first. Maintaining the love of the work. It sounds easy, right? Yeah. Like, we love this job. We love this job so much. We love acting, we love creating, we love working on a script and being character. We pay to be in classes to get this in and of itself, let alone get paid for it. Of course we love it. It seems like the easiest thing is to love this career. But the longer you're here, the fog of the industry and the glamour lifts and the more you see behind the curtain and the more you experience the active steps of what it takes to get a paid position on a set. It often doesn't feel creative and it often doesn't feel glamorous or fun. We don't really get to spend a really long time getting into a character because a lot of the time you get an audition and it's due. Sure, SAG rules say 72 hours, but we all know we've all been getting them that have 24 hour turnaround times due to the nature of the project. That's fine, but it doesn't leave us a lot of time. It doesn't leave us a lot of time to explore and to have the fun that we probably anticipated this to be. We hear great stories of actors who book these roles and they have months to prepare to be a singer, dancer, ice skater, or to get in shape for X, Y and Z, or to perfect their British accent. That is not the actual life of a working actor. We actually have very little prep time. We have Very little warning. I would say that a very small percentage of actors actually get ample notice of the roles that they're going to play and get ample time to invest in those characters. And a lot of us really joined this world because that's the fun part. Yeah, getting on set is also fun. And it's fun to be in costume and be in character and be creating the stuff. But a lot of this process isn't that fun. Not every day feels like you're creating a masterpiece. Some days you're actually going to get auditions you hate. Some days you're going to feel stupid because you're going to be pretending to be like a can of diet Dr. Pepper, like walking through a corn maze or something. I swear to God, these are things that happen. You're gonna have to find some weird prop that you can also hold up as a chicken drumstick because this commercial asks you to do it. But you need the commercial in order to pay for your work, to stay in this business, to book the film that you wanna book. What I'm saying is we're not really creating beautiful things a lot of the days. And then when you're on a set, when you, like, have the thing that we worked so hard to do, some days you might disagree with your colleagues. You might be on a set that you don't feel welcome on. The director might not understand what you're doing or who you are. Keep in mind that most shows have guest directors constantly. When you're also a small fish on set, sometimes you show up and it doesn't feel like you thought it would. It goes back to high school sometimes, and you're like, who am I going to sit with at lunch? And some days you don't really know what you're doing, and you blink and you were on set and the whole day is gone. And you're like, what did I just do? What did I contribute? How was that art? I asked someone if they wanted coffee, and now I'm home. When we take away the Hollywood shine of it all, it breaks down to something that's very different. So, bringing you back to the topic. Do you love the work? Can you maintain it? You don't have to love it every day. You're allowed to not like it. Sometimes it's like having a really good relationship with a significant other or a best friend. Some days you upset me. Some days, yeah, maybe I don't really like you today, but you know what? I still love you. And at the end of the day, you just have to love this so there's a few ways I'm going to add to this for you guys that might help you find some of the love in this career. And these are things I witnessed from other people and I've experienced myself. Because if we run out of love for this career, it gets jaded and dark and heavy real quick. And then it feels like nothing matters. And it's really hard for us to stay in long enough for the moments that feel like they pay off all of the time. That did it matter? So first of all, tips on this. Number one, search out sources of art. This could be going to see a play. Yes, there is ample theater in Los Angeles, my friend. There's also theater everywhere else. There is always theater. Actors are everywhere. This could also be writing your own work. You could write a book. It doesn't have to be a film or a short or a TV show if you want to write. That is creative, that is art. It could be participating in a 48 hour film festival or just going to one. It could be reaching out to people you know in this business who are doing it well and continuously and asking them how they rediscover the spark. Because I promise you, actors that you see on film and TV every single day have also lost their love for this business at some point in time. So if you have someone who's a positive example in your life, ask them how they maintain the love of this work. It also might mean taking different classes or changing up your style. Or it could be taking a break from something you've been working on nonstop for a while. If you've been going to the same class for like six years and you're kind of burnout and you're over it. If you've been going to the same class for like six months and you're born out and you're over it, do you want to take a break? Does that mean you can come back to something else and find the love that way? You know what I mean? Searching out sources of art, whether they be things you participate in or things you witness, can help get you excited. This can be part of your homework, like watching movies and actually diving into them, not like watching them and also being on your phone calling you out on this. This can be finding scenes that inspire you. This could be talking to your coach. I want to work on this scene because it got me excited. It might be a scene you're never going to do. It might be a character that's so against your range, but it gets you pumped. You're allowed to find work to fill an artistic void and do it by yourself. So passive or active, both options. For that, we have to remember to fulfill it ourselves. My second tip on that, beyond searching for art, is be willing to have a beginner mindset. Nothing shuts us down in this creative world so fast as deciding that we know everything there is to know. As artists, our goal is to be open and to be receptive. And yes, we can have opinions and we can interpret things how we see them, and we can put our best foot forward, but we also need to come and play. If you've ever worked with an actor on set who feels, like, really shut down or kind of jaded, or they're just, like, going through the motions in the process, it's really not fun. It's like one of the worst days on set is when you're with a person who really doesn't want to be there, and it's something you worked really hard to get to. And I know some actors who've been on sets recently with actors who are like that because they lost their love of the work and they took themselves too seriously and lost all beginner mindset. So ways you can have a beginner mindset, it can be in a new class. It can be going to a new coach or a new teacher. It can be going to a workshop. It can be approaching a scene in a way you've never done before. It can be watching content that normally you wouldn't watch. Getting out of your comfort zone and going to places where you don't know what's going on. And you have to listen and learn and be present and be open is so good for actors. It's so good to inspire us creatively and to fall back in love with things. I actually did this last year when I started out at improv again, and I actually might go back to it in 2025 if I feel called. Also, I restarted class this year. I haven't been in class in forever, and I just restarted, and I have been excited to put up scenes. I've been excited to work every week and see these people. And I didn't think that 13 years into this business I'd be back in class. But I'm here, and I have a beginner mindset, and I'm here to learn and to enjoy myself. I really do feel that filling up your own creative cup and having a beginner mindset are really, really important to staying in the love of this work, to getting reinspired, and to building the long game of a career. Speaking of filling your own cup, my next thought in creating the longevity of your acting career is constantly being able to pursue this work. This is where your money and your time really come into play. Because the longer you in this career, the less and less people will stay in it with you. That's just how life works. Don't shoot the messenger, okay? A lot of people left this business of the pandemic. A lot of people left this business in the strike. People left fall off as they get older because they change where their priorities lie. Some people shift their priorities and add acting back in later. It is just the nature of this business because it takes a lot from you. It is something I watch actors do constantly and I didn't believe it when I was in my 20s. I was like, all these people are always going to be here. They're always going to be the same auditions for me. No, a lot of them have shifted into other careers fully. They've stopped acting, they've moved away, they've prioritized other things and notion shade to that. I get it. Because this is hard. This feels so impossible half the time. So I really understand. And if anyone decided to step away from this industry and is still listening to this podcast, I'm so glad you're here. I'd love to talk to you. I think it's fascinating and I love that you're still interested in this process because art can look very different for different people at different stages of your life. That being said, those people who are left in our categories are probably really good at this job. Meaning we all need to consistently up level our skills and keep our tools sharp. So yes, there is less breadth in terms of number of actors, but the skill level of those of us who are still in this business is much, much deeper. So not only do you need to be able to constantly do it, you need to be able to afford it. It is not cheap. If you have listened to any of my last content from all of the month of October and half of September, I talked about how expensive this business is. I'm in the middle of teaching side Hustle Academy, teaching actors how to make money in other ways. This business only gets more expensive. And this is the hardest part is the older you get, the more expensive life gets. It is so much more expensive. I'm also in the face of work where I am constantly needing to uplevel things. So I coach auditions. If they are a certain caliber and they need a certain level of work that's expensive. I have a lifestyle that is slightly More expensive than it used to be. As you get older, life tends to get more expensive. People have weddings, they have kids. You have life and health concerns. You have dependents, whether it be children or elderly people in your family. As you get older, you just have to have more money in some capacity. You either have to lessen all of your expenses or make more money or some category of both. Both. And in Los Angeles, my life has only gotten more expensive. The price of keeping up with life here is harder. That's also why when you're in your 30s, 40s, and 50s, being an actor stops being cute. A lot of the time when you're here in your early 20s or like late teens, you can say to your friends, like, yeah, I'm an actor. I haven't like booked a ton of stuff, but it's, you know, it's I'm working and it's cute. As you get older, people have kids and mortgages and houses and I have friends who have vacation houses and multiple properties and tons going on and huge bank accounts. And me saying I'm pursuing acting isn't as cute and it's not as generally accepted by the public. When you put this actor on it between all of those things, it only gets harder. And it's really hard when you look around and realize you're the only person in your friend group who still lives in an apartment. This business, however, doesn't give a shit. It doesn't care. It doesn't care how long you've worked, it doesn't care how hard you work. It only matters per project. And if we can accept that, which we'll get into in the next point, and continue to do this regardless of the pressures or any outside expectations, that in and of itself is a victory. So can you constantly pursue this job in terms of finances, physical health, your schedule? I don't think this is talked about enough. It's real. You have to be ready for it. You have to consistently and constantly be able to cultivate the lifestyle of a working actor. And this means that your job needs to fit into this working actor lifestyle. So do you have the financial backing in order to work and pursue this job of acting that doesn't potentially pay you back ever, if not for years and years and years? And can you also at the same time continuously afford to level up your work? This means can you do self tapes consistently and turn them around and have them be awesome? Can you continue to meet more people and be outside in this world and experience art and do everything we talked about in the last point, this does not have to be every day. You know, I am heavily against an actor being 10 hours a day of actor work. That's just not. I'm not. You're never going to get that from me. You're never going to get that from me, guys. But you do have to be in pursuit of this career and it is expensive and it is costly and it is time consuming. And while doing that, I need you to keep an open mind and joy while doing it. So this is not easy. And it's not easy. The older you get and the harder it gets to maintain. Can you constantly pursue this work into your 30s, your 40s, your 50s? Think about that. Do the side jobs you have right now set you up to be able to continuously pursue this work when you're 50 years old? If not takeaway tip on this. Are there things you can start to think about and work on right now to uplevel your skills, to change your life so that you can consistently pursue this career as an actor? This would be a great place to insert an ad for Side Hustle Academy, but we just closed the doors to it. So if that is something you are interested in the future, continue to follow me here, continue to check in with this content and you can also get on the wait list in the show notes, by the way, because I'm never going to stop talking about this. I think having the financial wherewithal to pursue this career is a huge part of continuing your ability to have a long game in this actor world. And lastly, this brings me to my last point, which is acceptance of the process and release of the expectations. Let me tell you something. One, I had to pick up Willow. I have a senior dog in my lap now. She thinks 4:30 is the time to eat. Do you want to say hi to YouTube? Thank you. If I had a dollar for every actor who told me, yeah, you know, like, I, I tried acting, it just didn't work for me after like five years of this career, I would probably not need to have a Patreon or bonus podcast whatsoever. Five years is really the mark where I think that people start to fall off for whatever reason. Right. Who knows? Everyone has their personal stuff, but five years is the amount of time where typically we can look back and think a lot of time has passed but nothing has happened. When in reality, if you could zoom another 10, 15 years in the future, a lot of time has actually passed and you realize that in those five years, probably a lot of things did happen. You just couldn't see them from where you were sitting. And that is what this career looks like. It's a lot of small pieces of continuously showing up and doing and being prepared and being ready. And you cannot really see the house while you're building it. This career does not happen over a short period of time. And when I say setting yourself up for things like financial and physical and, and mental health, success and responsibility, I mean for the next 20 to 50 years, not for five. So can you accept this process and release the expectations of what you perhaps thought this career was going to look like? I did not think that my job would look like this when I was in my 30s. I thought I was going to be so fucking famous. I thought I was going to be like a 25 year old starlet. But you know what's funny is that my brain did couldn't actually comprehend the next 20 years after that. I didn't think about what my career would look like in my 30s. I really only thought about it at the exact moment when I started it. In the last few years, the releasing of my expectations of what I thought this would be has been such a gift. It makes this world so much smaller and so much easier to navigate. And the longer I'm here, the more I realize I'm here as long as it takes. I'm here indefinitely. When I accepted this, it really released the pressure of booking whatever the next thing is. And yes, I still want to book my next job. I still want to book the next thing. But I'm also hyper aware that Hollywood does not give a shit about my timeline. It doesn't care at all. It's per project, per character, per audition. And I cannot put put the expectations of what I thought this career was going to look like on individual auditions. I want to succeed. I want everyone around me to succeed. I remind myself that I'm a working actor every single day and I stand in that light and I own it. Even if I haven't been on set for a while. And that's when it's really hard to do, but when it's most important. So if you can release your expectations of what you thought this was going to be, it will help you immensely. And if you are new to this business, I do not want this episode to make you feel sad or sick or like, oh fuck, what am I gonna do? I better back out now. No, no, no, no. This is a magical process. It's a victory in every single way. No matter how much success you do or do not achieve in the front end because you will learn a lot about yourself in this process, and you have to do whatever it is you need to do to move on from what you thought this would look like to move forward. You know, it's weird. I haven't been on the COVID of Cosmopolitan. I haven't been on glitzy red carpets. I haven't really been the success I thought this was. Go be. But I've done a lot of other really cool shit. And along the way, I met amazing people, and I found my husband, and I found these really complicated, amazing rescue dogs, and I built a life. And I run this platform where I get to talk to you as inspiring actors every single day. If you guys go back and listen to Michelle Meredith's episode, It was in 2022, she talks about how all of the work you're doing is for something, even if you don't know it. If you haven't heard that episode, you should go listen to it. But I actually strongly believe that this is true. And while this might not be how you pictured it, everything you are doing is leading to something, and it's not necessarily linear, but we have to let go and just be a part of the process. All of these things have really solidified my pursuit of this acting career in a way that has made it possible for me to come here and share this stuff with you guys season over season. This podcast started as a blog in 2016. It is the end of 2024. We're still here. We're still going strong. And speaking of that, I want to wrap this episode in this season up with one more thought process for you. And it is what I call my Teaspoon of Hope theory. And if you have not heard me talk about it before, I'm so excited to tell you about it because it is literally how I function in this business. I talked about it in a Patreon episode. Really in depth. Speaking of Patreon, go check it out. But this is how my Teaspoon of Hope theory goes. Sometimes just a teaspoon of hope in some capacity is what you need need to continue in this business. Sometimes it looks like a callback. Sometimes it looks like a second audition from the same casting director. Sometimes it looks like a booking. Sometimes it's meeting with a director and them saying, oh, wow, you're perfect for this movie I'm making. Is that movie ever gonna get made? I don't know. I cannot tell you how many times I have sat at different lunch spots in Los Angeles and had someone tell me that they are gonna put me in their movie. And it has never been been made so many times. But when they tell me that it gives me a teaspoon of hope to continue, to continue the pursuit, to continue the work, to stay ready, to be up leveling my work, to be enjoying my personal time, to be resting and recovering and getting back at it. Because I know that something is coming. A lot of times what I pictured like the person at Aroma Cafe who told me 10,000 times they were going to put me in their movie. A lot of the times that is not what actually comes out, but something else does. This is because I released my expectation of what I thought this would look like, but something comes out of it always. It's just a teaspoon of hope to keep me in the game a little bit longer. And that is my magic sauce. That is what I can do. And sometimes that little teaspoon is a message from you guys saying, hey, I listened to your podcast and I booked this job afterward. Or I signed with an agent that actually respects my boundaries because you talked about it. Or I read on your Instagram that you continued to pursue this business when it was hard and it made me want to continue. Like little things like that can be my fuel to stay in this for the long game. And I think that figuring out what little teaspoons you can pull along the way from your own personal life, from your work, from the reps you have, from the people who surround you will help you stay in this business on the days where the long game game feels exceptionally out of reach. I hope this was helpful to you guys. I hope it gave you some hope and I hope it didn't scare anybody off. And I hope that you can revisit this episode in times when you feel like you need a teaspoon of hope or you need a reminder of how important the long game of this business really is. Like I said, this is the last episode of 2024, but I'm continuing to publish subscriber episodes on Patreon and Apple. This week I actually released an episode about getting over a vicious attack of jealousy in comparison if you want to see me go from uphill to downhill. And I'm also recording an episode after this about communicating with your reps during slow season, something I've gotten a lot of questions about. And I'm also considering doing a live review of my audition tracker from this year and what I've learned if the Patreon and bonus subscribers would like something like that to wrap the year up. Let's see. So check out that everywhere you get your podcasts. And guys, thank you for tuning in all of 2024 and I will talk to you not next week, but very soon. I will, I will put my heart on the line Give it all this time I will, I will put my heart on the line of things to stop me this time.