Yes.\u00a0 I am an actor. I say this with full confidence and commitment to the twenty odd years I have been an actor.\u00a0 I say this so you will be fully aware when I start talking about actors I too am somewhat commenting on myself-but also speaking to, or rather commenting on things that make me crazy about actors.\u00a0 Specifically, being in a room full of actors. Waiting to meet the director.\u00a0 Or casting director….or anyone else who is in a position to give an actor a job.<\/p>\n
Someone once said to me, in a rather snippy better than you sort of way:\u00a0 “What do you know?\u00a0 You are only an actor?”…..and then she turned on her mid-heeled black pump and dismissed me.<\/p>\n
I know a lot.\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 And through the course of my adventures in acting, I have learned many things about several things I might not have ever attempted to learn-had I not had to research the topic so I was better prepared to act.\u00a0I have an unofficial degree in human nature……keen with observation and listening skills-I have fine tuned my instincts.\u00a0 Not to say, it does not fail me at times-but all the same.\u00a0 I can handle my own.\u00a0 And I have. And I do.\u00a0 The ironic thing about me being an actor?\u00a0 I fail miserably when I have to act like I am acting.\u00a0 I do not have the capacity to bullshit and play the game- as some of my fellow actors have perfected.\u00a0 I am pathectically genuine-which is not what others want to see sometimes-and true to my self- I suffer well when I am not supposed to……stick to a script….make it real.\u00a0 Tell the story.\u00a0 OK?\u00a0 OK. I’d rather think of myself as…well…and artist.\u00a0 That said, I totally sound like, well,\u00a0an actor.<\/p>\n
I met with a director yesterday.\u00a0 Big name, big film.\u00a0 Scheduled appointment.\u00a0 I was expected.\u00a0 I had an appointment.\u00a0 I prepared…with my snippets of lines-pertaining to the bigger story I was not privy to-but all the same.\u00a0 I was ready.\u00a0 I knew my lines-I knew my intention-but because of said snippets, I was not real clear on my motivation-except I was reading for the part of “loyal secretary”- who happens to be in this film-\u00a0loyal secretary to “big\u00a0 name film star”\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 I don’t even look like I could have\u00a0been someone’s loyal anything for 25 years.\u00a0 But I was chosen- and so off I went.\u00a0 \u00a0I was “meeting with the director”….just like 25 other actors.\u00a0 Who were just as expected.\u00a0 Who had their own time slots.\u00a0 Who were ready to go and get a job………any job.<\/p>\n
I hate being in a waiting room full of actors.\u00a0 Hate it.\u00a0 I will avoid it at all costs. You can smell the desperation-actors talking to walls, saying their own lines out loud-chattering with other actors “Where do I know you from?”\u00a0 “Do I know you?”. Making excuses……putting on airs.\u00a0 Talking way too loud about the job they just booked-the job everyone\u00a0else wanted-or the job they did not book- though when mentioning\u00a0that job there is- almost always- an excuse-a justification- that absolves the actor:\u00a0 “welllllll, “they” wanted someone younger, older, prettier……” OR- “welllllllllll, I was not in: good voice,\u00a0a good place,\u00a0I wore the wrong\u00a0shirt, pants……”\u00a0 It is all these things- outloud.\u00a0\u00a0Playing manipulation games with other actors in the room and waiting.\u00a0 Waiting to meet the director.\u00a0 Sizing up the room-wondering who else is reading for your part and wondering why “they”, in there behind the closed door,\u00a0will not just give you the job so everyone else can go home and stop repeating those lines that are already yours to the wall.\u00a0 That was me yesterday.\u00a0 Surrounded by actors in a room.\u00a0 Waiting to meet the director.\u00a0 Usually, I leave if time is running behind and\u00a0 I walk around the block.\u00a0That way, I don’t have to suffer through my own little voices in my head\u00a0responding to\u00a0what I am hearing”\u00a0 audible\u00a0droppings of everyone else’s little voices.\u00a0 Little voices in my head are not well\u00a0equipped to overcome out loud voices that activate other voices.\u00a0I confess, wholeheartedly, I don’t do well in these situations.\u00a0My insecurities get the best of me and I can not, not\u00a0listen- to the chattering of actors in a room-or stop my psychoanalysis of everyone else in the room.\u00a0 And then I turn it on myself- and then know in a second I have: worn the wrong shoes, the wrong bra, the wrong everything..and I should have spent more on a good concealer…or saved up for Botox….and I wait.\u00a0 Look over the others who are Botox’d and looking less crinkly than I.\u00a0 Botox nation.\u00a0 On full display.\u00a0 OR, younger versions of us all or different ethnicities of us all-(Obviously, “they” don’t know what they are looking for) we are all saying to ourselves. The men too. Here we are foot tapping,nervous taps, reading over highlighted lines-all\u00a0waiting to go in and be brilliant.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
As time\u00a0ticked\u00a0on yesterday I sat there-not able to leave the room.\u00a0 It was freezing outside-so a walk around the block was out of the question. Quick,before I suffer greatly and the hour drive’s worth of\u00a0self confidence building music does not\u00a0go to waste.\u00a0 Let me just smile and\u00a0find a bathroom.\u00a0 A moment of privacy.\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 I will compose myself\u00a0in a stall\u00a0of privacy-and then return to be brilliant.\u00a0 Grab purse and go.\u00a0 Privacy. Check the\u00a0face.\u00a0\u00a0Read the lines.\u00a0 In peace and white tiled\u00a0quiet.<\/p>\n
Just as I made my way back to the\u00a0room- I hear my name.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Gloria?”\u00a0\u00a0“Where is Gloria?”\u00a0<\/p>\n
OH GREAT.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The casting director is standing there- calling\u00a0my name.\u00a0 I am messing up her schedule.\u00a0 She will never call me in again. Ever.\u00a0 I am thinking as I am quickening the pace-please don’t let my dress be riding up in the back.\u00a0 Static cling and all that.\u00a0 That happened to me once in New York.\u00a0 Half my ass-although covered in black opaque control top- and yes, mother I was wearing underwear-half my ass was showing half way down the hall as I made my way to the door way of a casting director’s office.\u00a0 There I was at Guiding Light, with the lower half of my dress clinging to the upper half of my ass.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Here!”\u00a0\u00a0I say as I am running through the door. All other actor eyes on me.<\/p>\n
There were supposed to\u00a0be four people in front of me? Check teeth- lines running\u00a0through my mind-be cool.<\/p>\n
“Gloria??”<\/p>\n
“Here I am” I say in a singsongy-just let me be composed sort of way as I make my way through the door.<\/p>\n
Casting director hurries me along.<\/p>\n
I walk in, coat off, headshot out- reading\u00a0glasses off- big name\u00a0director at the table- plates of cheese and fruit, bottles of water on the table- camera.\u00a0 Camera guy.\u00a0All of them unimpressed.\u00a0 Or at least I think so.<\/p>\n
“sorry”, I say to big name director,\u00a0and according to Google, producing partner of big name actor\u00a0rumored to star in big\u00a0film.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I was in the bathroom”.\u00a0 “I. was…..in the bathroom.”\u00a0\u00a0 Is no one impressed?\u00a0 In a nanosecond I know I should have worn my high heels, and the better bra.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I read through the scene- as asked- with a slight Boston accent.\u00a0 I break my own rule: never do an accent in an interview unless I am asked and unless I know it like the\u00a0 back of my hand.<\/p>\n
Big name director says to do it again.\u00a0 Without the accent.<\/p>\n
“shit!”, I am thinking.\u00a0 “Who do I think I am doing a Boston accent in front of a guy who is a southie?\u00a0<\/p>\n
I do it again.\u00a0 I am nervous.\u00a0 I am knowing this is not going as I had hoped.\u00a0 It was too fast. \u00a0have been sized up in a second-well, really, more like three minutes.\u00a0 Big name director is writing something by my name -there on the list.\u00a0 He looks up at me and says-<\/p>\n
“Great.\u00a0 That was great.”<\/p>\n
Which of course, never means that it was.\u00a0 What is means is that I am not what he was looking for.\u00a0 At all.<\/p>\n
I know I have been dismissed.\u00a0 I say my thanks.\u00a0 I leave.<\/p>\n
Out into the waiting room.\u00a0 Another actor is already half way into the room before I am out. His turn to take his stab at brilliance.<\/p>\n
It is 5:18pm.\u00a0 I will be stuck in traffic for the next hour.\u00a093South will be car to\u00a0car.\u00a0Plenty of time for me to think of all the things I should have done.\u00a0 I know I will not be working on this film.\u00a0 But I am sure during the drive home my mind will go to other things.\u00a0<\/p>\n
New day.\u00a0 Grease auditions at the high school.\u00a0 I have 50 kids showing up at 2pm to sing and dance for me in the hopes of securing a lead role in the senior show.\u00a0 The only thing worse than waiting in a room full of adult actors?\u00a0\u00a0 Being a high school student waiting to go in and sing and dance for the director.<\/p>\n