 |
What have you done to make ends meet?
BRYAN: I used to clean toilets. I used to serve food. I did telemarketing.
KRISTA: I did catering.
FRANK: I was a substitute teacher in daycare centers. They call you in the morning at 6:30 or 7 and you go to all these daycare centers around New York and you work with little kids all day long. That was a great way to make ends meet. I never waited a table.
JENNIFER: I never waited tables. I sold Tupperware. I always did weird things. I promoted an Off-Broadway show for Vickie Sue Robinson and I had to wear a rotating disco ball on my head and stand out in public.
Tell us about competition among actors...
BRYAN: When I was younger, I was more competitive about it. As I'm working a little more and getting a little older, I find you've got to let all that go because it just gets in the way. The
jealousy, all that stuff, is not good energy. It's worthless.
FRANK: There's only one road, and it's your road. If another actor your age, your look, gets a
part that's his road. He'll stop along the way on his road and he'll have a detour and he won't be
able to get back or he'll go further. You'll pass him sometimes or come back, but don't look to
the left or the right. Actors should always band together and be colleagues, even with the
competition. There's something really nice in this show about the fact that everybody has become
very supportive of each other.
Why would people want to enter the acting profession?
FRANK: Here's the thing about the show that intrigues me. It is in fact a very difficult painful, almost impossibly hard profession to stay in and keep pure and honest and noble about. I used to say to George and Grant all the time, "I would like Goddard to keep on reminding the kids that there's nobility in acting, that there is nobility in the lifestyle of actors." Because, if the show were only about the seamy side of acting, only about the dark and the struggles you have to go through, then as an audience member you'd say, "Well, what are they struggling toward? What are they trying to achieve?" So I keep trying to find ways in the classroom, despite what goes on in our lives on the show, to encourage you that it's all worth it.
I will say that there isn't any point in being an actor if in fact you aren't driven towards it with a tremendous, tremendous willful desire. If you just want to do it because it's the way to get girls, which it is, or because it'll get you famous, you'll have a few moments but you won't last. You have to have something inside you that's so overwhelming to keep you there because what you get hit with on a daily basis is brutal.
KRISTA: I don't think any of us would be here if we didn't believe exactly that. I get knocked around so much on a daily basis from casting, studios, things like that, and I keep going. I'll read scripts all the time and think, "God, this is so me, this is so what I want to do." If I'm not right for the part, it's hard not to take it personally. You just keep going.
BRYAN: People see the limos and the parties and the movies and the girls, but that's not my life. That's a small faction of people who actually get there. The reality is, it's hearing "no" all the time. You're the only one who has to believe because you're truly the only one who's gonna believe in you. If you don't believe in yourself, no one else is gonna do it.
More Quick Takes »
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Community
Is this all too familiar? Share some of your own experiences on the Unscripted Bulletin Boards.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
