contradictory opinions.
“Fix your teeth so you don’t look like a rabbit.”
“Your smile is charming, your best asset!”
“Lose some weight, and you could be a lead.”
“Gain weight; you’re too bony.”
“The red hair isn’t working, make it darker. No one likes a ginger.”
“Love the hair, very unique. But pad your bra. It’s very flat up there.”
(No one contradicted that last piece of advice.)
My favorite was, “You’re pretty, but you could use a . . . *shoop*, you know?” The agent made a gesture down his nose with two of his fingers, accompanied by a slurping sound. I think he meant a nose job. I also think he was an asshole.
It was hard to hear all the criticism, but I was still relatively freshoff the boat and naïvely self-confident, so I spurned it all. I knew by being myself, I had achieved some awesome things in life. Like local theatre awards and two Real Degrees. I was studying hard, I was doing all the right hard-work things, I was a unique and precious unicorn and FINE exactly the way I was!
Also, I couldn’t afford a nose job. I would just have to work hard to make up for the ugly face.
After my five millionth interview, I got an agent who didn’t want to rebuild me from scratch, and I started auditioning for television commercials, which was great, in a metaphysically soul-searing kind of way.
As a commercial actor, you get sent out on appointments several times a day with no preparation. Just audition over and over for the opportunity to become a human prop. A prop in a car ordering donuts, a prop being startled by a Transformer, a prop eating limited-release KFC panini sandwiches over and over until the prop pukes . . . I’ve done it all.
I have a great “love to please you!” attitude and look good in polo shirts, so over the next several years of my career, I did amazingly well in this area. If you are persistent enough, you can make a hell of a good living and work only two days a year doing television commercials. Half my nose snuck on camera for an Old Navy commercial during the 2004 Olympics, and I made more money than I’d ever made in my whole life. And the variety is fun, if you can remove yourself as an actual FEELING PERSON from the process.
On different projects I got to skydive, play with parrots, and eat five bags of Cheetos in an hour (FYI, it isn’t how I suspected. If you eat enough Cheetos you will NOT actually poop an extra-large Cheeto).I got hired to walk down a street thinking a whole monologue of silent thoughts about weight loss while drinking liquid yogurt. Later, they asked me to audition to be that same monologue voice in the commercial. Which I ended up LOSING OUT to someone else. Yeah, I lost a job to be my own inner voice . Strange, because I sound exactly like my own voice in my OWN HEAD when I think about liquid yogurt. But I got paid extremely well, so the empty feeling of being treated like a puppet was fine? Sort of?
Actually, not.
Acting in commercials was never my life goal. I wanted to be on TV or in an indie film with Parker Posey about quirky people having family issues around inheritances. Or Parkinson’s. SOMETHING where I wasn’t being yelled at for wrinkling my prop shirt or squeezing the prop burger too hard so the prop mustard started oozing out the back.
After five years of acting and making a great living, I started to forget why I moved to LA in the first place. And so did my family back home.
“We saw you on that post office ad, you’re so cute, are they going to turn that into a TV show?”
“That’s not how that works, Mom.”
“Well, here’s an idea. You should be on that NCIS thing with Mark Harmon. You grew up on military bases, you know that world!”
“Gee, you’re right! Why didn’t I think of calling them before? They’ve probably been waiting by the phone for YEARS!” Le sigh.
On a renewed quest for opportunity (i.e., last-gasp attempt to fan the dying fire of my dreams), I hustled
“Fix your teeth so you don’t look like a rabbit.”
“Your smile is charming, your best asset!”
“Lose some weight, and you could be a lead.”
“Gain weight; you’re too bony.”
“The red hair isn’t working, make it darker. No one likes a ginger.”
“Love the hair, very unique. But pad your bra. It’s very flat up there.”
(No one contradicted that last piece of advice.)
My favorite was, “You’re pretty, but you could use a . . . *shoop*, you know?” The agent made a gesture down his nose with two of his fingers, accompanied by a slurping sound. I think he meant a nose job. I also think he was an asshole.
It was hard to hear all the criticism, but I was still relatively freshoff the boat and naïvely self-confident, so I spurned it all. I knew by being myself, I had achieved some awesome things in life. Like local theatre awards and two Real Degrees. I was studying hard, I was doing all the right hard-work things, I was a unique and precious unicorn and FINE exactly the way I was!
Also, I couldn’t afford a nose job. I would just have to work hard to make up for the ugly face.
After my five millionth interview, I got an agent who didn’t want to rebuild me from scratch, and I started auditioning for television commercials, which was great, in a metaphysically soul-searing kind of way.
As a commercial actor, you get sent out on appointments several times a day with no preparation. Just audition over and over for the opportunity to become a human prop. A prop in a car ordering donuts, a prop being startled by a Transformer, a prop eating limited-release KFC panini sandwiches over and over until the prop pukes . . . I’ve done it all.
I have a great “love to please you!” attitude and look good in polo shirts, so over the next several years of my career, I did amazingly well in this area. If you are persistent enough, you can make a hell of a good living and work only two days a year doing television commercials. Half my nose snuck on camera for an Old Navy commercial during the 2004 Olympics, and I made more money than I’d ever made in my whole life. And the variety is fun, if you can remove yourself as an actual FEELING PERSON from the process.
On different projects I got to skydive, play with parrots, and eat five bags of Cheetos in an hour (FYI, it isn’t how I suspected. If you eat enough Cheetos you will NOT actually poop an extra-large Cheeto).I got hired to walk down a street thinking a whole monologue of silent thoughts about weight loss while drinking liquid yogurt. Later, they asked me to audition to be that same monologue voice in the commercial. Which I ended up LOSING OUT to someone else. Yeah, I lost a job to be my own inner voice . Strange, because I sound exactly like my own voice in my OWN HEAD when I think about liquid yogurt. But I got paid extremely well, so the empty feeling of being treated like a puppet was fine? Sort of?
Actually, not.
Acting in commercials was never my life goal. I wanted to be on TV or in an indie film with Parker Posey about quirky people having family issues around inheritances. Or Parkinson’s. SOMETHING where I wasn’t being yelled at for wrinkling my prop shirt or squeezing the prop burger too hard so the prop mustard started oozing out the back.
After five years of acting and making a great living, I started to forget why I moved to LA in the first place. And so did my family back home.
“We saw you on that post office ad, you’re so cute, are they going to turn that into a TV show?”
“That’s not how that works, Mom.”
“Well, here’s an idea. You should be on that NCIS thing with Mark Harmon. You grew up on military bases, you know that world!”
“Gee, you’re right! Why didn’t I think of calling them before? They’ve probably been waiting by the phone for YEARS!” Le sigh.
On a renewed quest for opportunity (i.e., last-gasp attempt to fan the dying fire of my dreams), I hustled
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