A Real Acting CV

HERE IS MY NAME. IT'S BIG. I SPENT AN ALARMING AMOUNT OF TIME DECIDING WHICH FONT TO USE.

Here is a photo of me

from 2 years ago after spending a 

week barely eating. I also spent over 3 hours

making myself look like this. 

Beautiful, aren't I? I'll never

look like this ever again. 

These are my contact details because I naively think that

you might bother to get in touch with me.

Boring stats:

Height: Do you really care?

Eyes: Green with envy at all the other actors you've hired in the past.

Hair colour: Look at my photo you lazy fool.

Playing age: This depends on what I'm applying for but let's presume 1-100.

Weight: At least 2 stone less than what it really is.

Training: No, I didn't go to RADA. Hey, don't go!

Parts Played:

This first role is the biggest one I've ever played. Despite the fact it was over 5 years ago, I'm still putting it first so that you definitely notice it.

Second is the best thing I was in but I didn't have a named part. I've made up a name so I look more important. 

Here are some things I did when I first left drama school or, as they're otherwise known, 'CV Filler Roles.'

The next few roles are one that I've made up or wish that I'd been in.

These jobs at the bottom are ones I'm pretending I didn't do in drama school.

Special Skills:

I could tell you about all the accents that I'm a master at in my head and how good a singer I am although my voice is regularly likened to a cat on speed. However, if I'm being honest, these are the only things that I'm really skilled at:

• Being able to avoid drama school classmates while in Soho.

• Thinking up wonderful excuses for not bothering to print off my CV for an audition.

• Reusing monologues time and time again because I can't be bothered to learn new ones .

• Hiding the fact I've a full driving license until I'm sure you won't be using me as an unpaid chauffeur for your profit-share schools' tour of 'The Drugs Don't Work.' 

• Listing a language on my CV that I'm 'currently learning.' The fact that the last time I studied it was back in 1999 while doing my GCSEs is utterly irrelevant.  

 Upcoming Work:

I've left this free because casting calls always state that actors need to be available for work. By leaving this blank I should be the most employable actor out there. Please hire me. Thanks.  

           

No Direction

Readers of my blog will know that there are many things I do like. If something falls outside the loved ones, crisps and Community circle then it’s probably safe to say that I’ll have something bad to say about it. So, you can probably guess what my thoughts are on monologues and what I want to do to people who dare ask me to prepare them for an audition.

If you’ve ever been or have attempted to attend a drama school then you will have encountered a monologue. Chances are you’ve spent hours, days, weeks scouring plays in the vain hope of finding a bit of speech that’s more than a few lines long that you could potentially perform to a panel of strangers. Once you find that said chunk of text, you then have to check that the character is of the same sex and preferably of a similar age. You then have to make sure that it’s not everyone else’s monologue of choice and once all those boxes have been ticked, you’re good to go. Time to get pacing around your bedroom and desperately learning someone else’s out of context words.

I understand why people ask you to prepare monologues as it gives them a chance to see you perform a decent amount of script and also lets them see how good you are at interpreting a piece of text. But really what it ends up being is an exercise in memorising a piece of text, working on it manically and getting just a few lines to a good enough standard to perform. It doesn’t show how well you work with other actors, how well you take direction or if you’re capable of natural-looking dialogue. So, you can imagine my annoyance when I was asked to prepare not one but two whole monologues for an audition.

Now, I find the times I actually get asked to perform a speech at an audition has dwindled as much as my ability to fight a hangover. I have a couple that I can whip out at a moment’s notice but they’re used so rarely that even they have become pretty dusty. But this casting had specifics. They had to be from specific plays so I was then faced with the frankly rather dull task of reading two plays that I’m not particularly keen on to find myself two whole new speeches to learn. They, of course, had to be contrasting in tone and finally, despite neither play having particularly wonderful female characters, I found my speeches. So the last few days has been spent preparing them so that they were ready for their great unveiling today.

I got to the audition to see a man in the waiting room refusing to leave until the casting director took his CV. It got to the point where he actually put it in her hand and in the end she gave in and asked him to come back later where they’d squeeze him in for an audition. He skipped out calling everyone ‘diamond’ and I scowled. A lot. Soon after I went in and after a brief chat, I was asked to perform my monologues. Did the first one, went ok. Had a ‘that was nice’ from the director. I stood and waited, expecting to be directed because that’s what normally happens. ‘So, can we see your next speech please?’ Oh ok. Obviously they’re going to see both and then work on one of them. I do the second one which is greeted with, ‘Well that was nice.’ Nice? Lovely and nice? You’d use more descriptive words for a blank piece of paper. So I stood again, waiting for my direction. Nope. Nothing. I was thanked for coming in and that was it. Time to be released back into the world. Not even giving a bit of direction and asking directors to at least try the speech again is really lazy. They have no idea how well, or poorly, I take direction. For all they know, I might enter a screaming fit of diva rage the second someone asks me to think about the emotions of the piece. 

So I’m back in the land of no upcoming auditions with a couple of unwanted monologues still aimlessly wandering around my brain. If anyone wants them then they’re yours for a cup of tea and a Wagon Wheel.

Fear Of The Unknown

There are days when I feel supremely positive about my acting career. Those days when I send loads one email out and change the font on my CV. The days when I rearrange my credits on Spotlight and spend two minutes looking up showreel companies. And that time when I spent all of ten seconds thinking about writing my own show. Those are the times when I feel like the hardest working actor this side of a temping job. And then there are days like today. Days like today make me worry about just how seriously I take my career.

I had an acting job today. As events go, this is rather bloody exciting because my acting regime has been about as active as my exercise timetable recently. In fact, rather worryingly, this has been my first acting job since January. At this rate, I can look forward to a bit more work sometime in December and can use my sparse CV to heat the flat. But yes, today I was actually paid to do a bit of acting and that was great. Thing is, I didn't entirely know what it was for. When I applied for it, I knew it would just be as part of an advert on a website. It paid and it sounded easy so of course I fired off my begging letter and, to my surprise, they cast me without even asking me to audition. For some reason, and I'm not sure why, it never really dawned on me to ask what the website/product was. And as it got closer to the day of shooting, I actually rather liked the idea that I didn't know what I was letting myself in for. Aside from the blogging opportunities, it made me feel a little dangerous (and yes, I realise this is about as dangerous as crossing the road when the green man tells you to.)

So I arrived this morning feeling all rather exciting. Who knows what exciting kind of product I was about to talk about. It could have been the newest flavour of crisps meaning that I'd reached the pinnacle of my acting career at the tender age of 28. Excitedly, I signed the release form, desperately scouring it for a clue as to what it would be. In fact, I was doing pieces of three different products, none of which I'd ever heard of. No Walkers. No McCoys. Not even Asda SmartPrice. Damn. Looks like this acting lark is going to be dragged out for a while yet.

Once I'd signed my life away, I was asked to make my way to the shoot which was a couple of minutes down the road. Not a problem. I've left buildings before and walked down the road all on my own. I've been doing it for years almost glitch free so today should be no exception. But of course, it was. I got to the main door downstairs only to find that the door wouldn't open. I searched for a magic green button located nearby that would let me out. Nothing. I desperately flicked a lightswitch numerous times. desperately hoping that it was a door-opener in disguise. Still nothing. I pushed and pulled to the point where I was dangerously close to losing my fee to cover the cost of a new door. Finally, a man who obviously worked there appeared on the other side of the door, took one look at me flailing around like a fly in a bottle and let me out. Good start.

The rest of the shoot was actually turned out to be fairly painless. I was very quickly briefed on the products, told what to say and that was it.  Although it was being shot on a very busy high street full of very normal people who obviously hadn't seen a camera before. Firstly we had to contend with the man who seemed to deliberately turn up his very frantic jazz everytime action was called. And there was also the poor man who, while trying to buy a coffee, was shouted at by the director because he couldn't take his eyes away from the camera lens. A group of foreign students also watched and looked utterly dismayed as they were rewarded with the sight of me hitching my skirt up as I came very close to feeding my radio mic through my knickers. After that I think word spread around London pretty quickly and we were barely bothered again.

But despite the general public and the fact that I was improvising about things I'd never heard of before, it was all done very quickly. In fact, rather worryingly, in the two jobs I've done this year, I've spent about 30 minutes on set. Best put that BAFTA Fellowship on hold, folks...

Whatever The Weather

Sometimes I appear to conspire against myself. Other times the outside world is completely against me. Some days, however, myself and the outside world like to club together and see just how difficult we can make things.

Today I had a meeting with an agent regarding potential representation. They'd sought me out so I was feeling particularly special and was massively excited about meeting them. I left the house this morning feeling pretty smug because I'd seen Twitter and everyone was saying how cold it was so I knew I had to wrap up warm. Apart from lacking a hat (don't want to go meeting an agent with 'hat hair') I was wearing the full works. If anything, I was a little warm when I stepped out of the house. As I skipped up the street, I noticed a few little snowflakes starting to flutter down. Hmmm. That was expected. But they were light and I was about to get on a bus and then straight on to a tube. By the time I got out on the other side they'd be as distant a memory as Keenan and Kel.

So, imagine my surprise when I step out of the tube station to find that first the snow has got heavier than ever and then, 30 seconds later, the snow turns to hail. A little annoying to say the least but no matter, at least I've got my umbre....hang on, where is it? Suddenly a slow motion flashback plays in my increasingly wet head as I watch myself putting my umbrella in a different bag. That different bag is all the way back in North London on my bed. So, all I have now to protect my now ruined hair (which was cut and wonderfully styled yesterday, of course) is my folder that is now clearly struggling to keep my CV and headshots dry. Do I succumb to the weather and just allow my hair to fulfil its destiny and finally become the ratty mophead that it wants to be or do I potentially ruin my CV and headshots which may be asked for in a few minutes time? Let's just say that I'm eternally thankful that they'd printed out my Spotlight CV and therefore needed nothing from me...

Normally I'd go on to write about how I managed to royally screw up the meeting but I'm surprised to say that it was all very lovely and it's very likely that I'll be a represented actress in the next few days. Unless, of course, they ask for me to send my CV and headshot in the post. In which case, normal woefully clumsy service will resume shortly.

Chasing

Today is very much a day about chasing things up. This may not be the best idea on the day which is supposedly the most depressing day of the year. It should be the perfect idea in the world as it should be making me feel organised and industrious. However, every bit of chasing up I've done is currently being ignored and I'm left feeling like the invisible actor.

Currently I'm the chaser of one payment, one set of photos and one film. If I'd just begun the chase and still had my victims in sight then I'm pretty sure I'd be feeling joyous and optimistic about my pursuit. But I haven't. Instead, I'm on the fourth leg of the payment run and have just entered the second leg of the film and photo race and it's fair to say that my sprint has now turned into a woefully tired crawl. My emails started out so sunny and polite that I can't imagine how anyone could possibly ignore them. They were full of questions about the recipient's wellbeing and wishes that we get to work together in the future. They were laidback and crammed full of understanding of how busy the recipient was and when I sent them off I fully expected a response in the next day or so.

At first, my payment chase was where I was most successful. Probably because an actress in pursuit of money is something that even Usain Bolt would struggle to beat. They said they realised that there was another form I had to fill out and that as soon as it was done, they could process the payment immediately. I signed the forms to promise that I wouldn't turn into a murderous, drug-taking, alcohol-fuelled thesp and my email was received with a very brief but hopeful 'Thanks.' That email was sent just under a month ago and yet I'm still hunting down these pennies which will allow me to live for another month. So today I began my 2012 campaign and fired off an 'I really mean business this time' email in the hope that they finally take notice and empty the companies entire savings into my account or, y'know, just pay me what I'm owed.

But it's not just the reward that I'm after. It's bad enough that I've worked for these people and the very little that I ask in return is currently being dangled above my head, just out of arm's reach. But what's really bugging me is the fact that I'm now just being ignored. I realise people are busy but how long does it really take to quickly reply to an email? Even if they don't know the answer and can't currently tell me when I'll be able to pay my rent/cry at the sight of myself in a novelty costume/cringe at the sound of my own voice, can't they just reply and say that? But no, instead they have all decided to use the tried and tested method of 'let's ignore her and hope she gives up and goes away.' I'm not sure why they have all decided upon this approach and I can only presume that all the directors and producers and accounts type people all got together recently and decided that the best method for really winding up an actress with way too much time on her hands would be to get her to do the work and then pretend that she doesn't exist. Well, let me tell you, all you people who do important things that mean that I occassionally get to do the job I really want to do, I most definitely do exist otherwise T has some serious amount of explaining to do about the amount of dresses in his wardrobe.

However, I have to admit that that this hasn't helped with my theory that I may not actually be visible to the naked eye. That person you barge past as you're walking down the street as if they don't exist? That's probably me. That customer that gets repeatedly ignored? That'd also be me. But I'm pretty sure I do exist. I mean I've got credits on my CV which I'm almost certain that I didn't make up. And there's definitely evidence of my existence on film although they're mainly in the form of adverts, none of which have actually aired. Maybe this means I am actually the world's first invisible actor. In which case I'm off to place my CV at the top of the pile in every casting director's office until I can finally make the leap and get myself seen.

Total Recall

So, the advert I went up for last week where I got to pretend I was one of those life-saving types. The one that said they had pencilled me in for the role. You remember? Yeah?? No? Oh well, all the information is in the first two sentences so go back, read them and then come back here and we'll start again...All done? Great. Now let's carry on....

The recall for the advert was yesterday and so, like the well-behaved thesp that I am, I went along. While sat waiting to go in, an extremely pretty girl (and therefore quite clearly not up for the same role as me) was told that she was too early by about two hours for an audition. She explained that she had another casting to get to and she wondered if there was any chance that she could be seen any earlier. Instantly the room disliked her. She was absolutely stunning, she had another audition to be getting to and she might be going in before us. You'd think she'd filled the resentment quota for the day already. But oh no. She was asked to go and get changed into what she needed to wear and we were then called to go in. The three of us filed in bitterly, wondering why our genes and agents were failing us so badly. Lined up in our dowdy outfits that we had been asked to wear, we were just ready to introduce ourselves to camera when Pretty Girl bursts into the room, scantily clad in the tiniest of leopard print bikinis. She was hastily turned away but the damage was done. Never have I felt like such a monster and to make matters worse, I had a camera pointing straight at me. There's nothing like a beautiful model to suddenly push you ten steps back down the ladder of attractiveness.

Pushing all Quasimodo feelings aside, we got on with the casting and it was all good fun. It was all very much the same as the first casting but this time it was in front of production team and we were given a few more things to react to. We weren't allowed to speak so reactions were limited but the director seemed to really like what I did so I went away feeling pretty damn happy. And it seems I was right to. I had a call this morning to say that I'm down to the final two and I'll hear in the next day whether I've got it or not. This now means that T has to deal with me constantly having one eye on my phone for the next 24 hours.

Of course I'm massively excited and I keep telling myself that even if I don't get it, I should still be pleased that I got down to the final two. But there's almost something worse in being in the final two that being knocked out in the early stages. The closer you get to something, the harder it is when you lose out. Getting this job would help out a lot, not only by having a lovely credit on my CV but financially it would be damn useful too. But knowing that I could miss out on it at the final hour would be properly disappointing. As I've said in previous posts before, it's nice to be kept in the loop about these things but the 'ignorance is bliss' camp is also a pleasant site to be spending some time in.

So tomorrow's entry will either be one of woe or one of joy. Let the phone watching commence...

So Close

Today the 'So Close Bug' has swarmed into town. Every job I see today, on first glance, appears to be perfect. The role sounds like something I could do and they actually involve getting paid. Imagine that? A role that you could play and they'll give you a few pennies for being so god damn perfect for the part too? With each casting call, my heart has skipped several beats as I read down what the role entails. I start forming my perfect cover letter, content in the knowledge that the part is mine. That's until I read the final requirement. And damn, you can always bet on that final requirement being the one thing you can't overcome.

So far today I've got excited about roles that finally reveal that they require you to be black, 5'9" and blonde, have access to your own small child and be an astronaut. Even with the best will in the world, these are insurmountable requirements. Even if I didn't sleep for a week and did everything possible to work on these, there is no way that I can change race, grow an extra 5 inches, give birth to a small person or train to fly to the moon. Although frustrating, there is something quite nice about the 'so close and yet so far' casting calls. There is absolutely nothing that I can do about it. I can't feel guilty about the lack of time I'm putting into making myself a more versatile actor because these are aspects about myself that I can never change.

It's the qualities that you probably could have that are the annoying ones. The fact that I can't speak fluent Arabic is totally unforgivable on my part and means that I've lost out on quite a few roles because of it. If I'd bothered to keep up my flute and oboe classes at school then those casting calls that require the actor to play a portable instrument would be accessible to me. If I'd saved up my money for singing lessons rather than spending it on countless trips to London Zoo so that I could gawp at penguins for hours on end then I wouldn't have to shirk away from pleas for actors who can sing. These are the things that I beat myself up over and make me realise that there's always more that I could be doing. I've bought language tapes, various instruments and various sets of juggling balls but all get used for a couple of days until my annoyance at not being able to master means that they are consigned to a life under a thick layer of dust, fluff and receipts.

But it's not unknown for me to try and gain these skills in time for an audition. A few years back I was asked to audition for a very good play with a very good theatre company. They asked me to prepare a five minute story telling piece, to be prepared to show them a skill that they could possibly use within the performance and also a bellydancing a routine. Sorry, a what?! Why would they ask me to do that? Why would they be so cruel as to just throw that in? I checked back over the casting call and stupid Miss L had missed that one of the requirements was that the actor be proficient at belly dancing. Oh god. But instead of holding my hands up and saying that I'd messed up, I decided to use the week that I had to try and learn. This would be the perfect opportunity to finally add a new and interesting gift to my very sparse looking 'other skills' section on my CV. I bought a couple of belly dancing DVDs and then spent nearly every waking hour desperately trying to teach myself how to undulate my stomach without looking like I was midway through a seizure.

The day of the audition came along all too quickly and I was terrified. I was totally unprepared and had somehow convinced myself that I'd be able to wing this one. I had a piece of bellydancing-esqe music downloaded which I'd managed to listen to a couple of times and apart from a couple of moves, I had pretty much no idea what I was going to do. I went in an aced the storytelling part and then played the piano for a bit which all seemed to go down well. They then said that they were ever so sorry but unfortunately, because they were overrunning, there would be no time to watch me shimmy and shake in their faces. I was more relieved than a relief worker relieving herself on a sculptural relief while watching Comic Relief.

Thankfully I never heard from them again so my bellydancing days were shortlived. I may not be able to juggle and I'll never be able to play the lute but 'not being caught out' should almost definitely take pride of place on my CV.