Happy New Year

The new year. A time when we’re all supposed to crawl out of the comfort of cheesy leftovers and cosy pyjamas and start thinking about how this is going to be our year, the year that we truly make it. As January hits, actors across the land (whether emerging from the gruel of panto or the pain of experiencing the grinding halt that December comes to every year) start thinking about how they’re going to take this year and make sure it's their name stamped all over it.

The problem is that the world hasn’t quite caught up yet. Everyone’s still working out whether those last few slices of turkey are still safe and trying to convince themselves that their entire wardrobe must’ve shrunk in the wash. No one knows when they’re supposed to put the rubbish out and everyone’s enjoying that joy usually held exclusively by the self-employed where it could genuinely be any day of the week.

So, while I wait for the rest of the world to reluctantly prize itself out of its slippers, I’ve thought about how 2014 can be a good year. I make no secret of the fact that, acting-wise, 2013 was a bloody shocker. My worst year since I graduated 7 years ago, I barely worked. In fact, I earned more in a week at my day job than I did from acting in the whole of 2013. It was horrible. At first. Until I realised that everything else in my life was brilliant. I have a lovely life, a wonderful boyfriend, a truly brilliant family, an excellent day job, somewhere to live and Adventure Time Monopoly. And when I realised all that, things started to happen. I started getting to nerve-wrackingly perform Casting Call Woe and deal with the shock of people asking me to write things for them. And I’ve already had one acting job this month with another have another coming up in a couple of weeks.

That’s 2014. Not letting this silly industry get the better of me. If acting wants to ignore me then fine. Yes I’ll keep applying for work, yes I’ll update my headshots, yes I’ll finally get my new showreel sorted. But I will not let acting get me down. I’m not one for resolutions because I’m the crumble to the good intention’s custard but I do vow this year to stop measuring myself in terms of how much acting work I’ve done recently. Because it doesn’t matter. If I haven't had an acting job for 6 months then that doesn't make me a bad actor, it just makes me a bloody awesome rester.

So here’s to 2014. Good luck to all you actors determined to make it your year. I hope you all succeed. Unless you’re in my casting bracket, of course…  

Happy New Year

I really wanted my first post of 2012 to be a positive one. Today's post should be a hopeful, optimistic one as I aimlessly dream about what the upcoming year will be thrusting upon me. I've had a bit of a break from blogging over the last couple of weeks due to the acting world being forced into hibernation while pantomime reigns supreme. It's an odd feeling having inactivity left on your doorstep and being asked to look after it over the festive period. Of course, sloping around the house in pyjamas with a bag of crisps while keeping an eye permanently on crappy movies is probably my default mode so I embrace this time of year with pathetically weak arms. But the novelty wears off soon enough and there's only so many times you can watch 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus' before the need to be proactive becomes more important than seeing just how many Pringles you can eat in one sitting (it's about 386.) But sadly there's only so much you can do when everything has shut down for mulled wine and presents. As I've said many a time in this blog, I could use this free time do productive things that better me as a person but this never happens so instead the season has been spent with me patiently waiting for the jobs to start coming back.

Last night, while vaguely assisting T as he embarked upon his final push to try and defeat Arkham City once and for all (my greatest skill seems to be pointing out things that aren't actually there), I became distracted by a flurry of acting jobs suddenly being posted online. I leapt upon them with an enthusiasm usually only seen when food is put before me and I excitedly worked my way through them. I applied for all the paid ones that I could and thought I'd just have a quick look through the unpaid ones just in case there was something that looked interesting. As I glanced through the usual stuff, my eye was caught by a post by an incredibly well known production company. How exciting. This company produce some of the biggest television shows out there but hang on, why are they in the unpaid section? And woah, what's that? They're asking for audience members for their upcoming celebrity reality show spin-off? I read through the whole brief and my worst fears were confirmed...here, on a respected casting website was a call for audience members for a reality TV show. My heart sank and my soul wept.

Is this what has become of the acting industry? Are performers now held in such low regard that we are now being used to pretend that we're fans of one of the main culprits in the crime against television. Reality TV has taken over our screens and this cheap programming means that the amount of quality shows is so few that once parts have been offered to those few actors that always appear in these things, there's very little left for the rest of us. And sadly, because of this depressing lack of work, I'm sure there will be some actors who respond to these calls in the hope that it will at least be a chance to get on television.

But my main disappointment is with the casting website. Surely they have standards to uphold and instead of just bowing down to these production companies, they should have the nerve to stand up to them and try to maintain what little dignity the acting profession is desperately clutching on to. This casting site has served me incredibly well over the years and it has helped pay a lot of bills but seeing it become the next victim to the cheap, sensationalised, celebrity driven takedown of the industry is a seriously disheartening way to start the year. I posted about this job on Twitter last night and I was delighted by the reaction of other fellow actors and I really hoped that this casting website would take note and by today the job would be removed but I'm sorry to say that it's still there.

I really hope that this is just a minor blip and the rest of 2012 will be the year that the world of acting finally fights back. Maybe this could be the year that despite the debilitating cuts, dramas such as Black Mirror and Great Expectations can lead the way and prove that there is a lot more to be gained from putting what little money is left into producing quality programmes. Sadly I forsee yet another year dominated by the same formulaic shows meaning that this time next year, I'll be in exactly the same position writing the same blog. See you in twelve months!