Everyone loves a good villain. The really fun ones—Hannibal Lecter, Voldemort, The Wicked Witch of the West (stick with us)—even become archetypes. But how does an actor craft a truly good portrayal of a terrible person? How does one crawl into the mind of, say, Hitler, and look out at the world through such foreign …
As an Actor, you must develop a philosophy and approach for succeeding in the entertainment business. Never forget: this is a business. Many of the people making decisions are making them purely for business or monetary reasons. Artistic reasons are often not even in their paradigm or equation for arriving at an ‘executive’ decision. Your …
Ah, the eternal subject of the headshot . . . as an actor, your headshot is arguably the most important tool in your arsenal: It is your calling card. It is often the thing that catches the casting director’s attention and gets you in the door. It is the thing by which they remember you …
In Part I, we discussed, among other things, how to find a character’s arc, and how to break down a scene into beats. In this post, we will continue on this thread of the breaking down of each scene. More on the “detective work” I’ve written about in earlier blogs (such as “specifics”: If what is …
In Part I of this series, we examined a few key formatting ideas for constructing an actor resume. Here are a few more tips to help you get your resume up to snuff: Keep a Master Copy I have several versions of my acting resume. Various incarnations of my resume are geared toward film, theatre, …
Benedict Cumberbatch is arguably the actor of our generation and has played more iconic roles these past few years than most actors have played in a lifetime. He’s played the incomparable Sherlock Holmes, the iconic Star Trek villain Khan, the dreadful dragon Smaug, and is gearing up to play the comic book superhero Doctor Strange …
Breaking down a script, a scene, or a story is where it all starts. This first thing that happens when you get an audition or a part is that you read the script. It is crucial that, when you first read the script or play, that you read it for the STORY–not for the part. …
