I have been teaching professional level acting for twenty years and am still astounded when a prospective student tells me – usually on the telephone or in an e-mail - that her primary goal is to become famous. Sometimes they think they can do it by getting a role on a soap opera, sometimes on a situation comedy. I don’t think I have ever heard one speak about fame and acting on stage in the same breath.
Let me say right off that there is absolutely nothing you can do to become famous as an actor. Indeed, if that is your goal, there is a good 99 percent chance you will fail. One of the ingredients of fame as an actor is pure old fool’s luck.
But let’s talk about fame for a minute. Suppose you land a role in a Tom Cruise movie and actually achieve some of it? What difference does it make? You’re still the same person, right? You probably still wash your hair before your feet. And let’s go a bit further: Suppose you land the lead role in a film that draws lots of publicity at various film festivals. That might help you get an agent, but it still won’t make you famous.
Anyway, what will fame get you? The guy at the next table at Denny’s will recognize you at breakfast? The folks at the dry cleaners want you to sign a photo so they can tape it to their wall? What difference does it make?
Acting is an art, like painting and music and dance, and hardly anybody makes a living wage from doing it. Van Gogh only sold one painting in his entire life! Beethoven died a pauper. 85 percent of the members of Screen Actors Guild earn less than $5,000 per year. Only about 5 percent of the membership earns what you might consider a living wage, and they’re not even famous. Paris Hilton is famous, and she can’t act. They pay her a lot of money to show up at Las Vegas parties so they can take pictures of her.
I have worked with some exquisitely talented and sensitive actors who are not stars. And I’ve acted with a lot of stars and I’m here to tell you they aren’t any different from you and me. I remember one guy that was so famous he had an assistant follow him around the set with a small plastic fan pointed at him so he could stay cool between takes.
Even if you could snap your fingers and become famous, you would still be you. You would still put on your pants the same way you did before, and you would have the same worries and concerns you always had. Fame will not make you enjoy looking at that pimple or mole on your left cheek.
I suppose I have been asked a hundred times over the years whether a particular person “has what it takes” to become an actor. My answer is always the same. Becoming an actor – or an artist of any kind – is like finding religion. You wake up one day and realize you simply must do it. If my telling you that you do not have “what it takes”, then you should by all means go find some other line of work. My opinion doesn’t matter, even if I am convinced you may be the next Pamela Anderson.
