We have found 19,248 posts across 4 actor forums:
Soundproofing suggestions by so_guys_ • last post Apr 12th
I want to practice both my voice acting and singing but cant without disturbing anyone else in the house or my neighbours. Any ideas for low budget, non-professional voice actor soundproofing?
A Voice Acting Stream (Amateur Actors) by kingsolomon76 • last post Apr 11th
We're reading the accursed script for practice. Come join and enjoy! [https://youtu.be/fdiYhgxlI30](https://youtu.be/fdiYhgxlI30)
Does anyone else lie about their age? by hoodiebeanie • last post Apr 11th
I’m 21. Yet I could pass for 16. This has messed up my opportunities for years. I can’t get cast as 21 because I look “too young” I can’t get cast as a teen because I’m “technically too old” So I said f*ck it, my age is 18. Bad idea? Good idea? Has it worked out for you? I know other actors that made it lied about it for similar reasons. I feel a little guilty, but how else can I make it work? Ya know? :(
I have got a lead role in a Netflix series coming out in February by youngboymindset • last post Apr 11th
This is going to be quite long. Probably about a 5-10 minute read. But I promise you what I write on here is 100% true. No one will know me from my username I have nothing to gain with lying, it is all 100% true. On my mothers life. This explains how my acting career went from playing Aladdin in my primary school play to being cast as the lead role in a netflix series due to be released in February. And an honest experience and insight into life on set and what that is truly like. I am seventeen years old, and I live in London, UK. I am keeping anonymous. Growing up I always loved acting a lot, and I was one heck of a liar too. It was so bad I would be lying three, four times a day. And most of the time it wasn’t even to benefit me, it was just so I could sound cool. Anyway, fast forward a few years and I got cast as the lead role in my school play, and boy did I love it! Not even the role or the performance exactly but just the rehearsing and I loved how a whole community ( my local neighbourhood) came together to watch a bunch of 11 year olds do Aladdin. It wasn’t even about whether the play was good or not, that didn’t matter. It was all about seeing your son and daughter up on stage, and seeing the pride on their face as they nervously muttered a line or two. I loved that. And I loved acting. I took acting classes every week for about two years when I went to secondary ( high school ) school. Probably between the ages of 12-14. In the UK we have these things called LAMDA grades which are national exams in acting. I was pretty good, not amazing, but I passed all my exams and I did two or three of those. I maybe got to Grade 3 and then I quite. I honestly can not remember why, but I did not have such a good time at my old school because people didn’t like me there as such. Sure I auditioned in a few secondary school plays early on and I even got a part in one, a small one but it was still something. However I was not doing well at school and overall was going through a low motivation period and at around 14 I stopped most things to do with acting, like completely. Also exams were coming along and I never really considered acting as a career and I thought I was no where near good looking enough as all those famous hot actors as I was a little bit chubby. Then in the summer of last year almost everything changed completely. My life got thrown completely off the course I was planning on and within a few weeks EVERYTHING changed. I really do not remember what it was but something made me want to try acting again. And I remember one day I went downstairs to my mother and told her. And she was like, ‘that’s great! I’m sure your new school will have something!’. At the time I was between schools and I was 16. So I emailed the head of drama at my new school ( it was a small local school ) and he/she responded with an attachment. A small extract of script from the musical ‘ we will rock you’ and he explained to me about how they were auditioning for that back in September when school started again. I was excited. My mother is a huge optimist and sometimes I love it, sometimes it’s annoying. She was always the type to tell me ‘ you can do anything in life’ which I found great but sometimes a bit too much. My dad was quite the realist on the other hand. Of course he was supportive and loving but was a realist, and to be honest I found that provided a healthy balance in the household. Anyway, I packed the script with me and I went on holiday, over the vacation I learned it and once I learned it off by heart I was very happy and started playing with the emotions a bit more. Then one day back in London maybe a week after we got back from holiday I performed it to my mother and younger sister as they sat on my bed smiling. And my mum was surprised at how good she thought it was and she told me, ‘that was great!’, but it wasn’t the usual supportive ‘ that was great! ‘ . It was honest and true, I could tell in her eyes. Now I by all means am not an AMAZING actor at all but I had received this script, dedicated some time learning and working on it, performed, and it was great! That moment really clicked something inside me. And that’s when the idea of potentially doing this as a career planted itself in my mind and started to grow. Now, we are about halfway through this story, and nows a good time to be honest. If I were to tell you that the fact that A-List actors make millions per performance didn’t at all influence my decision to try this as a career, I would be lying. I had a pretty big obsession with hopefully making millions of dollars too one day, and buying certain material things and having all this attention. I want that so bad, but beneath all that, the foundations of all the acting that I am doing is based around the fact that I love it. It is an art that I love. And being able to make a living of this art was the dream, regardless of how much I made. After my mother had told me this I ( still being on my summer break ), spent all my free time signing up to online agencies, looking at all the opportunity’s there were out there. And then, one day, I can’t remember where I saw this. Maybe it was even a Facebook post. I saw a casting call for someone that fit my description. I emailed the casting director and really made that Aladdin play sound like it had won Tony awards. He sent me an extract of a scene, and at the bottom he explained that he needed this role urgently. Filming was starting that same weekend. ( at this point it wasn’t confirmed that this project was going to be involved with Netflix. Which is probably why they also made a public casting call as opposed to only contacting the too agents) ( also important to mention is that I had also grown up slot since my thirteen year old self and I had lost a lot of weight also ( maybe even too much) but at this time I think it’s safe to say that I was relatively good looking. I had a good strong face and blonde hair and I had had a few girlfriends at this point but was just then walking away from a pretty long relationship and it felt great ) I didn’t tell my mother much but I just asked her to get out the old dslr and I was about to do my first self tape. Except the extract was seven pages long. I tried to learn it as much as I could but there was no way I would get it all in my mind. So I auditioned anyway just holding it in my hand but I still managed to get the emotion down. I told my mother to keep to tape rolling and that I would just read through the script as long as it took until I felt like I performed the best I could. I edited my mother’s favourite one of all the ones we had filmed and sent it over. I spent the next twenty four hours refreshing my emails every few minutes. And then I got an email back, the casting director explained to me that he had received over two hundred submissions but he kept coming back to my video. My acting wasn’t perfect, but he explained that there was just something about me, maybe in my look or I don’t know what, but there was something. He decided to get me to film it again because just having ‘ something’ isn’t enough, bottom line is you have to perform the script well. He gave me direction this time, and really told me what emotions I should try and hit, as opposed to me having to guess. So once more my mother filmed me. And then I sent it over. A day went by and I didn’t hear anything. But then one evening that week my mother got a phone call. I just heard from my room her say ‘ yes, this is his mother’ and my heart rate went up. I came out to the corridor where she was standing in the phone. As it turns out she was talking to the director directly ( who I will keep anonymous) and I remember her just asking ‘does that mean he got the part?’ and her then her saying she would call back and hanging up. At that point we both knew that my life would be changed forever. I walked into my room, I can’t even begin to explain how it felt. Two months ago I was spending my days smoking weed at the park with my friends eating snacks, and now I was just cast as a lead role in a new series and that I was needed on set this very weekend. It’s been six months now, and it’s recently been confirmed that it is a Netflix project. The coronavirus outbreak has delayed everything but we aim to wrap filming in July/ August on the first season. Around winter the trailer will be released on the Netflix YouTube channel and a few months later out it comes. My life has been changed completely. And all of this happening to me has brought me a lot of happiness, but no doubt some new issues and worries that I never thought I’d have to face in my life. The TV show is a history drama. I really don’t want to go into too much detail about the show because I want to keep everything anonymous but I will answer every question ( I don’t expect to get too many ). I might write a second article on what’s happened since if enough people read this one, because I enjoy writing these. Thank you if you’ve read this far :) And stay safe.
My unique relationship with acting by chrisredfieldu • last post Apr 11th
I come from a family where acting is a revered form of art. In my family acting is like...this sacred valued way of being. My grandfather was a professional actor. He won a tony award. He became famous from his acting. Growing up i was the absolute black sheep of my family in part because my parent had schizophrenia. Because of that, i hated some family members because i was an outcast within the family. That also meant hating acting even though my grandfather was a great guy (my grandma hated me). My older sibling also pursued acting & was decent at it (imo) and my family heavily supported her, so it was another reason i felt i couldnt have a career in the arts. I feared “well if my sister fails at acting who will financially afford taking care of my parents one of which is permanently disabled? I have to pursue a career that i am able to do which also pays the bills. A career in the field of science.” Unfortunately for me i was too horrible at math to pursue a career in science, & learned i have actual math disabilities, so i instead studied psychology which i had very little career interest in. Well i avoided acting for years. In school i wanted to do voice acting but couldnt because i was so afraid of failure. My teachers knew who my grandfather was and also knew my older sibling’s great acting skills, so if i failed it would be failure for me, & disgrace to the family which i couldnt shake. It would be pathetic. The worst part was failing at something i love & want a career in so badly id rather die than settle for another career. Now i am an unemployed college graduate who lives outside of new york city. I have no money, ive only worked as a cashier at grocery stores. I want to pursue voice acting. I want to be like roger craig smith, tara strong, laura bailey. I suck at acting but in a weird way i have many inherent skills that are good for acting. I feel the field of entertainment is the only place i can have a career without wanting to end my life and feel its the only field i have any chance at thriving at. I worry at the same time that i dont have the “voice” for voice acting. I dont have the acting skills of roger craig smith. I dont have the range of tara strong. I have zero acting experience at 26. Did anyone else start their journey acting at a late stage, at 26? Like i said, zero acting experience. I remember jim carrey saying this quote “you can fail at what you love but you can also fail at what you dont love” and i feel like i failed at the latter already. I want to put my entire life into a career in the entertainment industry specifically in either voice acting or video games. I know desperation means nothing i guess i just wanted to vent a bit & also hear feedback.
How important is studying theatre to working in film? by gigilone • last post Apr 11th
Hi everyone! I am currently a student in the Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. Here, it is strictly an academic program, and looks into the theories of film, the art of film, and the history of film etc. I’m currently debating whether I should also enrol in the Drama program here at UofT. It’s mainly a program for theatre arts, and there a a multitude of acting and performance classes, as well as courses for academic study of the theatre arts. I was wondering, as someone who wishes to eventually work in film as a director/actor, how helpful is learning performance from a theatre perspective? Is it better to study acting for film rather than theatre if film is my goal? How much does studying acting at university affect my opportunities after graduating? Any insight or wisdom would be greatly appreciated ! <3
My dad was an actor and just recently passed away. Today is my birthday and I would love for you all to enjoy his YouTube channel! by twowhomitmayconcern • last post Apr 11th
Do I have to movie to LA? by TheJthunder45 • last post Apr 11th
I want to persue a career in acting. Honestly I'm sure everyone wants to make it big. I do too. I just do. Although I'm not looking for fame. I really appreciate the art of filmmaking and being able to bring the best version of a character to life for the writer and director of a film that they worked on feels really fulfilling. And those movies that I watch god. The stories they have in hollywood. I would love to be aprt of those stories and working with such amazing professional story tellers. Anywho, I digress. I have to be realistic. I'm 19 and have to be realistic. I pretty much have no money and work as a busser in a restaurant (not now obviously) and I know there are millions of actors trying to get to that point, thousands of which I are living in LA. I live in Ventura which is about and hour and 30 to 2 hours away from LA. If I was serious about this (which I am). Is it necessary for me to move to LA to persue this there? Or will I be fine where I'm at driving to LA for auditions? Thanks.
I have spent hundreds of hours as a supporting actor on a Spielberg set. AMA. by makebelieveguy • last post Apr 11th
I prefer to maintain a level of privacy on this account, so won't be disclosing any specific details that reveal which production I worked on or my identity. Keep the questions general and about the business, and I will happily answer. Thanks for understanding. At some point in the last decade I worked intimately with Steven Spielberg over the course of many months. I would love to share the wisdom I have gathered over the years. AMA!
What techniques do the following actors use? by kephenstingg • last post Apr 11th
Daniel-Day Lewis Joaquin Phoenix
Is there a thread for promoting an actor? by Awwolague • last post Apr 11th
Is there a thread for promoting actors like how r/promoteyourpatreon is meant for that purpose? I have a friend who will be graduating with a theater degree this winter and I'd like to promote her as best as I can. I read the FAQ page and didn't see such a thread referenced. Any general advice is welcome as well! ❤️ She has done mostly theater work and some film and voice acting work. I have made her a website so that step is done
Reality TV question by M-E-M-E-L-O-R-D • last post Apr 11th
Say if during my career I am presented with the opportunity to go on a reality tv show or a game show should i take it? I have often heard that it will make people take you less seriously and you will not be seen as a legit actor.
How do I make the most out of college? (Serious) by iReallyLikePicasso • last post Apr 11th
Hey everybody I was recently accepted into suny new paltz where I will be majoring in theatre. I really like their curriculum and I never thought I’d make it this far so I’m pretty excited. I want to be an actor more than anything and I can really see myself thriving there. I’m just looking for advice on how to juice this school for everything’s it’s got and make the most out of it as an actor. I’m ready to fully commit myself. Any advice is greatly appreciated thank you
Which book should I read first? by Movie-Connoisseur • last post Apr 10th
I have many acting books to choose from and am not sure on which I should read first. Technique-wise I lean more toward method acting but am open to anything . Here is my list: - An Actor Prepares - Stanislavski - Building a Character - Stanislavski - Creating a Role - Stanislavski - To the Actor: On the Technique of Acting - Chekhov - Respect for Acting - Uta Hagen - Challenge For The Actor - Uta Hagen - Stella Adler: The Art of Acting - Improvisation For The Theatre - Viola Spolin As you can see, I have a lot to choose from, if you don’t mind, could you list what you think I should read in order? I’m extremely interested in the method and have been trying to learn about the relaxation exercises, sensory memory exercises, affective memory exercises, etc. If that helps at all. If you have any books you think I should look into after these, let me know, I was thinking about Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Thank you in advance!
What are people doing to further themselves as actors during quarantine? by dicfila12 • last post Apr 10th
Looking for books recs, film recs, anything that will further myself and my career. Thanks and stay safe everyone!
YouTube Video Ideas For Voice Actors? by pocketsydney • last post Apr 10th
Hi everyone! I’m an aspiring voice actor and I’ve been thinking of starting a YouTube channel. Besides impressions and comic dubs, what types of videos could I make? Any ideas are highly appreciated! Thanks!
My recording day routine, feel free to add to it. by Supes_man • last post Apr 10th
Mine is to avoid caffeine 2-3 hours before I need to use my voice. Not only is it a dehydrator, it will exacerbate many common problems such as talking to fast, having a strained sound by pinching the back of your throat too much, etc. I drink lots of water. I usually end up around 2 liters a day anyway but it goes without saying I never skimp if I’m doing recording that day. Hydration is incredibly important for a healthy throat and a smooth sound. I avoid spicy food and sugar that day. Same as on the day I’m doing a triathlon, I want my body as healthy and primed as possible to deliver a brilliant performance. With that set, I look over my script (if applicable) and get myself mentally ready. Most of the time it’s narrations or commercials so it’s not as intense as it is for animation actors, but you still gotta get yourself “there.” Who am I talking to? Is it one guy or a whole crowd? Who am I? Why am I talking about this? All these questions help get yourself in a proper mindset. Half of this job is ACTING after all. Finally I’ll do vocal warm ups. Lip trills, I’ll do singing vocal warm ups, do some tongue twisters, no different than the way an athlete does stretches and light running to warm up before a race. Professional clothes. This is personal but I always feel more of an “authority figure” when I’m in a nice button up shirt and dress pants than I do when I’m wearing a ripped t shirt and sweat pants. Body posture and mannerisms very much come through on your performance and while you don’t need to be in a tux, in the very least wear something you feel confident in. I’ll probably think of more stuff but just wanted to share my own routine and tricks before recording days!
I think I’m going to quit acting by kephenstingg • last post Apr 10th
I’m 20 years old. I don’t mean to come off as arrogant but like thousands of actors, I was born with natural instincts to acting. At the acting school I went to, (which taught Meisner, movement psychology, Shakespeare and traditional acting) I understood the material faster than my classmates in most classes. Every scene study presentation I would slaughter. I did get lazy with doing the homework and would improvise a ton but by the end of the year I got my shit together. This was last year. Today I’ve started in three short films and two music videos. I had no issue working on these films. It was only until I started putting in the time to study other techniques did I start doubting myself. I became obsessed with learning every technique. I used to tackle scripts with a basic analysis: what’s happening in the scene, what’s my objective, my obstacle and what is my action. I would sometimes implore some Shakespeare stuff in my work and some movement psychology. But after reading Stella Adler’s The technique of acting I realized how much I was missing. “Physical actions” in her words came natural to me but once I became conscious of what I was actually doing in the scenes that I figured was logic and common sense, I started to doubt myself. All of sudden I’m stressing over justifying why I’m moving and where and blah blah. I read Chekhov and he talks about carrying different centres in different parts of the body and I over analyzed that and now I can’t even pick up a script without having all these techniques swarming in my head with zero clue how I’m going to play my part. I will always respect acting and actors but I think I killed my inspiration and “talent”. Time to be a welder as my teacher would say.