Being an actor is a tough life, especially when you receive so much conflicting information! Here are 11 paradoxes actors face every day in pursuit of their dreams.
1. Your neighbors hate when you warm up your voice in the morning for an audition. However, if you don’t warm up your voice, you won’t get the job that would make you not need to go to auditions that require you to warm up your voice!
2. An agent wants you to have great film and TV credits on your resume before they will consider signing you, but the auditions for those roles only go to actors who get submitted by their agent.
3. If you need a union contract to join Actors’ Equity but you can’t get seen at the EPA unless you are in the union, then how the hell do you join the union?!
4. In order to compete at dance calls, you need to take class, which means you are not at your survival job, which means you aren’t making money, which means you can’t afford dance class!
5. You need a reel to get considered by the casting director, but you need a part to put on your reel before they will consider you.
6. When you go home for the holidays, your relatives want to know why you aren’t in a show. But when you are in a show, they don’t understand why you can’t come home for the holidays!
7. You wait tables to be able to audition, but Restaurant Week—err month—is during the winter right in the middle of the busiest audition season—meaning you always have to work and can never get to auditions!
8. You need to join a gym, but it is so expensive that you have to work all the time to afford it—meaning you can never get to the gym!
9. You need commercial headshots, but you can’t afford new headshots until you get cast in a commercial!
10. Your manager wants you to lose weight, which makes you depressed, which makes you eat your feelings, which makes your manager want you to lose weight!
11. You take classes to meet agents who tell you that you should be taking classes to meet casting directors. So you take classes to meet casting directors, who want you to have an agent.
