I have a few coaching clients who are so beautiful they take my breath away. You might think, so what? They won the genetics lottery; what’s the problem?
I’ve found a common thread among these actors. Because they are so beautiful, they think people don’t take them seriously. Not only do they believe they aren’t taken seriously as actors, they think they have to compensate out in the real world as well.
These deep-seated fears rule their choices in their scene work and auditions. I would go so far as to say they probably affect their interpersonal relationships as well.
One of my clients confessed that she has a very hard time accessing her sweet, soft, and vulnerable side. She feels more comfortable in rough and edgy roles. I encourage everyone to know what’s in your comfort zone, but also to explore things outside of it. I watched one of her self-taped auditions in which she’s meant to be warm and friendly and it was very one-note and had no depth. I could tell she was struggling.
We worked on her scenes again. I recognized that she has been putting on a tough and brave face in her scene work, as well as out in the real world. She feels she has to be inaccessible and not too friendly or she’ll get taken advantage of.
From working with her, I know for a fact that she is friendly and warm. I let her know she has this within her but was holding back. Because she has problems showing this, we went back to the material, which is always your guide. I urged her not to focus on trying to be “friendly and warm,” but rather shift her focus to embracing a very specific point of view on the story she was telling. Because we didn’t have the script, we fleshed things out by building her backstory.
Slowly, we began to see a human being with all her colors and flaws. This work helped her connect to the other character in the scene. Suddenly we began to see flashes of a real woman in the flesh. She was able to access her warmth and let down her guard because she stopped focusing on her old “go-to” moves and patterns.
Adding to her problems, there’s a societal and cultural double standard for women. The way character descriptions are written would never be written for a man. Descriptors such as “she’s the kind of woman who can drink beers with the boys or slip into her little black dress for a night out at the opera.” It sets us up to fail because these are usually men’s fantasies, not grounded in reality.
I coach my clients to take these character descriptions with a grain of salt and find the human depth of the character. It’s always more interesting. Put your imprint on each character. That’s what we want to see. That’s what your audience needs to see.
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Known for her work in film and television, producer and casting director Marci Liroff has worked with some of the most successful directors in the world such as Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Mark Waters, Christopher Nolan, Brad Bird, and Herbert Ross. While working at Fenton-Feinberg Casting, she, along with Mike Fenton, cast such films as “A Christmas Story,” “Poltergeist,” “E.T. – The Extra Terrestrial,” “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” and “Blade Runner.” After establishing her own casting company in 1983, Liroff cast “Footloose,” “St. Elmo's Fire,” “Pretty in Pink,” “The Iron Giant,” “The Spitfire Grill," “Untamed Heart," “Freaky Friday,” “Mean Girls,” “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” “Mr. Popper’s Penguins,” “Vampire Academy,” and the upcoming “The Sublime and Beautiful,” which she produced as well.
Liroff is also an acting coach, and her three-night Audition Bootcamp has empowered actors to view the audition process in a new light. The class spawned an online course available at Udemy entitled "How To Audition For Film and Television: Audition Bootcamp."
Visit Liroff online at marciliroff.com, follow her on Twitter @marciliroff and Facebook, and watch her advice videos on YouTube. You can also read her blog.
