Do you treat your career like an Athlete?

Actors and athletes may seem on the surface to have made opposite life choices to get to those careers, but deep down they are actually quite similar.

For one, if you want to be great at either of these careers you have to practice ... a lot.  Plus, there is a certain level of luck that goes alongside all that practice if you want to be a star athlete or a star actor.  The best college ball player ever can be sidelined by a bad injury and never go pro.  Some of the most talented actors are never at the right place at the right time to get that star-making role.

I recently heard a story on NPR about a baseball player who got drafted into the Minors.  He was getting paid to do what he loved and many actors will say that in itself would be a dream come true for them.  The ballplayer said that from the moment he got drafted he thought the call to go up to The Show (that's what they call the Majors if you believe "Bull Durham") would come at any moment.  Every once in a while, one of his teammates would get the call and he knew if they took that guy surely they were going to call him next.

Then years started to pass and he never got the call.  There are so many actors in Hollywood that have similar stories.  They watch their friends start booking and become successful.  They think why not me and know their big break is right around the corner.

Here is where the story splits.  The ballplayer eventually got too old and had to retire.  With most sports, the retirement age can be 30.  Actors get to keep going and many are just starting at 30.  It's one of the wonderful things about this profession: there is no age limit on success.  Examples of actors who found success later in life include Chris Cooper, Michael Emerson, Melissa Leo, and even Tom Hanks waited tables for most of his twenties.

What's so wonderful about that, is it gives you so much time to become a great actor.  They say you have to spend 10,000 hours working at something to become an expert.  That is approximately 3 hours a day, every day for ten years.  Actors can keep working at it for a lifetime, so just think how amazing you'll get to be.  It just takes work.

How many hours a day are you working on your craft?

So, you want to be Rich and Famous?

If you chose to become an actor because you want to be rich and famous, I should tell you there are easier ways with a much better return to achieve both of those goals.  Your average work-a-day actor may never be able to quit the day job.

I spend many weekends working one of my survival jobs, sampling stuff at Costco.  It's not a bad job: short day, good money, and sometimes I get to take samples home.  This weekend a couple aisles down from my moisturizer demo, a guy had a fancy demo of those super cool blenders that can blend anything.  I call it fancy because they gave him a microphone and he was standing on a small stage with lots of equipment, all I had a small table with a black tablecloth.

The most interesting thing about the blender demo is that the guy running it is a well-known character actor.  He has a large recurring role on a series that has already gotten picked up for the fall.  This actor has a career that spans two decades and has included other large recurring roles, guest stars, movies, and a long running commercial campaign.  By all accounts a very successful career and one most of us actors are striving for.

And here I am working basically the same survival job as him.  Now, I am not pretending to know him or why he was there.  Maybe he has large gambling debts or he was doing it as a favor to a friend, but I suspect he was doing it because if you aren't working an acting job, doing promotions is a respectable way to get some extra income.

This is why you have to truly have a passion for acting, because if it's money you want there are more tried and true ways to get it like going to med school or becoming a stripper.


And if it's fame you're after, well I had an acting teacher once tell me that if I wanted to be a famous I chose my parents poorly.  Navigating Hollywood certainly would be easier with a name like Coppola or Arquette.

But, if you really want to be famous may I suggest reality television.