What Do Actors Do On A Daily Basis?

August 4, 2022

-So, what do actors do on a daily basis? In this video, we will tell you. So Tom, what do actors do on a daily basis?

-Read a play a day

-Hmm.

-How about that? So voice, voice, voice work in your voice, work in your speech. The most challenging thing folks about being
an actor is self discipline. So, I really urge you to become part of a creative community. Where you are holding each other to a certain standard. Right? I mentioned this in the past that so many actors that were successful were successful with a group of other actors. Yeah, so that will never change. But you've gotta do something that I call homeroom that by 9:00 AM, there is something that requires discipline that you are doing. I mean, for me, it was running central park. It was close to it. Get those shoes on. When the Walkman came around,
I was plugged in listening to that. That really dates me. Doesn't it? Yeah. I have one of those two now that. Last week they've discontinued the iPod after 20 years. Thankfully we got four of 'em that's it? No more. Okay.

So, you've gotta have the thing that you do that is your daily regimen, much like a musician would play scales. Part of what I loved about living in Lincoln center. When I went to school, there is in my apartment building we had all of the arts. And while you were waiting for the elevator,
you heard violin scales, you heard piano scales, you heard someone singing opera, you heard a trumpet. People were practicing. That inspired me. And I worked out in the basement of my building in the storage room amongst furniture and suitcases to where I could just make noise and make sounds and work on monologues. Coz you know, actors say to me all the time, well, yeah, I know I need to work on my voice everyday. But my roommate doesn't like to listen to it and I say, get a new roommate. Right? You gotta get that. You didn't move to New York city or to Los Angeles or to Atlanta or Chicago or wherever you are, because, well, this person doesn't like this. So, you have to create the conditions for creativity.

-And what do you do about, because I think for a lot of actors, they think, well, I'll do my work. When I get an audition. When I get a script, that's what I'll practice. But what else can be done on a daily basis in terms of working on material or text?

-Your voice has to leave your body every day, read aloud, pick up a script and just get used to.

-Or a newspaper, anything right. Text.

-Well, but yeah, I mean, that's fine. A newspaper's fine, but I would recommend a play script.

-Okay.

-Yeah, because we're a film script even, but as we've said, How to find a good monologue for an audition or how to find six monologues as we call it. You have to have your regimen of stuff that you practice every day.

-To develop your craft you need a community. You need a group setting in some way, to have that objective to have the ability to not only put up your own work, but also see what others experiences are. Cuz often that's when the greatest breakthroughs happen is when you see somebody else doing something that you've been coming up against again and again, and again, you see it objectively in somebody else's experience in class and you go, oh, that's the thing, that's what I'm doing. You know what that person just did. You need that group experience?

-Well, you need to mirror each other.

-Yeah.

-And it really is a willful. You know, you mentioned, you know, you could be a painter and you could sit on the santa monica third street promenade or the pier, and you could paint people's portraits or you could just pick up your violin and throw a case open and play. There's not a lot of actors doing monologues on the pier. You know.

-You could, I suppose.

-I mean, if you're remarkable, you could, but I don't know that I've ever seen it. Right. But guys remember acting as private moments
made public. So you've gotta practice publicly doing this stuff.

-So, if you wanna learn more of the strongest practices for your daily work, as an actor, click the subscribe button below.

-So, things you can do every day. I meet a lot of actors who say, you know, I'm very serious about acting. I go, what do you do every day? I go, well, I don't do every day. Listen, folks. You're not who you think you are. You are what you do. you know, with Mr. Shurtleff's book audition,
people go, oh, you teach that book. I go, it's one of our texts I worked with Mr. Shurtleff for 15 years and upon his retirement, he passed the book on to me. They go, oh, I know that book. And I go, you know, that book really? What's guidepost 8? I go, what do you mean? Well, you said, you know, the book it's based on 12 guide posts, he added a 13th post-publication.

And with his permission, I added a 14th and a 15th. They go, well, I don't, I don't remember going. Well, right. But here's a guy who read this book once apparently has retained none of it. But he thinks he's going around saying, I know that book. And I say, well, no, guidepost 8 is importance and it's really important that you would know that if you're gonna go around saying, you know, that book. When I met Mr. Shurtleff actually, someone brought him over to me and said, Tom, do you know Michael Shurtleff? And I said, well, no, but I'm sure I know his book more thoroughly than he does. And he said, well, you're very cheeky. What makes you say that? And I said, what's guidepost 8? And he goes, Well, I, I don't know them numerically. And I said, well, number eight is important. And I think it's really important that you, the author of the book would know that don't you? And he paused and then he said, hahaha.... and we we talked for 5 hours on a balcony. This little condo in Santa Monica and that was the beginning of a 15-year friendship. But I know that book and I believe I know that more thoroughly than anyone alive and I'll go toe to toe with them. But guys, that's not luck. It's not boasting. I listen to a part of that book on audible every single week and often daily, do you? Now, that's just a choice. Now, I do that and it gave me confidence cuz I learned many things from that book that I didn't learn in theater school. So, guys discipline is a choice. Isn't that great? Doesnt matter how old you are. Doesn't matter your gender, your nationality. Discipline is a choice. No, one's born discipline. It's a choice. You can choose to be taller, but I cant help you with that. You know, cuz we gotta break the legs and stretch. It's just too painful. It's not worth it. Ultimately, Mr. Shurtleff, Michael Shurtleff was the casting director for Bob Fosse and Mike Nichols. And also worked with the producer, David Merrick on many different Broadway productions. He cast the graduate, et cetera, et cetera. But he was, I employed to write a book on auditioning by Bob Fosse because he said in these great actors come in the door and they don't present themselves well and if you didn't know their work, you wouldn't think they were an actor. So, these are people that had, you know, numerous Broadway credits folks. So, it's a craft it's teachable. It's learnable. You wanna learn it? Remember folks, There are three techniques of acting, auditioning, rehearsing, that's the fun part and performing. But they're different and auditioning is its own particular animal. Get great at it. Never say I'm great. Once I get the role, I'm just terrible at auditioning. You're never gonna get the role. Learn to love auditioning. You wanna learn how to do it?

-What's really important is that this work ultimately needs to be really personalized to you and what you say to her or him is very different than what he will say to you. So, come visit a class on Saturday, click the link below, and we'll see you there.