How to Break Into the Acting Industry

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Richard Rifkin, I'm a professional actor. We're here at the Merlin Theater in Budapest and I'm going to tell you a little bit about how to break into acting if you so incline to do so. It's very important if you want to be an actor to get some experience. You have to start doing theater or taking lessons. The main point is that you're going to have to have what's called a resume telling about what performances you've done, what things you can do as far as extra things, riding a motorcycle or water skiing. What languages you speak or what dialects you can do. For instance, if you can do an English person, you can do a dialect and you can put that on your resume. I can do an English person. If you water ski, whoa, you can say I water ski. And you might get a part because there's a part for someone that has to water ski. You'll probably need photographs which are called headshots. And nowadays because of technology, many actors of course have their own website and you can see all these things just by going to their website. The most important thing probably is you need the experience. So if you check your local newspapers, possibly even on radio shows, you can find out who is casting for productions, plays in little theaters in your area. In your own city. You don't have to become an actor first on broadway in New York or be in Los Angeles in Hollywood. You just have to get experience. You have to be able to act. Some, it comes very natural to, others, well, taking lessons might help. I would suggest that again you check with your newspaper, maybe community services, things like that to find out who is giving some acting lessons, go and take some acting lessons. Get involved with one of the small theaters in your neighborhood. That way you can start to see how theater works, how acting works, from the ground up. You might even be in the theater building a set, learning how to paint the backgrounds and things of that sort. And at the same time, reading. I've always said that reading a lot about acting - there's a lot of great books. Go to your library, check on the internet, get some books and get started with an acting career, if that's what you like. I'm Richard Rifkin, this is the Merlin Theater and that's a little bit about how to break into the acting profession."