Let go of the expectations of others... especially at the dinner table.
Nov 18, 2019
I get it, it sucks. When your acting career has no momentum, and everyone else in your family has an MBA, 2.5 kids, a picket fence, and a house.
While that may be what some call the American dream, the dream for an actor looks very, very different.
We love the highs, not so much the lows… We love something new every day, we love change, we love reading new stories and being a part of them.
But when we get to Thanksgiving dinner and our mom asks us why we’re still taking acting classes or when we’re going to get a real job… we’ve got to have something to combat it with.
One idea is to talk about the most recent thing that you’ve done in your career. Maybe it’s an amazing scene that you worked on in class, maybe it’s filming a scene for your new demo reel, maybe it’s going to a casting director workshop and building a relationship with them…
Ultimately, we don’t owe anyone an explanation for pursuing our dreams, but… Sometimes having an intelligent, thoughtful response to those who don’t believe in us can help to ease the tension in the room.
I believe the best way to combat this is to build a community of actors around you who you can talk to and share these types of things with.
You’ve got to remember that you’re not alone, there are more actors on this planet then there are roles for us to play… Get yourself a community and hang on tight to each other.
We’re all pursuing the same dream, so we may as well do it together.