Throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate to work with dozens of actors who booked series regular roles from all ages, ten to 75. Booking a series regular role is a life-changing experience and an opportunity almost every actor has on their vision board. It increases an actor’s visibility and star power, it opens doors to opportunities that might not have originally existed, and the paychecks can be life changing. Not to mention, starring on a show is a huge accomplishment! That said, this article isn’t about all of the great things that can happen to an actor when they book a series regular role. In fact, quite the opposite. Booking a series regular role early in your career can create difficulties with building long term success in life and work.
But Zach! Booking a series regular role is the dream!
Look, series regular roles are an agent’s dream, too! Agencies don’t pay the rent with only guest star and co-star bookings. But, I think it’s important to be mindful of some of the downsides for actors booking a series regular role in their 20s. Finding that success later in life (even when actors want it right now) may be a more holistic and psychologically healthy career path. If you are someone who books a series regular role in your 20s, that’s wonderful! However, I think it’s important to be mindful of the full scope of what that entails.
Short Term:
Maturity:
When I was in my 20s, I thought I knew a lot and was qualified to be giving advice. While that may have been the case, being in my 30s has shown me just how much I’ve learned and matured over a decade of experience and building perspective. This likely comes as a surprise to no one (except those in their 20s), but your 20s are prime years for making mistakes, growing and maturing. The ability to learn from bad decisions when the stakes are low is instrumental for improving your judgment for your whole career..
Life Experience:
Academy Award-winner Cillian Murphy once said, “You have to learn your craft, learn your trade — and also you have to live a life and experience things.” When you find success early in your career, it’s very hard to live a life and experience things outside of the public eye. Once you find success, the public’s microscopic eye does not lend a lot of grace for an actor’s life experiences. You don’t need the paparazzi following you around on a first date or being asked to sign autographs while grabbing coffee with a friend. And because acting is such a personal art form, those personal life experiences are essential to draw from.
Pressure:
When leading a series or major feature film, you are the face of a multi-million dollar investment. Investors and studios are relying on that actor to get people excited about the project and spend their money and precious time supporting the project so they can recoup their investment. This pressure can pile on top of an actor and if it’s your first press junket, there isn’t a lot of education beyond a brief training seminar to prepare you for months of promotion in most cases. Some might even experience imposter syndrome; they begin to feel they don’t deserve this success so early in their career which is tough to experience in the spotlight.
Professional Obligations:
When an actor is on a high profile show, there are a lot of responsibilities beyond just the performance that an actor takes on. They are required to do press junkets, mingle with powerful execs and promote the show so that its success continues.
While that sounds like fun (and some of it is), it is exhausting. As we have recently wrapped up award season, most of those nominated actors (or those associated with nominated projects) have spent the last few months traveling around the world for different press junkets, screenings and award shows without spending more than a couple consecutive days in their own bed. Each event requires a different look and each interview requires new and exciting answers. And while these press days will sometimes last 12–14 hours, there is no room for an off-day or to look tired, let alone take a day off. These actors remain “on” for weeks and months at a time and that is above and beyond any acting obligations they may have.
Schedule:
With the amount of time it takes to promote a project beyond filming, actors will miss vacations, family gatherings, birthdays and may spend months at a time away from friends and loved ones.
While this is common for all actors working at a high level, having this chaotic schedule early in your adult life can be extremely difficult and demanding. Most humans use their 20s to make lifelong friendships, find their significant others and lay the groundwork for the rest of one’s life, especially if starting a family is in the picture. The schedule of an actor on a successful show is extremely unpredictable and planning one’s schedule is near impossible with some long term consequences as well.
Long Term:
Money:
Everyone remembers their first adult paycheck and the concept of having money of one’s own. While the urge is there to buy something nice to celebrate this new income, life reminds you pretty quickly that bills also exist. In my 20s, part of my learning process was how to set a personal budget and be mindful about saving money so that I could feel safer if the job went away and didn’t have that steady paycheck.
When hundreds of thousands of dollars are coming in (as is the case with most series regular payments), it’s easy to quickly forget that after the show has run its course and the checks might stop coming, the bills won’t. There are countless stories of actors who ran out of money by thinking that the paychecks were guaranteed. Getting your hands on large sums of money without having budgeting/planning skills in place can leave you in a rough spot when the project eventually stops because the next job isn’t always waiting in the wings for you.
Warped Sense of the Business:
In my opinion, the most detrimental aspect of an actor booking a “life-changing” job in their 20s is that it creates an incredibly warped sense of the industry. Being an actor is hard. Finding consistent work is even harder. The project you book right after college graduation will eventually end and you will have to find another job. When you don’t book that first audition back on the market, you will be wondering why getting the second job wasn’t as easy.
Yep. The hardest job to book in the industry is someone’s second series regular. While booking one series regular is hard enough, you may book that role because it was the role you were born to play and you were in the right place at the right time. Lightning striking twice has a different set of challenges such as the mental pressure of trying to prove that booking the first one wasn’t a fluke. When it doesn’t come quickly, actor’s begin to second guess themselves.
Psychological Effects:
The struggle to maintain success can eat at a person regardless of when they find success in their career. If it’s earlier in a career where an actor hasn’t fully mastered managing anxiety, those feelings will fester and grow. While there are plenty of people who seem to have successfully transitioned from young adult to adult careers (Zendaya, Austin Butler, Selena Gomez, etc.), there are far more that don’t and experience mental trauma during their early years of success.
As I’m not a psychologist, I won’t go into any diagnoses or attempt to psychoanalyze actors, but what I can share is that from both actors I’ve worked with and actors whose careers I’ve closely studied, the actors that deal with the most pressures of success are those who are younger. Life in your 20s is hard already. Adding the pressure of being the face of a multi-million dollar project doesn’t exactly take the pressure off.
Conclusion:
If you are in the incredibly fortunate position of booking a life changing job at any point in your career, that’s wonderful and you should take it. At the end of the day, these are the bookings we strive for our clients to book. But if you’re beyond your 20s and worried about finding success, don’t be. Continue to live your life and mature as a person while striving to work on your craft. It will make you that much more of a well-rounded individual who is ready to receive the wonderful opportunity when that life-changing role presents itself.
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