The Driven, Happy, UnGlamorous Life of a Film Actor: Auditioning For A Living
I once heard Billy Dee Williams asked what a film actor’s life was like.
“It’s completely insane,” he said, and the interviewer, sensing she was onto something juicy, said, “Why is that? “Because you never know where the hell your next job’s coming from.”
Unless you’re a major star, and even if you are, a big part of an actor’s work is auditioning for jobs. If you’re a character actor and damn good at it, with dozens of good credits and a reel as long as Liam Neeson’s member, you’re still going to have to convince them you’d play the part better than anyone else, against tens and maybe hundreds of actors doing the same thing.
You’re going to put it on tape usually, and if they like you, be invited to an in-person callback where you prove a second time to the director, producers and casting agents that you’re the one they want. I’ve done second and third callbacks, and have heard of doing five or six.
You see, they aren't looking for someone who might be good in their film. They’re looking for a monster to floor them, to blow them away, today, the 800 pound Gorilla that makes their hair stand up on the back of their necks and them giddy to work with you.
Your agent e mails you scenes. You spend a day or two eating, sleeping and drinking them, dreaming them, sleepwalking in the middle of the night running lines standing at the toilet, trying every kind of delivery under the sun, reaching into this character’s soul and knowing him as well as you know yourself, getting “off book,” which means throwing the pages away. Then you do the audition, often on tape, or drive hundreds of miles to get there, come home and wait, and you’re not guaranteed a single dime.
Congratulations, you’re auditioning for a living.
Samuel L. Jackson tells the story of how he didn’t get the part in Pulp Fiction. He’d flown to L.A. from New York and read for it, thinking he was a shoe-in, and flown back. A few days later his agent tells him they weren't impressed. “What?” he said. “Are you serious?” Hold on, he told them, I’m coming back to read again, just hold the fuck on. Do you think you’re going to give this part to somebody else? I’m going to blow you motherfuckers away!” He prepared his ass off, went into his fire breathing Sam Jackson mode, flew back, and did a scorched earth audition that obliterated any thought in the director’s mind of anyone but Sam playing Jules Winnfield.
And this is a major star we’re talking about. I remember reading an interview with Tommy Lee Jones where he said: “There were times I've put my head down, and thought, I’ll never work again.” What? Tommy Lee Jones thought this? Tommy Lee’s one of the most rawly gifted actors of our time!
It’s a brutal business. It isn't for anyone who thinks he might want to be an actor. It’s for someone who will not be denied. It’s for the one who knows he’s carrying lightning in a bottle, and expects every time he reads to be cast; and getting shafted, getting kicked in the stomach after doing the most riveting audition of his life, one he’d prepared for like it was his last testament, gets up, lets it roll off, and surges ahead with a ravenous appetite to read for something else—any damn thing—like a zombie who will not die, and uses his frustration and anger and general disgust for what he knows in his soul these productions are missing, have blown, have passed up, to prove to them beyond a shadow of a doubt he’s the one to play the next role he reads for.
I heard William H. Macy put it this way once: “If you know you’re right for the part, that nobody can play it better, it’s designed for you, you want it so badly you can taste it, and you prepare like crazy for it, and you go in and completely shatter them with the most stunning, overwhelmingly great audition of your life, and you know they know it, they have to know that you’re the guy, and you leave thinking, they have to give this to me, I completely killed that audition—there’s no way you’re going to get. They’re not going to give it to you. You can forget it.
He was talking about those years before the movie Fargo, of course, when he was doing what every other actor had to endure, beating the pavement like a door-to-door salesman paying his dues.
Once I read in person for the great director John Frankenheimer, sitting five feet in front of him.
After I read he became very excited and began to promise profusely he wanted me in his film, he was going to use me in his film. “You’re good! You’re good! I’m going to use you in my film! Don’t cut your hair,” he said repeatedly, trembling with a hushed, eager intensity, “Don’t shave you’re beard; I’m going to use you in my film!” I felt the casting director nodding nervously next to me. Frankenheimer told me to take the full script and look at a particular character, which I did, and there were dozens of characters I could’ve played in this large-ensemble movie.
I was ecstatic! I was working with the iconic director of Seven Days in May, The Manchurian Candidate and Birdman of Alcatraz. I got it straight from the man himself, and prepared to go to work in the fall, telling my wife I’d be mailing her fat checks from Andersonville. I slept, ate and dreamed the damn movie, reading the script five times, waiting to be called, chomping at the bit.
And when production came back to town I wasn't on the cast list. I was sure there was some mistake, and asked my agent to check with casting. No, no mistake: I wasn’t going to be cast. And I never heard another word from Frankenheimer or the production again.
What was wrong with these people? I thought. John Frankenheimer sat there and promised me a role in his film.
I couldn't believe a director of his stature would look me squarely in the eye and swear to me over and over he was using me in his movie, then never even contact me again. I had mystified these people into something they weren’t. I was still naive enough to believe that great filmmakers were necessarily great people, men of their word, and couldn't be pathological liars.
But later I realized it was one of the best things that could’ve happened to me. Excruciatingly painful, it made me starkly aware of how ruthless this business can be and to never trust anyone who promised anything in it, because that can change. When what people promise happens—and not before it happens—is when you believe it, and still keep your eyes wide open.
I have more horror stories about auditioning on the road than you want to hear, but you have to keep your sense of humor about this stuff too. You develop Rhino Skin over time.
Once I drove from Atlanta to Jackson, Mississippi and back in one day, 900 miles, to read for a major Southern film. My agent said something like “you’ll meet the casting director who’ll decide if she wants you to read for the director,” but I didn’t even imagine they’d have me drive all the way over there without getting a shot. After talking to this August L.A. Grand Casting Dame for five minutes, I was told the director wouldn't be seeing me today.
I went into shock. I got in my car and screamed and pounded the dash for ten minutes, then cursed and cackled all the way home, doing a wonderful Coen Brothers scene no one witnessed but me. I wasn’t right for the role in the first place, but maybe someone should’ve noticed that before I drove 900 miles.
Agents will throw you against the wall to see if you stick—that’s their job. They've sent me to the right city on the wrong day, and the wrong city on the right day, but if they’re any good they’re trying to hustle you into as many auditions as they can. Early on, with one major casting director who is a good friend now, I’d lose sleep the night before auditions. Just hearing her name would make actors tremble and want to throw up—she was the Dragon Lady, tough and demanding, offering career-changing roles. It was life and death reading for her, and if you didn't cut it she’d bump you from her list. If you were good you had a shot at the biggest films being made.
Auditioning for a living, rejection becomes your friend, your brother, your steady companion, and you use it to fuel you, propel you into better work.
Heartache becomes something you laugh at, and gradually, over time, it really does give you a kind of cynical power. You’re not easily fooled by anyone, you learn the ropes and see the signs, and how to get up and brush off rejection, and never take it personally when you’re knocked down.
And then one day you find yourself playing Coach Jim McNally for two months on We Are Marshall starring Matthew McConaughey, or doing good scenes in New Orleans as the Sheriff of Vermilion Parish with Woody Harrelson and McConaughey on True Detective, and you know it’s worth all the sweat and heartache and hair pulling you've been through for years, and in all likelihood will keep going through.
Auditioning for a living can be maddening, frustrating, exasperating. But working on a charmed project with some of the finest actors in the business is akin to heaven, and makes up for all the rest of it.
You know this is what you’re meant to do, this is why you do it, and nothing on earth is going to keep you from it.
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Ron Clinton Smith is a film actor, recently seen in the first season of “True Detective,” “Hidden Figures,” and a writer of stories, songs, poetry, screenplays, and the novel Creature Storms.
