You can’t make a living as an actor.

You’re working nights in a job you hate while waiting for a break that might never come.

You’ve been doing this for years now, and you’re starting to wonder if it ever will.

But little did you know

you’ve been set up to lose.

Some free resources to play with this week

Selftape without learning your lines

• ​The Brando is a way of freeing you up to focus on what really matters in your tapes – freedom and connection.
• The industry is hell bent on making us hate the work. Don’t let them grind you down. Use this method to reclaim your art again.
• You can find it here.

health tips you wont be able to unsee.

• It’s fecking hard to stay healthy, or at the very least feel healthy.
• These are quick and easy, research backed tips on how to live a happier, healthier life.
• ​You can find them here.​

Try them out this week.

Script Fundamentals

• Craig Mazin, creator of Chernobyl (HBO) and Last of Us (HBO) breaks down how to write a movie.
• Drama schools should be teaching actors screenwriting, if not to teach actors how to write a film script, then to understand how to effectively analyse one when working on a character.
• This episode of Mazin’s does much of the heavy lifting for you:

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Reader Wins

• This week, reader Simon changed up his self tape mic.
• It may seem small, but you’d be surprised by just how much new energy you get from making a simple change to your set up. Especially one that has been bothering you for a while.
• And we saw last week that bad audio was one of the top things a casting director will throw your tape in the trash for.

Huge congrats for taking action mate 👏.

Find out more about Simonovich here.

And if you’re on the hunt for better selftape equipment, there’s a list here, which includes the mic Simon now uses.

Rock on.

Reduce Your Bills Like A Boss

I used to pay Virgin £54.99 a month for internet.

Then I read one article.

A phone call later £54.99 had been reduced to £32.94, banking me an extra £260 a year.

1 year later I stumbled on the article again and tried the technique, again: £23.00.

I have since made approx £1,400 on cutting my internet bills alone.

I proceeded to haggle with anyone I could – phone company, the gas and electricity people, taco salesmen.

This is the article.

• ​How to Haggle with Your Service Provider​

Happy haggling!

The Lottery

• Only 2-3% of actors make a living from acting.
• 85% of actors make less than £10,000 a year.

That math is impossible.

The system is designed for you to lose.

Losing our Royalties

In the Eighties actors made 40% of their income from royalties.

Today an actor is lucky to make 13% from royalties.

This means we need to find £17,592 per year more from our jobs than actors in the 80s, just to earn the average UK salary.

Why are we in this mess?

Because Streaming companies started doing “buyout deals” – they pay actors once instead of every time the show plays.

Well done Sarandos, you cut actor pay by more than half.

And of course, it’s getting worse.

Studios are consolidating. This means there are fewer directors working. Fewer Casting Directors hiring.

And the casting directors that are only have a scarce amount of time to see a scarce amount of people.

And so the same few actors get used over and over and over. It’s just safer that way.

And yet we still manage to tell ourselves that if we were just a bit better, we would be able to earn a living.

Bollocks.

It’s got nothing to do with your talent.

You’ve been trained to think that way through years of people telling you if you just get a little better you will succeed, the talented ones succeed. Become more talented and you will succeed.

But after a certain level of competency, “talent” doesn’t exist any more. You may object to this, but how often have you debated with your friends the “talent” of your favourite actor to which they say “what are you talking about they’re not good at all”.

After a certain point, talent exists only in the eye of the beholder.

But the math does not.

52,300 people are playing musical chairs on 1000 chairs.

You’re not losing because of your talent, you’re losing because the game is rigged against you. Only 2-3% can win.

(and yet I bet that demon’s whispering to you right now, “Yeh but it’s probably a little to do with your talent”)

It will take a while to undo the conditioning

But let me assure you, it’s categorically not.

There is a different way:

We must reject their system – pleading with them to pick us. We must figure out how to make a living without being dependent on winning the lottery.

Because that is not a sustainable business plan.

Get luckier is a terrible solution to this game.

Ingratiating yourself in the lunch queue so you can be picked first on the football pitch is not a solution either.

But starting your own game is.

The solution is to make the work you want to make, with people you want to make it with and finding people who’ll pay for it.

Kevin Kelly spelled this out in his essay “1000 True Fans.”

You don’t need millions of people who’ll pay for it.

You need around a thousand people who love what you do enough to support it directly.

That’s how you build something sustainable instead of waiting to win a rigged lottery.

Over the next few weeks we are going to be going deeper into the ways actors can start building something bigger than having to work their shit job waiting to be treated like shit in order to book a job that, in theory, will raise them above the shit.

For now, I recommend reading Kevin Kelly’s essay 1000 True Fans. Or watch this video. Or both.

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What I watched last week

​Contact (dir. Robert Zemekis)

Why you should watch it:

Because it’s one of the greatest films ever made.

There is so much mystery still to be discovered within the universe. And every time I watch this film I feel closer to that.

You have endured long enough. But you are no longer alone in your struggle.

There’s a movement of us who are finished with the old system.

Who have nothing to lose.

Who are ready to fight and do what we have wanted to do for years:

To just. fucking. act.

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See you next week,

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A x

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P.s Hit reply and let me know what you thought of this Newsletter. I respond to every email I receive.

Rock on x