[NoHo Arts District, CA] – This month’s acting blog from Fran Montano of Actors Workout Studio discusses “How to Be Successful.”
You might be reading this because you saw the title of this blog. Maybe it caught your attention. This is short, you might not be too satisfied with the response, but it’s the best I ever heard.
This is a short transcript from Charlie Rose interviewing Steve Martin. It’s short but nails it. Here’s “How to Be Successful.”
Charlie Rose:
“Someone stood up in an audience somewhere and said to you how do you be successful? And you said you have to be undeniably good at something.”
Steve Martin:
“Well it really is this. When people ask me, say, how do you make it in show business or whatever. And what I always tell them, I’ve said it many years and nobody ever takes note of it because it’s not the answer they wanted to hear. What they want to hear is, here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script, here’s how you do this. But I always say, be so good they can’t ignore you. And I just think that if somebody’s thinking how can I be really good? People are gonna come to you. It’s much easier doing it that way than going to cocktail parties.”
My advice when coaching actors for auditions is this. You don’t want a “maybe,” or “no” or even just a “yes.” You want this, “I can’t say no tothis actor. If I don’t use them here I’ll find something else.”
You want them to not be able to say no. And like Steve Martin said, you have to be undeniably good.
Thanks Steve. Something to think about. Break a leg.
Fran Montano
Actors Workout Studio