• About

Love That Book! First Chapters

~ Start Reading Now

Love That Book!  First Chapters

Category Archives: Hollywood

Now You Tell Me! 12 Actors Give the Best Advice They Never Got: Brian Stokes Mitchell

15 Saturday Sep 2018

Posted by Book Lover in Advice, Hollywood, How To, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

acting, acting school, Advice for Actors, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Broadway, Celebrity, Movies, Television

12 actors coverBrian“Celebrate Being Human”

MAKING A LIVING

Audtions

When you walk into an audition, the most important thing to know is that the people sitting behind the table are not your enemies or adversaries. As a matter of fact, they are dying for you to be the right person for the role. It makes their job easier and makes them look good–casting director, director, choreographer–everyone.

Working With Directors

I have found that the most difficult directors are not those at the top or at the bottom of their craft, but those in the middle. The same is true for actors. The bottom ones (in small community theaters, for example) are so happy to be working and those at the top are confident in their abilities. However, as with anything, there are grand exceptions on both ends of the scale. If the director is incompetent, I just nod my head and say, “Yes” to their advice, then do my own thing when it comes down to the performance. Of course my preference is to work in concert with a director and find the ways we can trust each other and be mutually supportive. I have had the good fortune to work with great directors for most of my career. How do you work with good directors? Listen and learn and trust.

The Best Actors

The best actors have taught me how to listen. How to prepare. How to treat others around you with kindness and respect. And to continually work on your craft and yourself.

On the other hand, there’s a lot you can learn from bad actors as well! For example, the deleterious effect of selfishness and not being prepared. That fear kills comedy (and tragedy, too, for that matter). Of course, you’d rather learn such things while on stage.

Your Craft

Acting is a living art that changes and deepens as you change and deepen. Never stop learning. Never lose your curiosity or love of life.

Stay in class, certainly, and study–but also read, go to museums, allow everything to inspire and fill you up. Be open to life and to new experiences and to new people and to change.

Short and Long Art Forms

When it comes to moving between film, television and stage, my motto is, “Go where I am wanted.” The more you can do, the more you work. Each medium has different subtleties in technique, although the basic technique remains the same: find the truth in your character. I call television and film “short form art” that favors those who are spontaneous and good at improvisation. Stage is “long form art” that favors those who are good at delving into the nooks and crannies of a piece and character over (hopefully) a long amount of time. In fact, when you’re in a long theatrical run, doing the same part again and again, keep exploring the nooks and crannies of the role. I like to say that art is in the spaces. A great artist continually explores those spaces.

And yes, no matter which form you’re working in, the mind-set is the same–do the best work you can at the time.

Habits of the Successful Actor

While I truly believe that the difference between a talented actor who makes it and one who doesn’t is luck, lucky actors, by and large, tend to be those who constantly work on their craft, trying to find new ways to explore their art. Tenanciousness helps. Big time.

When Is It Time to Pursue Something Else?

Give up acting as a career when you become bitter and frustrated and find yourself hating life and your career and yourself. I am a firm believer that it is a good idea to rewrite yourself every now and then.

MAKING A LIFE

Managing Money

It’s easy to manage your money when you have none! What is hard is when you have some. Never spend more than you have: if you can’t pay off your credit card completly every month, you are spending beyond your means and getting yourself into debt. As you make more, you can spend more.

My second rule is to be sure you always have some “F.U.” money set aside so you don’t have to take jobs you don’t want!

Which Jobs to Take

I have turned down a lot of jobs I didn’t think were going to lead me to where I wanted to go. I’ve never done soap operas, for instance. At one time I was offered more money than I had ever made to be on a soap. But personally, I don’t like them; consequently, I would have been very unhappy doing it. I also noted that soaps can be hard to break out of once you get on them or become pegged as a soap actor. That said, soap actors are some of the hardest working actors in show business. There are some very good ones, so this is no slam to them, just a personal choice.

I also would not want to portray someone who was insulting to a race or group of people without the piece’s having a greater purpose or working to a greater good.

There are also personal and family consequences to be weighed. Part of choosing the life of an artist means that you can’t always do what you want when you want. And sometimes a good career choice can be difficult for one’s personal life and vice versa. Those are decisions that each person must make for themselves.

In general, the criteria I hold for parts that I accept are: first, is it something in which I can excel? We don’t usually get the parts in which we can’t excel, anyway, so that is not a big worry. Second, I prefer parts that lift the human spirit or illuminate something about the human condition–if not the individual part, at least the piece as a whole.

I want to celebrate being human–in all our glory and pathos. It is my hope that when I leave this planet I will have done more good than harm.

Click HERE to continue reading advice from your favorite actors such as Eden Sher, Sam Waterston, David Oyelowo and others!

brianstokesmitchellDubbed “the Last Leading Man” by the New York Times, Brian Stokes Mitchell has enjoyed a rich and varied career on Broadway, television and film, along with appearances in the great American concert halls. His Broadway career includes Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha (Tony Nomination and Helen Hayes Award), Fred Graham/Petruchio in Kiss Me Kate (Tony, Drama Desk and Out Critics Circle Award), Coalhouse Walker Jr. in Ragtime (Tony Nomination) and many more. On television and film, he his recent apperances include The Path, Mr. Robot, Jumping the Broom and Glee.

https://www.brianstokes.com/

Other actors who share their experiences and advice in the book are:

Sam Waterston, Brenda Strong, Eden Sher, Pauley Perrette, David Oyelowo, Michael O’Neill, Alexandra Neil, Julia Moytyka, Michael McKean, Joseph Kolinski, Charles Busch

and the last major interview by Lynn Redgrave

The book was compiled by Sheridan Scott, Chris Willmand and Todd Coleman

HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE by Kellye Garrett

12 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by Book Lover in Action Adventure, Female protagonist, Fiction, Hollywood, Kellye Garrett, Mystery, Suspense, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Hollywood HomicideONE

He stared at my résumé like it was an SAT question. One of the hard ones where you just bubbled in C and kept it moving. After a minute—I counted, since there was nothing else to do—he finally looked up and smiled. “So, Dayna Anderson … ”

He got my name right. The interview was off to a pretty good start. “So what in your previous experience would make you a good fit for this position?”

He smiled again, this time readjusting the Joey, Manager. Ask me about our large jugs! nameplate that was prominently placed on his uniform. Since I was sitting in the Twin Peaks coffee shop interviewing to be a bikini barista, said uniform happened to be a Speedo. I pegged him for twenty-two, tops. And it wasn’t just because he didn’t have a centimeter of hair anywhere on his body. I made a mental note to get the name of his waxer.

“I make a mean cup of coffee,” I said. “Not to brag or anything but it’s been compared to liquid crack.”

I smiled and he frowned. He was actually serious. Maybe a drug joke wasn’t the best opening line. I quickly attempted to rectify my mistake. “This position just seems tailored to my competencies. I’ve always been a people person.”

He nodded and glanced back at my résumé. It felt like it took him years to ask the next question. “So why do you want to work at Twin Peaks?”

Because I needed money and this was my first interview since the head Starbucks barista turned me down for being overqualified. “Because it just seems like a great place to work. I’ve known Richie since I moved to LA five years ago from Georgia.”

The Richie thing was the first true thing to come out my mouth. He’d opened the first Twin Peaks down the street from my first apartment. The coffee was good enough that I could overlook the whole “the person serving me basically has no clothes on, which cannot be sanitary” thing. I’d come in every morning after the a.m. rush and every morning Richie would offer me a job. At first, I’d dismissed it as harmless flirting but Richie was serious. He’d extol the virtues of working for him. Dental. Vision. Even tuition reimbursement because, like strippers, the majority of bikini baristas were apparently just doing it to pay for college.

I’d always turn him down. I didn’t care how great the 401(k) match may be, no way I’d ever reduce myself to being half naked for a paycheck. Being half naked for free? No problem at all. I did live for the beach, after all. But definitely not for a paycheck! Of course, after months of not receiving a paycheck totaling more than a couple hundred bucks from jobs that required you to be fully clothed, I’d suddenly seen the light.

Swallowing my pride, I texted Richie out of the blue to ask if the offer still stood. It did. He was opening a new downtown location and would be happy to set up an interview with the manager. Even though I was happy for the opportunity, I still had to give myself a ten-minute pep talk to walk in the door. Words like self-worth and college degree flew around in my head, but I banished them for the only two words that now mattered: steady and income.

Joey smiled again and this time it was actually genuine. Maybe this could actually work. “How much do you weigh?”

Or maybe not.

“Enough,” I said.

He gave me a once-over and apparently was not too impressed. “Our biggest uniform is a size six.”

“I’m a six.” If it was really, really, really, really, really stretchy.

I’d kinda, maybe, sorta put on a few pounds since Richie had last seen me, blossoming from a size four to a ten. Not considered big in any state known to vote Republican, but in LA, I might as well have been fused to a couch and needing a forklift to help me get up. “I’d be happy to try on the uniform,” I said.

Joey didn’t say anything. Just looked at me. And then something changed. I knew that look. It was coming. The question I dreaded most, even more than the tell-me-about-yourselfs. He was going to ask if we’d gone to high school together.

People always knew I looked familiar but just couldn’t figure out why. So they assumed they knew me from home. I’d been from places like Seattle, Omaha, and in one case Wasilla, Alaska. I’ve always said there is at least one black person everywhere. Folks all seem to think that lone integrationist is me.

“You look like someone I went to school with,” he finally said.

There it was.

“Oh?” I said. “She must be beautiful.”

I smiled, just so he’d know I was joking. He said nothing. Just stared some more. I waited.

It took a few seconds, but it finally hit him. “Don’t think so, boo! You’re the ‘Don’t think so, boo’ girl in those commercials.”

“Was,” I clarified. “I was the girl in those commercials.”

I had been considered famous once upon a time. But unlike Cinderella and Snow White, my fairy tale had not ended with happily ever after. Instead, it came crashing down a year and a half ago, and I had joined the rest of the mere mortals.

Having had fleeting fame, I was not recognizable as much as familiar. The familiarity was courtesy of the Chubby’s Chicken chain. For almost two years, I would somehow end every situation—and commercial—with the catch phrase “Don’t think so, boo.” If the scene called for me to be really upset, I’d even give a quick little finger jab, a long neck roll, and a sophisticated sucking of my teeth. Rosa Parks would be so proud.

Eighteen months ago, Chubby’s had abruptly ended my contract with the all-too-standard “we’re going in a new direction” spiel to my now-former agent. Silly me had been under the impression Chubby’s would be just the beginning, not the end. I knew there was more in my future than just chicken wings. I was wrong and now officially unofficially retired from acting.

“You gotta say it. Just once.” He looked at me, all goofy-like—a complete 180 from the wannabe-grownup of a few minutes before.

I shook my head. I hated that phrase even more than I hated my life at that moment.

“That was a lifetime ago.” A lifetime and an almost-repossessed Lexus. “I don’t act anymore.”

“Oh come on.” He was practically begging. “We love those commercials. ‘Don’t think so, boo.’ Just say it one time.”

I was tempted to tell him I’d say it every time I brewed a freaking XXXpresso if he would just give me the dang job already.

“Wait,” he said, as if I was actually about to do it. “Bobby needs to be here.” He turned in the direction of the counter and screamed at the top of his lungs, “Bobby get out here.” The bleached blonde at the register barely blinked.

Before I knew it, a tall redhead was in front of me, his uniform staring me smack-dab in the face. It was obvious he didn’t have a clue who I was, which was fine by me.

“Dude,” Joey said.

“Dude,” Bobby responded.

“Dude!!”

I could tell by the inflection that each dude had a different meaning, but it was a language I didn’t know or care to learn.

“Dude, it’s—”

“Don’t tell me!” Bobby said. “I wanna guess.”

I sat there while Bobby and Joey both stared. And stared. And stared. Like I was some kind of exotic tiger. At least they fed the animals at the zoo. All the Chubby’s Chicken talk was just reminding me I’d skipped breakfast. I needed out of there. Unfortunately, I could only think of one way to make my escape. “Don’t think so, boo.”

I even added a neck roll.

Joey really didn’t give me the job. Instead, he made some joke about how I obviously preferred my two-piece to be chicken orders, not bathing suits, and sent me on my merry little way. He was lucky I didn’t curse because he surely would have gotten a mouthful.

Twenty minutes later, I sat at a stoplight on Vermont Avenue staring longingly at an Original Tommy’s Hamburgers. At that moment, I wanted a chiliburger almost as much as I wanted world peace. It was almost lunchtime, after all. I went for my purse, hoping to scrounge up enough cash for at least some fries.

My retirement from acting had only been official for about six months. Each and every second of those six months had been used to make up for every meal I’d missed in the three years of my illustrious acting career, hence my aforementioned hypothetical size six status.

I checked my wallet. Three dollar bills. I was counting my change when the light turned green. It took the guy behind me all of .00013 seconds to honk. I hit the gas. Nothing happened. So I hit it again. Still nothing. I looked down. The gas gauge was past E.

Fudge.

The guy behind me pulled around me with one hand while still blowing his horn with the other. I casually gave him the finger. Like I said, I never cursed. Hand gestures, however, were fair game.

Putting on my hazards, I got the gas jug out the trunk. A station was a couple of lights up the road. I made it with no problem and just stood there. The cheap stuff was $4.89 a gallon. My new-to-me pale pink Infiniti was twelve years old, had a cracked windshield and a temperamental horn, and was nearing 200,000 miles. The gas was worth more than the car.

There went the French fry fund. Since I didn’t have my emergency credit card with me, I rooted around in my purse and found a stray nickel and a penny. That upped my disposable income to $3.56. I was about ten miles from home in Beverly Hills. Was it enough? I was attempting to do the math when curiosity got the best of the gas attendant. “Help you?”

“I ran out of gas,” I said, motioning down the street, where the Infiniti was causing quite the traffic backup. Eek. We walked over to an empty pump.

“Pretty car,” he said, then looked me over as I removed the nozzle. “Pretty girl.”

Not to sound too conceited or anything but I actually was pretty. Of course, this was Los Angeles. Everyone was so pretty—the men even more so than the women—that you had to resort to a sliding scale, on which I was closer to cute than beautiful.

My skin was what Maybelline dubbed Cocoa and L’Oreal deemed Nut Brown, while MAC had bypassed all food groups to call it NC50. I had straightened black hair that was just long enough to get caught in stuff. My nose had been on the receiving end of many a nose job recommendation. But I’d gotten my boobs done first and the pain was so bad I swore off any further surgery. When I was little, I was as bug-eyed as a Bratz doll. But now that I was grown and the rest of me had had a chance to catch up, my eyes were my pièce de résistance. I didn’t even own a pair of sunglasses.

I used them to look at the attendant.

“Smile,” he said. “It’s not that bad.”

And with that, he walked away. I wanted to scream after him that I’d just been turned down for what was probably my last chance at steady income—a bikini barista job at that. So yes, it was in fact that bad. I was ready to have a full-out meltdown in the parking lot of an Arco. I needed a distraction. Pronto.

I found it on a billboard. It was your typical high school graduation photo, complete with a hand awkwardly holding a graduation cap tight to the chest. The girl was blonde and young. On the pretty scale, she’d definitely be considered beautiful.

The copy was straight to the point. Wanted: Information on the hit-and-run murder of Haley Joseph. Tuesday, August 18th, 11:30 p.m., Vermont Ave near Hillside St. And across the bottom, right over her press-on French manicure, $15,000 reward.

I peered closer at the billboard, looking for a hint this was a brilliant marketing scheme for some new movie. I was tempted to call the number, sure I’d hear some prerecorded message letting me know what time and day it would be airing on Lifetime. But I realized this was real. The address was right up the block. They wouldn’t put the cross streets on there if it was for some silly movie. Haley Joseph had died.

I stared back at her, and then my eyes moved to the date. It was familiar. Too familiar. I realized why.

That was the last time I’d seen him.

Click HERE to buy the book and keep reading!

copyright 2017 Kellye Garrett

Kellye GarrettKellye Garrett writes the Detective by Day mysteries about a semi-famous, mega-broke black actress who takes on the deadliest role of her life: Homicide Detective.  The first, Hollywood Homicide, won the Agatha, Lefty, and Independent Publisher “IPPY” awards for best first novel and is nominated for Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards. The second, Hollywood Ending, will be released on August 8, 2018 from Midnight Ink. Prior to writing novels, Kellye spent eight years working in Hollywood, including a stint writing for Cold Case. She now works for a leading media company and serves on the Board of Directors for Sisters in Crime as the organization’s Publicity Liaison. You can learn more at KellyeGarrett.com and ChicksontheCase.com.

 

  • 2017 Agatha Award for Best First Novel
  • 2018 Lefty Award for Best Debut Mystery Novel
  • 2018 Independent Publisher Book Award for Best First Book – Fiction
  • Anthony Award Nominee for Best First Novel
  • Barry Award Nominee for Best Paperback Original

 

  • Macavity Award Nominee for Best First Mystery Novel

Connect with Kellye at:

Website: https://kellyegarrett.com/
Twitter: www.twitter.com/kellyekell
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kellyegarrettauthor/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/kellyekell
Multi-Author Blog: https://chicksonthecase.com/
Amazon: amazon.com/author/kellyegarrett

Actor David Oyelowo [Selma] on the Importance of the Long Game

15 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by Book Lover in Hollywood, Non-Fiction

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

acting, acting school, David Oyelowo, Golden Globes, Jr. . Acting advice, Martin Luther King, Selma

David Oyelowo pic

Interstellar. A Most Violent Year. Lee Daniels’ the Butler. Jack Reacher. Lincoln. The Help. Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Is there anyone who doesn’t want to work with this actor? But not that many years ago, David Oyelowo’s phone wasn’t ringing. “Acting jobs seem to follow the pattern of buses in New York City,” he says. “None come at all, then six arrive at once.”

[If you’re serious about acting or succeeding in any field] you can’t just turn up from a small town where you were the big fish in the little pond and expect to make it in the big city. Good looks and the fact you played Annie in school will not get you very far in Hollywood, New York or London. You must train! The people I see having success and long careers are people who, in any profession, put in the time. There’s a lack of respect for what goes into being a good actor. A lot of people think that if you can learn lines and say lines without fumbling in front of a camera and you work out a lot, you’re good to go. It’s not true. You may get one opportunity or two; but you will be found out quickly, and you will not have a long career.

Keep your eyes on the long game. It can actually be detrimental to get your biggest opportunities early on. You want to build slowly. If you do that great, big, successful thing, the Hollywood machine will want you to do that same thing again and again and again.

After I played Henry VI [at the RSC in England], I began being referred to as a classical Shakespearean actor. That’s a fantastic label for any twenty-four-year-old actor. But the thing I needed to do straightaway was challenge that perception. So I took a TV show, a spy show called MI-5.

When I was very young–and this was a sort of naive audacity coming through, but it was absolutely right–I told my agents, “Put me up for things that are not race-specific.”

They said to me, “But casting directors stipulate! They say they want ‘young, black, twenty-two, rough around the edges,’ whatever…” And I said, “I’ll go up for those, absolutely. But if they say, ‘young, white, twenty-two,’ put me up for that role, also.”  Some agents actually laughed at me when I said this. I didn’t go with them. I held out until I found an agent who believed in me enough to put me up for many kinds of parts. It paid off, because one of the roles he put me up for was Orlando in Kenneth Branagh’s As You Like It, and I got it!

Now, I’m not saying I won’t play race-specific roles. But if it’s going to be a caricature, if it’s going to be about being a gangster or a criminal or a stereotypical thing, then you will not find me anywhere near it. If it’s a three-dimensional character who is saying something other than “I am black” in every scene, I’ll do it. It’s very important for me as an actor to continue to challenge the perception of the audience. You’ve got to keep the employers guessing as well; that’s when they’ll consider you for anything and everything. I remember hearing that early in Denzel Washington’s career, he said to his representation, “I want you to send me all the scripts that Harrison Ford turns down. Those are the things I want to do.” And it’s paid huge dividends for him.

David Oyelowo 5 111

photo Eric Williams/DR photo

If I got the lead in some kind of studio tent-pole type film, it may well be a great payday, may be fantastic exposure, may be fun–and I love action. I love getting to run around and do boy stuff. But it’s never going to come close to playing Martin Luther King, Jr., just in terms of the levels of challenge and depths of emotion and soul-searching and research and interviewing of extraordinary people. That’s the zenith. That’s the absolute height in what you aspire to do. But having said that, there is never a role to which I give anything less than 100 percent of my attention and ability. I will never coast, because I’ve seen actors who do, and you can tell, especially if they’ve done good work before. You watch them, and you can see that they don’t want to be there. They’re phoning it in. This job was a paycheck. I never want to be that guy.

For me, what works is doing the research on the character, reading the books, taking the dialect classes, reading or listening to interviews, just jamming it all into my brain, then practice, practice, practice–and let it go. On the day you’re filming, you trust the the combination of your preparation and the other actors, the director, and being there in the costume in the right setting, hopefully, will allow the action to happen.

For me, this process is all built on theatrical training. In the theater, you tend to have a minimum of four weeks rehearsal, so you know the character back to front, and you have a muscle memory of what the character feels like so that you can walk from the wings onto the stage and be taken over by the character. And that, by and large, is how I approach film. Do the work beforehand, and do it rigorously. You’ll never find someone more obsessively voracious than I am in terms of imbibing as much information as I can before I am on set; and then, by the time I’m there, there’s no question in the world you would be able to ask me that I won’t be able to ask in character.

Read a lot more from David Oyelowo: Click here to buy the book from Amazon, and keep reading!

Interview by Chris Willman

About the book:

NYTM_Actors_71Now You Tell Me! 12 Actors Give the Best Advice They Never Got is chock-full of insider advice about acting and having a successful life while being an actor. It features MUCH more backstage and insider advice from David Oyelowo, Pauley Parette, Sam Waterston, Eden Sher, and many more. Grab it today on a special sale for either the actor or the theater/television/movie fan in your life! (The ebook is enhanced and is stuffed full of even more photos, links, and videos.)

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014

Categories

  • Action Adventure
  • Advice
  • Bartender protagonist
  • bartenders guide to murder
  • Biblical Fiction
  • Cat Mystery
  • Cathi Stoler
  • Dana Hargrove Legal Mystery
  • Female protagonist
  • Fiction
  • Historical fiction
  • Hollywood
  • How To
  • Kelli Stanley
  • Kellye Garrett
  • L.A. Chandlar
  • Laura Benedict
  • Legal thriller
  • Lori Robbins
  • Mesu Andrews
  • Mystery
  • Nancy Allen
  • Non-Fiction
  • Ozark Mystery
  • San Francisco Noir
  • sharon linnea
  • Suspense
  • Thriller
  • Uncategorized
  • V.S. Kemanis
  • Young Adult

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
    To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy