Every time I speak with wannabe writers or voice actors, I give them a piece of advice that I suspect everyone in my position tells to wannabes. It's sound advice, the kind they may need to hear over and over. This is a video of Broadway performer David Eggers doing a better job than I ever did of delivering a major part of that advice…
That's part of how it works — a very important part. But there's another thing to keep in mind…
One of the many things that can be maddening about being a freelance actor — or writer for that matter — is how much of your career depends on the whims of strangers. The other day, I was talking with one of the most successful voiceover artists in the business — successful in bank account terms. The guy makes a very handsome amount of money per year but here's the thing: He is constantly rejected.
He books anywhere, on average, four or five good-paying voiceover jobs a week. But he auditions for thirty or forty…and that "on average" means a lot because sometimes, he goes a week or two with naught but turndowns. When it comes time to file his taxes, the annual gross is impressive but there are times there where his income matches someone who's an utter failure in his line of work.
The other day here, I told you a story of how a lady named Bonny Dore first hired me to write for Sid and Marty Krofft. That led to many years of (mostly) happy employment and that led to offers from other producers but it could have gone many other ways. Bonny interviewed twenty or thirty writers for three openings and she could easily have decided to go with the guy before me or the one after or anyone. And if she had, the rest of my life would have been much, much different. That doesn't necessarily mean worse. It could even mean much, much better.
We'll never know. There have been times when I didn't get a job — many, many times — and in some instances, I was glad I didn't. Not getting one job usually leaves you open to get another which might be way preferable. A very large part of my life (and income) has involved writing Garfield cartoons for TV. I probably wouldn't have gotten that gig at all if I hadn't walked — make that "moonwalked" — off a project I was doing with Michael Jackson. As I explained here, I worked for a few weeks as a writer on Macgyver and it was a very good thing for my career and my sanity that I was only there a few weeks.
I have known many performers and writers who couldn't embrace the notion that not getting a job — even a job that looks from afar like the best one you could ever have — wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Losing one might not be a bad thing either. It isn't horrible that the above-referenced voiceover guy doesn't get 90% of what he auditions for. It's just the way the business works.
I've been a freelancer for…well, around fifty-seven years. I learned early-on not to pin my hopes on any one possibility and not to take it as a disaster when that possibility stopped being possible. But for a while, I made the mistake of telling my father things like, 'I interviewed today for a job with So-and-So magazine" because, first of all, long after I'd put it outta my mind, he'd still be asking me, "Have you heard anything from So-and-So magazine?" And no matter what I did get, he'd be wrongly fretting that his son's career was in trouble because So-and-So magazine didn't hire him.
I understand why he felt that way. He lived in a world where a job is something you get and then you do it for decades after, collecting that set salary every week, all very predictably. Acting and writing are among many professions that rarely work that way. If you don't understand that, watch the above video again. And if you still don't get it, watch that video again and again until you do. And then understand that an "audition" that doesn't lead to anything else may not be a negative because there can always be one that will make you glad that you didn't get (or keep) the one you didn't get (or keep).