How to Succeed in Voice-Overs

If you speak to most actors who are struggling to “make it” in Hollywood, you will most likely be told that the rejection is awful.  In magazine articles and on interview shows, I’ve heard very successful actors say the same thing.

            The plain truth of the matter is; THERE AIN’T NO DAMN REJECTION!  

            After having said that, every once in a while there actually is.  If you show up drunk or ill-prepared, or you become unruly or surly, you will most certainly be rejected.  But the normal process of auditioning is one of selection, not rejection.  

            For example, if you and I are given the task of casting the role of Santa Claus, we will notify various agents to submit actors who physically meet our specifications; they should be roly-poly, jolly, elfin, and have a full voice for his “ho-ho-hos.”  And although we can attach a beard to anyone, it would help if they had already cultivated one, which should be white.

            Okay.  Now a whole bunch of fat actors will show up.  Some will be wearing Santa suits, and most will not - most with beards, and some without.  We’ll look at all of them, talk to them, have them read the lines, if there are any, and then we’ll select only one.  The one you and I agree upon is the most Santa-like of the lot.  We can select only one.

            Therefore, all the rest do not get selected, but may go out into the world and say that they were rejected.  Who rejected them?  We were in the process of selection, not rejection.  If they said they were rejected, they made it up.

             Some will say, “I lost a good one today.”  

            Which begs the question, when did you ever lose something that was never yours in the first place?  The role was theirs to win. And they didn’t win it.  

            What they did win, however, was the chance to be seen by a casting director who might very well choose them for another part in another project.  

            More than that, on the day the call went out, what we wanted were the best actors from each agency to show up.  We never asked for anything less that the top guys in the business.  

            Nobody ever said, “Send me a bunch of so-so actors.”

            So if 20 Santas show up, all were the best in the business.  

            And in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago (and from time to time, a few other cities around the country when they‘re producing national commercials), we’re all playing at “world class.”  That’s not rejection, that’s validation.