Get Your Butt To LA, Part 43: Show Them Yours.

Self-awareness is so key to acting success. Every now and then I’ll meet an actor who’s still in the shittier talent stage of his career but thinks he’s ready for a huge starring role. He doesn’t know he’s shitty because the part of his brain that should know is getting a wedgie from the rest of his brain.

The problem is subjectivity. There’s no board to be passed. No guy in his first month of med school would ever think he’s ready to perform surgery, and yet actors hound directors and casting directors right out of the box with the self awareness of the chick I know who, when blogging recently about what she wants in a relationship, wrote “I’m looking for the kind of connection that you see in the movies and that I believe my parents had before they got divorced.”

Yes. Yes.

Here’s a question I received this week: “How do you know when you have a good enough reel? People say submit for SAG work and agents when your reel is good enough. I did three films and I think my reel is pretty good, but I don’t know.”

Smart actor. Here’s the easy answer: show your reel to ten actors whose opinions you trust. If nine of them like it, it’s good.

Here’s the answer that’s all over the map: trust that your reel is ready to go. You’re probably your own tough critic, so chances are you won’t be giving casting directors a bad first impression of you. And remember: every actor begins at zero and works his way up from there. You start with a blank reel, then incrementally build it into a good reel, then one by one replace the good scenes with great ones. The ultimate goal being a amazing collection of your work, acting your ass off opposite A-list stars.

If you’re still not satisfied, let’s analyze your reel in the form of a graph, the Y axis being your degree of talent vs. the X, which is substantive length of content… (Sorry, I’m just so flabbergasted by that woman’s blog post that I’m trying to distance myself a million miles from her.)

So you’re ready. Send it out. I don’t care what age you are – you’re not getting any younger, and before you have a reel capable of giving every casting director a nipple hardon, you gotta go with what you’ve got. They may just love it, or see something in you that makes them really like your potential. Don’t question it, for the same reason you should never apologize after an audition because you think you biffed a scene – you have no idea if the casting director loved you, and why would you give them a glimpse into your insecurity?

So link it, email it and get to what’s left of your local post office and send it. It’s time to make your first surgical incision.