"THE DREAM"
There is no "right" time to dream, and there is no right time to be an artist. You would be surprised by the number of E-Mails I receive from people who confess to having had long time dreams about acting, but reality and the demands of making a living have caused them to follow a different path. They can't get rid of their dreams, though, and they often want to know if it is "too late."
It is never too late. Life is not a dress rehearsal.
It is never too late. Life is not a dress rehearsal.
Van Gogh was twenty-seven before he painted his first picture. Henry Miller wrote Tropic of Cancer when he was forty-four. One of my favorites is Norman Maclean, who wrote the novella A River Runs Through It when he was seventy-six. The hit television show The Sopranos was brimming with late blooming actors. Vincent Curatola, who portrayed the New York underboss Johnny Sack, was a masonry contractor until the early '90s. Federico Castellucio, was a painter when he decided to pursue a sister art - acting. Tony Sirico, who played Paulie Walnuts, was an actual honest-to-God criminal before becoming an actor. No, it is never too late. Having said that, following a dream does not mean you have to toss common sense out the window. Unless you are a stash of money, you still have to make a living, pay the rent and maybe support a family. You can't just jump ship in life.
You have to balance your dream with reality. If you are a person who has the actor dream, I suggest that you start the process by asking yourself what your dream is really all about. (It is important to be very honest with yourself about this.) When you day-dream about acting, where do you see yourself performing? On a movie screen? In a soap opera? On the stage? As a guest on The David Letterman Show? If fulfilling your dream is dependent upon you becoming a movie star or a celebrity, you will be wise to think twice before pursuing it. There is a lot you can do to become a good actor, but there is almost nothing you can do to become a movie or television star. Sure, some small percentage of actors will likely become celebrities, but this requires a lot of luck, fortunate timing and persistence, in addition to acting skill. Dreaming of being a movie star is sort of like dreaming of being the Princess of Monaco. Yeah, maybe it is possible, but it is not a very realistic goal.
How much satisfaction and magic do you imagine acting will provide in your life? How important is it that you get paid to act? Are you thinking of making a living from acting? How much money is that? Could you scratch the itch by performing in non-or-low-paying community theater productions while making your living in a day job? If you intend to be paid to act, then it is a good idea to put on your business-person's hat for a minute and consider a few realities along with your dream.
The frustrating truth is that, especially in the United States, very few people make a living from their art, whether that be acting, music, dance or painting. Eighty-five percent of the members of Screen Actors Guild earn less than $5,000 per year from their craft. In acting, a middle-income group is practically non-existent. There are thousands of actors who are making zilch or close to zilch, and then there are Will Smith, Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts - who earn in the tens of millions of dollars per movie. An acting career tends to be feast or famine, starving or being over-fed. For twenty-five years, I was fortunate to be in the middle-income group, but I did that by acting on episodic television shows and commercials. Those kinds of programs are an endangered species in an age of low-cost reality-shows like America's Next Top Model and Wife Swap. Advertisers are in the process of moving their clients' money away from television and onto the Internet. New actors today are going to have to be entrepreneurial, seeking out new venues that pay money.
My point is that, if you want to make a living from acting, you really ought to have a realistic game plan regardless of your age. As Antonin Artaud famously observed in his book The Theatre and Its Double, "The actor is an athlete of the heart." He was correct about that, but actors that get paid are also generally hard-nosed realists that are willing to go out there and play tackle football.
Do you have a feeling deep inside that you have a life-perspective that you want to share with others? If so, I think you have what might be called an "artistic impulse". In that case, it is mainly a matter of pursuing the art form that speaks to you most personally. Art of all kinds is about communicating feelings.
In one sense, deciding to become an artist is like finding religion. You wake up one morning and realize that you simply must do this. Even though becoming an artist may not make good logical sense, you will never feel satisfied until you at least try. There is one more very important benefit to becoming an artist that I want to mention. You will find others like yourself. All of us have a need to communicate. That is, after all, why I wrote these craft notes, and it is why I send you an encouraging cyber-hug.
