1 Actors Act of Kindness Absolutely Changed My Acting Career Here's How

In this video, I'm going to be sharing with you how one actor's act of kindness absolutely changed my acting career. And if you watch this to the end, I also have a great bonus video for you— how to create a great resume that agents and other industry professionals expect to see, even with little to no experience. Okay. Let's get started. Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and welcome to the Actor and Model Quick Tips channel and the Actor Career Center, where I use my 37+ years as a full-time actor to share information with you that I believe will be really helpful. If you haven't done this yet, don't forget, click the subscribe button, the notification bell, so you will always be notified when a new video has been uploaded. And if you like the video, Give it a thumbs up. So this is—I'm—I'm actually a little bit nervous about this one. And look, I've done over almost—not over almost 300 videos—and this one makes me a little bit nervous just because it's a very personal video. It's you know, I know a lot of my videos. It's straight and forward information, techniques, apps. You know, you can— this one's a much more personal journey, and, and I just decided I, I want to share it with you. So many, many years ago, um, it wasn't when I first got started, it was probably maybe close to my 3rd or 4th year in the industry I made a contact through a friend, and this person was friends with an agent. I'll say the name, it doesn't matter, at the William Morris Agency. Big agency, bicoastal. They might be worldwide, I don't even know, but big agency. And, and I felt like I was finally ready to try to break into the New York market. I had spent about 4 years working on a kind of a local level— Maryland and D.C. and Virginia— and I was beginning to move into Philly for work and New Jersey. I felt like I was ready. I had this connection, and I was very excited. I was nervous, and I sent a headshot and resume to the agent ahead of time. At that time period, you didn't just— you couldn't email things. Sent a hard copy and had all my information in there. And she said, yeah, I'd like to meet with you. And I'm thinking, wow, this is, this is pretty exciting. This is a little guy from Baltimore, and an agent from the William Morris Agency is expressing an interest. She didn't say, I want to offer you a contract, but an interest in meeting with me. So set up a time, set up a date. Took the train up to New York, very excited. And I'm sitting on the train and I see this guy walk by me, and I knew the guy looked familiar. And then, and then it hit me. It was about a year ago. I had a commercial modeling job in Washington, D.C., and I remember this guy who was the main guy. I mean, I I was principal in the commercial print ad, but he was really the main focus of the ad. And I remember talking with him for a couple of minutes, and he lived in Wilmington, Delaware, and he traveled to DC for this photo shoot. Wow. I just felt amazed by that. I thought, that's incredible. That's something I would love to be doing more of, actually being paid to travel for work. Because once again, at that time period, everything that I did was pretty much local because the Maryland, D.C., Northern Virginia area was considered local. And I see this guy walk by, and I'm sitting in my chair, and I'm thinking, do I say anything? Do I just sit? Do I talk to him? I don't know. And I'm kind of debating and debating, debating. The guy walks by. And then at one point I just thought, you know what, I'm gonna go say hi to him. So I'm walking from car to car to car to car on this train, and finally I see him, and he's seated. And I walked over to him and I said, your name's Tony, right? I said, you worked on a commercial modeling job in DC about a year ago. And he looked at me and he said, oh yeah, yeah, you look familiar. Yeah, I did. And he said, what are you doing? I said, well, I'm going up to New York. I'm going to be meeting with an agent. He said, well, why don't you sit down? So we talked for a while. He said, hey, let me look at your headshot, your photos. I showed it to him and had a lovely conversation with him. Very, very nice guy. Very successful guy in the industry as well. And he said, hey, I'll tell you what. I'm just going to give you the name and contact information of my agent in New York because I really like her a lot. She's really good. And just have it in case you ever need it. And so I thanked him so much. I mean, it was just really, really nice of him. And so got out of New York. He went his way, I went my way. Go to this meeting at the William Morris Agency, and I sit down with the agent. And she— and I gave her another headshot just so she can see it. And she's looking at my resume and looking very closely again. And she said, Aaron, I see there is a 301 area code on your resume. And at that time period— the area codes have changed— at that time period, that was the area code for Maryland. And she said, where exactly is this from? And I said, well, it's, it's in Baltimore, Maryland. I live in Maryland. She said, wait a minute, you, you don't live in New York? I said, no, no, I've never lived in New York. I've always lived in Maryland. And she said, I'm sorry, I can't work with anybody from out of town. She said, look, when, when you move here, let me know and love to talk with you. But thank you very much for coming in. And I walked out. And just, look, I never— certainly I never tried to fool her in any way. I never lied to her. I sent her my information. I never said I lived in New York. And it was just devastating, you know, here, besides, you know, spending all the money on train, going up there, Being really excited I might have representation with the William Morris Agency, it just died. And I was walking around and I was just thinking, well, what do I do? Do I just go home? And then I thought, well, I mean, I've got the name of an agent. I guess maybe while I'm here, maybe I should just check in and— call and explain who I am and tell her about, you know, my connection, you know, Tony recommended. So I did that and I called, and once again, I don't mind telling you the name. It was called McDonald Richards. They were— I— well, come to turn out, they were, I think, the best commercial modeling agency in New York. And when I asked for Eileen and I told her who I was, and she said, oh yeah, yeah, Tony called me and he said you might be getting in touch with Why don't you come on in? Let's talk. And so I went in there and sat down. She looked at all my stuff and she said, this stuff looks great. Where do you live? I went, oh no, not where do you live again. And once again, look, I know that some people are not honest in that way and they will say, oh, I live here, because maybe they have a friend who lives there or a relative and they can always stay over if they need to. That's— it's never been my style. I didn't want to lie to her about that because, look, at some point it's going to catch up to you. Besides the fact, hey, on a side note, I don't think it's a good idea to run your business as a lie. That's my overall philosophy. And the next part is, at some point you're going to get caught because when you do get contacted about Either an audition or a go-see. It's a last-minute thing. It's happening, you know, in an hour. It's happening in 2 hours. They want to see you now. How many times can you say, hey, I'm just not available, I'm booked out? Because for me, it would take somewhere between 3.5 and 4.5 hours to get to New York. I just didn't want to do that. And I told her, you know, I lived in Baltimore, Maryland, and she kind of sat back and she said, look, We've had problems with people who live out of town. They say that every time we contact them, they will be here for either an audition, a go-see for this particular agency because it's a modeling agency, and then they might come up once or twice, they don't get the job, and then they start having reasons why they can't come up. And she said, I just don't want to be involved with that again. And I looked at her and I said, Eileen, Look, let's work together. I am promising you, anytime that you contact me, as long as I'm not booked out on something else, I will be here. And she said, all right, well, let's do a trial run. Let's see how it goes. And that was how I broke into the New York market. Now that was strictly commercial modeling work. However, once I started going up there, I started making connections with other people. Certainly once they heard that I was doing print work with McDonald Richards, that was a major coup for me because it was a very, very well-respected agency and there were a lot of great actors who also did commercial print work with them. That Changed my career. That changed my acting career completely. And I started— that's how I started working in New York. And so it just goes back to, it was an act of kindness from one actor that changed my life, changed my acting career. So I guess one of the things that I just wanted to share Share and ask. Because I knew at that point, because of what this person did for me, that if I ever had any success and I had the ability to help other people, I would do it. And that is really— that's what I've done with my life, is help other people. Either break into the industry, advance a career, share information, try to help out. I know how hard it is. And here, this one person who's a stranger, complete stranger, changed my acting life and changed my life. So I'm just asking you, if you ever have the opportunity to do something nice for someone else in the industry— I mean, forget, you know, just doing something nice for somebody in the world. Let's just talk about in the industry right now. Please do it. You might be thinking, well, I'm just kind of getting started in the industry. I really don't know that. Let me tell you, you still probably have information that can be incredibly helpful and beneficial to other people. And that's why I created my Acting and Modeling Quick Tips channel. It's, it's an opportunity for me to continue to share and give back to other people and let people know about my experiences, what has helped, what has not helped, ways of doing things that have been really beneficial to me. So please subscribe there, click the notification bell so you always know when a new video is uploaded. And that's what that channel is all about, is building a community of people helping each other. So please spread the word, let other people know about it, and please share information with other people in the industry. To me, it just seems like a wonderful way to run a business and also to live your life with helping other people. I did promise I was going to share information about another great bonus. You can just Look up there again. And you're going to find the link for a really good video that I created, how to create a great resume even with little to no experience that industry people expect to see. And so watch it. I hope you enjoy it. Share the link with as many people as you possibly can. And I'm really glad I got a chance to share this. It's not something I really talk about. But it makes me feel good sharing it. And really, I hope you follow in the same tradition and maybe do one thing, one act of kindness for somebody else in the industry and help them out. I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya. See ya.