Aaron Marcus, a veteran actor with 33 years of experience, warns against mentioning personal relationships with casting directors during auditions. Bringing up that you know the casting director can raise red flags about favoritism when producers and networks review the tape, tanking your chances. Keep auditions strictly professional and save personal greetings for private follow-up.
Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and I've been very fortunate in this industry. I've been able to work as a full-time actor and a commercial model for over, actually now, 33 years. And some other things that I'm able to do that I get a tremendous amount of enjoyment out of, and that is I set aside 5 days every month and I mentor people. I have a mentoring program. just howtoactamodel.com/mentoringprogram. And it's really, it's a lot of fun for me to teach people what I do during the week, answer questions, help guide people. I also am very fortunate to be in a place where I am brought into events literally around the world as a guest speaker. And I've been everywhere from Australia to South Africa to Mexico City. And when I am at those events, Certainly being able to share information and talk with people is always great, giving people encouragement, specific information that will be very beneficial to them. But also I get an opportunity to meet other industry professionals outside of a work environment. So I'll meet agents, I'll meet casting directors, I'll meet managers, and it's really nice to not necessarily be in an office, you know, in their office and talking to them, but just sharing meals, talking about other things besides business. And that leads me to my latest quick tip video. This is something that if you do during an audition, you've probably ruined your chances of booking the job. And what made me think about this is I recently had an online audition, and it was for a casting director. I'll just call her Jane. I don't want to give out specific names. I'll call her Jane. And I met Jane years ago at some events, and we spent time together, enjoyed, um, uh, hanging out with her. And as a matter of fact, I enjoyed her so much— I, I do monthly online videos, and I interview industry professionals. And she's somebody who I interviewed, uh, just talking about the audition process from the casting director's point of view. And so anyhow, I like her, she's very nice. And it just so happens that Jane is casting a new TV series. And I got an email from an agent saying that I was given the opportunity to audition. And I got the information, and I'm— I always like to look— look at the sides and prepare, but I also like to see who the director is, who the writer is, who the casting director is. And as it turns out, it's Jane. She is casting this television show, which I was so happy about. Because I know, look, it's, it's, it's hard to get that kind of gig. So, you know, there was a part of me that when I was doing my slate or at the very beginning— hey, Jane! Hey, just— I just wanted to say, hey, I just wanted to let you know, it's so nice to connect with you again and congratulations. And, you know, I had all these ideas flying through my mind. And— but I certainly knew that you don't want to say anything. You know, you don't want to say hi. You don't want to say, how are you? You want to— don't want to say it's been a long time. You know, how's your husband doing? How's the dog? Nothing. You don't make any connection whatsoever that you know this person. And one of the reasons is, let's just say you do an audition, you know, the casting director really likes it, but in there you're seeing that You have a personal connection. And when that gets sent up to, to the networks, they might be thinking, well, is she really recommending this person because she knows them? Because she likes them? Because she, she has spent time? Yeah, who knows? So anyhow, I just wanted to say that even if you are friendly with the casting director, Don't say a word about— if you want to send a private email, you know, at some, at some point afterwards saying, hey, just wanted to let you know, it was great to get a chance to audition with you. Well, that's one thing. But during the audition, the taped audition, or even if it's live, you know, if people are in the room, I wouldn't say anything about it. Now, if it's just the casting director, you walk in, hey, hey, how are you? So nice to see you again. But, you know, if there are other people, writers, producers, directors, It's very, it's very businesslike, you know, no personal old-time story connection. So anyhow, I wanted to share that with you. 2 other quick things. If you have not subscribed to this channel yet, make sure you click the subscription button. You'll see it at the end of the video. There's also a little bell. That's the notification button. Click that too, and that way every time I upload a new video, a quick tip video, it will be sent to you if you're watching this on YouTube. I'm not sure where you're watching this. The other thing too, I just wanted to ask, as you can imagine, I spent a lot of time coming up with the ideas, editing, loading, having people help me with the site. If you could make a donation, I greatly appreciate it. If you scroll down, once again, if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see there's a PayPal link. Just go straight into a PayPal account and it just helps, helps me cover some of my costs for creating these things, keeping everything updated, making things look good, to giving you, to give you easy access to it. So yeah, whatever it is, whatever you can afford, I greatly appreciate it. And if you have any questions at all, any topics you want me to cover, email them to me, and if it's something that I can do, I'd be more than happy to share that information in a new quick tip video. Your name would never be mentioned, don't worry about that. You can just email me, or actually just go to my website. That's probably the simplest way. You can just go to howtoactandmodel.com/home. That's howtoactandmodel.com/home. And shoot me a question if you have any. And I can get back to you as soon as possible. Anyhow, I'm Aaron Marcus. This was fun. I hope you guys are doing well, and I look forward to talking with you again soon. See ya. Bye.
