How I Started Acting With No Experience| Never Imagined Being in Film, TV and Modeling Projects

Hey, I'm Aaron Marcus, and if you are watching this on my Acting and Modeling Quick Tips channel, uh, don't forget to subscribe, um, and also click the little bell, the notification button, and that way every time I upload a new video, you'll know about it. So this is something I really haven't talked very much about, but I really had no plans on being an actor. For me, and once again, I haven't shared this with many people either, but many, many years ago, I was actually a full-time musician and songwriter, and I performed for 7 years doing mostly college concerts. And when my brother, who, who I performed with, decided that he wanted to do other things, I had to kind of figure out what I wanted to do. with my life when I grew up, and so I checked out lots of different things, and I decided I wanted to be a physical therapist. There were just so many aspects about it that really intrigued me. I love learning about the body. Helping people seemed really important to me— not seemed, it was important to me. It was just a fascinating field, and so I spent 300 hours volunteering in orthopedic hospitals and shadowing surgeons, and, and when I went back to school, because I had to take all these prerequisites for PT school, I needed a job, and I met an actor one day, and he told me what he did. He did a lot of TV commercial work. And I thought, that sounds like a lot of fun. That sounds really interesting to me, and I needed a part-time job. I, once again, I think I did, I think I did a play in high school, and that was about my extent of acting. I was on stage as a musician, but I mean, that was very, very different than being an actor. And as a full-time student, I had 3 requirements for a part-time job, which I really needed in order to support myself. And so one of them was I needed to do something that I thought would be fun. I needed something that paid pretty well because I really didn't have that much time to work as a full-time student. And 3, it had to have a flexible schedule. And so after I met this actor and he told me what he did, and I thought maybe that would be fun to do. I don't know. I don't know anything about acting, but it sounded pretty interesting. And so did a little research and I found out about a local agency, and I had no idea what I was doing. Um, I went to the agency and it was, it was really, it was pretty amazing. Um, they let me come in, they had an open call, and they said to me, well, what TV shows have you worked on? What commercials have you done? Have you done any commercial modeling? And I didn't even know what that meant. Um, have you done any movies, independent films? And I looked at them and I said, I've been on stage as a musician for 7 years, but that's, that's been the extent of my acting except for one play in high school. And she— I never forget, she said, well, look, we, we only work with people who've had experience, but thank you very much for coming in. And I was about ready to leave. I understood. And then, and then she very quickly said, Hey, look, While you're here, why don't you just read some copy for me? I said, okay. I didn't know what copy meant either. I didn't know those were the words for a TV commercial. So at least I had enough sense, uh, at that time period to say to the agent, could I just go in the hallway and, and take a look at this? And she said, yeah, sure, take your time. Whenever you're ready, come back. So I'm really glad I did that. And so I went out into the hallway and looked over all the words and practiced them a lot. And once again, I didn't have any technique, I didn't have any concepts of what I wanted to do, um, I was going by instinct. That, that's all I had because I didn't have any training. So went back in and I read, and she said, Actually, I really like that because you're good. She said, look, you need to get a headshot, so here are the names of a couple photographers. Go out and get a headshot and then come back. So that's what I wound up doing. I didn't really know what a headshot was either, so I went to a photographer's studio and I met somebody and, uh, Once again, no preparation, no concept of what I was trying to do in this headshot session, what I needed to get out of it, what kind of look do I have, what kind of roles would be right for me. I mean, all the kinds of things that I teach people now in my private online mentoring sessions. Um, but once again, I, I just, I didn't know. I was doing everything on the fly. And it was not a very good headshot session. He took a lot of photos, but most of them were horrible because I asked him, I said, what should I do? I didn't know what I was supposed to do. And he said, well, make faces. I said, okay, well, I can do that. So I was just making faces the whole time. And after the session, I looked at all the photos and he narrowed them down and there was one that was salvageable, you know, it seemed like it might work, and so I brought it back to the agent and she agreed, and that's really how I got started, and once again, I'm still a full-time student, and now I'm taking— I'm taking— I remember it was— I take physics, I took inorganic, organic chemistry classes, took biology, I think I take zoology class. I had a lot. Basically, I was taking all the classes I avoided all my life because I wasn't really a science guy, but I was planning on applying to physical therapy schools. So, um, the agent started submitting me for projects, and the crazy thing was I actually started booking them. And I started doing commercial modeling work. I started doing some extra work on movies or TV shows or TV commercials, and then I actually started booking some principal work, and I'm getting more and more work as a part— as a, you know, part-time basis as a full-time student, and after doing this for about 2 years, I started really loving doing this kind of work, and all of a sudden the physical therapy stuff, it was— it still interested me, but the passion wasn't there, the excitement wasn't there. And so right before I got married, I said to my fiancée at the time, my wife now, and I said, you know, I know you're planning on marrying a guy who's going to be applying to physical therapy school. I mean, there was no guarantee I'd get in, but, um, I think I want to try acting and commercial modeling full-time for a year, just, just to see what it's like to do it on a full-time basis and try to make a living at it. And she was great, and Nancy was very supportive, and she said, yeah, give it a try. And, you know, I knew that I would have the stomach for it just because I'd been working for 7 years as a musician, not a real steady job, and, you know, just essentially being a freelancer and having to get work on your own and things like that. So that part I wasn't really concerned about, but would I actually get any work? And after the year was up, I didn't have any specific goals. It was just Do I still like doing it? Is it something that still excites me? I didn't have any monetary goals like I have to reach certain levels or anything like that. And what I found was it was great. I loved it. I was having a wonderful time. And look, not to say, like any business, not to say there weren't some difficult things, there weren't hard things, of course, but the job itself, I loved. And so, it's crazy how this part-time job that for me, it was just a way of making money while I was in school because that's what I need. I needed a part-time job to support myself, how that parlayed itself into a career. And that's what I've been doing for over 34 years. So, I've been just very, very fortunate with it, and so, you know, I guess I just wanted to share some of this information with you because, look, there are people who from a very young age, they know this is what I'm going to do, this is what I have to do in my life. That really wasn't it for me. I had no intentions of doing this kind of work. I just needed a part-time job while I was a full-time college student. So, I don't know, maybe this kind of rings a bell for you. Maybe it's something that you can relate to. And so, and by the way, I got started older in life. I was in my late 20s when I got started doing this full-time. So, you know, if you're in that situation and you're thinking, you know, maybe this is something I could try and And I'm not even suggesting, you know, just automatically start off on a full-time basis, but maybe if you have a full-time job, maybe if you are a full-time student, but you're, you know, kind of thinking of acting or commercial modeling, maybe this will give you a little bit of support and a little bit of background that it's worked for other people. And by the way, if this is something you are interested in doing, just to let you know, I do set aside 5 days every month And, and I help people, and I have a mentoring, online mentoring program. It's just howtoactandmodel.com. It's all spelled out, forward slash mentoring program, and you can read all about that. And basically what I do is I will save you the headaches that I had doing everything by trial and error because I did not have a mentor. I didn't know who to go to. Um, I found that people weren't necessarily all that open to sharing information with me, and so it was hard. You know, I struggled and I learned a lot. I did a bunch of things that I didn't need to do. You know, went to a headshot session completely clueless and almost wasted a lot of money. I did, like I said, salvage one photo. So if that's something that you're interested in doing, I've helped hundreds of people get started, you know, find agents, have success. And success, you know, means a lot of different things to different people. But if that's something of interest to you, yeah, it's just howtoactandmodel.com/mentoringprogram. But anyhow, I just wanted to share this with you, and I hope it's helpful. And by the way, on my YouTube channel, I always ask, and it'd be wonderful if you could make a donation just to help support the channel, whatever amount is good for you. Certainly there's a lot of time, effort, money that goes into putting all this stuff together. And so if you can, you know, if you can't, that's fine too, but if you can, that would be wonderful. There is a PayPal link at the bottom, and you can make a donation of your choice. So anyhow, just wanted to mention that to you. And please Feel free to share this with other people as well. The whole point of having this channel is to share information with others in the industry, and I want to build a large community of other people who are helping others in the industry. So please also below share a comment. You know, how did you get started? What was it like? Do you do this full-time? Do you do it part-time? What mistakes did you make? What things did you do right? You know, love to hear about that as well. So, you know, basically I just wanna share information and learn from you as well as me hopefully giving you some knowledge about the industry as well. I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya.