Aaron Marcus shares how actors can protect themselves from career sabotage, using Blake Lively and Johnny Depp as examples. Stay close to your PR team, avoid fighting online, and surround yourself with honest people who'll tell you the truth.
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Hey, in this video, I'm going to be answering a question that came in from one of my YouTube subscribers. Question is how to avoid career sabotage campaigns, things like what's going on with Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, and Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. By the way, before I get into that, let me also tell you that I have a great bonus video for you. Watch this till the end. How many headshots do actors really need? Okay, let's get started. Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and welcome to the Acting and Modeling Quick Tips channel and the Actor Career Center. This is— look, I love getting questions from subscribers, and I will do my best at trying to answer them for you. Hey, and by the way, if you haven't done this yet, don't forget, Subscribe, click the notification bell so you always know when a new video has been uploaded. If you like it, give it a thumbs up. That's actually very helpful. And please share the link with your fellow actors. Look, let me, let me just start off by talking about the whole situation with Blake Lively. That's very different. It feels very different to me than the situation a couple years ago with Johnny Depp. I mean, one, one, and if you're not familiar with it, and I'm not going to go into details, it just doesn't— I don't feel like I'm in a position to be going into details. I don't know either one of them. And, you know, I've read a little bit about the situation, but basically she's, you know, as an actor, she was working on a set and things took place on the set that angered her, she didn't feel was right, and complained, filed a complaint. And so it's probably going to end up in court. That feels very different than, you know, in a workplace situation as opposed to a married couple that ended up in court. So it feels very, very different. Let me just tell you, look, I'm, I'm an everyday working actor. I'm not a star. I don't have my own TV series. I'm not starring in a feature film. I'm kind of like a blue-collar actor. Punch in, punch out, do my thing, get in, get out. And so I'm really not in a A great position to answer that specifically for you. Let me also just tell you, it's a very difficult, very complicated question. I'll just share some of my thoughts with you though. Number one, look, if you are ever in a position where you do have a whole team working with you, you've got, you know, attorney, manager, you've got a whole PR team. Look, if you are in that situation, my recommendation is you got to stay on top of everybody. Look, people sometimes do things that you might not like, that you might not want, and it's easy just to say, you know what, I'm just turning this stuff over to other people. I think it's really essential that you are a part of everything that goes out there that bears your name, your likeness, who you are as a human being. So that's one of the things that I would say. Another thing, and once again, this is just my philosophy. I'm not telling you this is what you should do because I never tell other people what they should do. It's not my place to do that, and I don't think it's right. I have never— and I've been doing this for like 41 years now— I have never had an interest in being a star. I have never had an interest in being well known in this world. Honestly, for me— and I'd like— love to hear your thoughts about this too— I've always loved to work, to get onto sets And not be noticed by the world. And when my children were younger, I mean, I was thinking, this is great. I mean, first of all, nobody recognizes me. Nobody says, oh, hey, weren't you the guy who fell off the train tracks and was saved by Tom Hanks in A Man Called Otto? No, nobody recognizes me or knows who I am. People think I'm, you know, like a proctologist or— you know, social worker or, you know, a college professor. I don't look like an actor. I don't look like a commercial model. I get it. And that's— and actually, the crazy thing is that's actually my strength, that I look like everybody's next-door neighbor. So for me, not having to deal with any of that craziness, it's been a wonderful way for me to live my life. Now, would I like to have the kind of money that the stars make? Sure. To make $20, $30 million on a feature film or making $500,000 an episode on a TV series, that would be great. But not being noticed in the world, for me personally, that's been wonderful. And it's not like if I go to a party or something, I don't walk in and say, oh, hey, by the way, I'm an actor. You want me to tell you things I've been— No. I don't talk about myself. I mean, if somebody asks me a question, I'm not going to lie to them or avoid it. But to me, I don't— to me, that's not— it's never been of interest. So just as a suggestion, if you're worried about these horrible campaigns, look, there are some things even at our level that we can do. And let me give you a real example. So of course, as you know, I have an Acting Modeling Quick Tips channel. And, and actually, this has happened to me in a couple of other places. There was a, a group page where this also happened. It was like a listserv, and I was sharing information. And I remember one time— well, actually, I'll tell you the one on YouTube, then I'll tell you the other one, but it's a similar concept. Uploaded a video, and, you know, normally people will comment on it. They'll ask questions. They'll offer some of their own experiences so we can learn, you know, from other people as well. And one person wrote in blah blah blah. And, you know, I thought about it. And I said, why? If you don't like the video, then just don't watch it. Don't, don't go to my channel. That's okay. I'm not going to take it personally. And, and there was a part of me that I initially wanted to respond and say something like that, just like there was a listserv. It was for actors. And I uploaded a video. And, and by the way, like, I've got over 500 videos on my channel, and these are all free videos, and I don't sell things. I'm not saying that I might not mention, you know, I've got a book, I do private mentoring. Sometimes that's come up, but it's only been within the context of the video itself. Otherwise— and I'm not saying that's bad, that's a bad thing to do, but I just don't. I I don't promote myself. And somebody on this listserv started just making these nasty comments about, I'm just doing this to get more recognition. And it's like, why? It just didn't make any sense. My initial reaction was I wanted to write back. I wanted to respond. And I took a deep breath and I thought, Why is it going to make me feel better to get into a battle with somebody online? And then what happens if I see this person on a set? It's going to be really awkward. And, and just like there was someone else who wrote to me, another subscriber, and she was saying that she's in a play and one of the actors who had to drop out started Gossiping about her. And, and it's like, yeah, you can get into battles with people. I find that it typically doesn't take you anywhere in a positive way. So kind of going back to the initial, you know, how do you avoid these kinds of horrible situations? And, you know, my suggestion is kind of like doing martial arts. It's like you avoid the punch. That's what you do. You sidestep it and you don't engage. And I have found that when I— and I'm not saying you should never engage. There might be times where you should. Sometimes it's absolutely necessary. I have found that it's been in my best interest most of the time, walk away from it. Because no matter what I say, I'm not going to convince the other person. And I don't wanna get into a battle online. And, and if you do engage, that just incites the person to continue with more stuff. So actually with that one listserv, I just stopped posting. And I know that probably 99.9% of the people there, uh, really enjoy the video. You know what? Uh, I, I'm at a point I don't wanna deal with it. And I only want to go to parties where I'm invited. And, and if I'm not being treated properly, I'm gone. And so, yeah, I just stopped posting there. And if people want to still watch the videos, they can go elsewhere. They can go to my channel and they can see it. So I guess as a suggestion is, yeah, maybe they're like, if you are in a play and something is going on, I wouldn't get into a battle with the other actor. I would speak with somebody else, just explain the situation. And, and you know what, this just popped up in my head, and I did a video about this a long time ago when I was working on a film, and an actor actually pushed me down the steps in the scene. And actually, it was a boxing Ring. And, and as I was walking down, because the, the fight is about to start and we're filming, he actually pushed me. And I was really angry about that. And, and this is a star, and I was kind of debating what to— actually, interesting story— what went on in my, in my brain When he pushed me, I am— because I had jumped like 3 or 4 steps just so I didn't trip, and I'd land, I was fine. I was kind of thinking about falling, rolling over, grabbing my ankle, and start screaming, screaming in pain. I was kind of thinking about doing that. It was a split second, and I just thought, you know what, I don't want to get involved with all this stuff. And the guy did eventually apologize to me. There was no need to do that to me. He certainly could have gotten by me, although there was nothing I could do in that particular scene. I had to walk down, and I guess I wasn't going fast enough for him, but I had to wait for somebody to finish going down before I could continue going. Anyhow, the point is avoid— try to avoid situations as much as you can, and in those times where you can't Then yeah, you speak up and just understand, you know, things might happen. And once again, I'm not saying don't do it. At times you have to, but just pick and choose the right spots. One other little thing before I finish up here is make sure that you are surrounding yourself with people that you trust. Because it's easy to start doing things, acting foolishly, saying things to people that you shouldn't be saying things to if you are only surrounding yourself with yes people, people who are agreeing with everything that you do. They love you because you're probably supporting them, and that's, that's their job, to let you act out in any way that you want. And I think it's really, really important to surround yourself with people that you trust, people who are willing to say no to you, people who are willing to say, you know what, you're, you're being kind of crazy here. You got to stop this. This is mean-spirited. Um, this is not who you are. People who are willing to talk to you honestly, those are the people you need to surround yourself with because those are the ones who will keep you grounded. And I tell you, I've, I'm not going to say hundreds of stars. I worked with enough well-known actors to see that some of these people are the nicest, kindest people, at least on sets. Look, I don't live with them. I don't know what they're really like, but on sets they were generous, they were appreciative, they were wonderful to be around, they were humble. And I don't know, I think there's a way that we can live our lives That way, no matter how famous you might be. So anyhow, I know this kind of went into a lot of different directions. This felt like an important video. It's very different than the others. It's not, you know, step by step, this is what you need, this is what not to do, these are ways to improve audition. This is a much more generic kind of video, but I hope it's helpful to you. And please, if you have any thoughts about have you done something that kind of stirred things up that you wished you hadn't, or you were able to avoid situations. Please share it with us so we can learn from you. Hey, I promised I was going to share a great bonus video with you. Look up here, you'll see the link. How many headshots do actors really need? I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya. See ya.
