Aaron Marcus, a commercial actor and model with over 26 years and 1,182 jobs, shares commuting tips for actors traveling to auditions. He recommends using BoltBus or Megabus from outside Manhattan and waiting until the night before to buy tickets in case bookings change.
Hi, my name is Aaron Marcus, and I've been making my living as an actor and a commercial model for actually over 26 years. I've done, as of today, 1,182 jobs so far. I'm the founder of howtomodel.com. I wrote the book, How to Become a Successful Commercial Model. I offer online acting and modeling coaching, as well as doing acting and modeling workshops around the world. Many, many years ago when I first got started in the industry, I made a decision that I did not want to live in Manhattan. Work-wise, it would be great. Life-wise, it wouldn't be as good for me, and that takes priority over work. Although, believe me, I work unbelievably hard, but my life is more important. And I thought that living in a place where I could have a house, I could have land, it would be a much more enjoyable place for my kids to grow up. So basically I decided to commute. And over the years I've been commuting many, many, many different ways, from trains to even like old kinds of buses to subways, partially driving, partially subway, many, many different ways. And sometimes what I do now is there are a couple of bus lines That run up and down the East Coast or in parts of the Northeast that actually work out pretty well. There's one that's called the Bolt Bus. There's one that's called the Megabus. And so typically what you'll find is the further in advance that you purchase your ticket, the less expensive it is. So what I've always done is try to book it at least 3 or 4 days ahead of time because that's generally how much time I have when I know about an audition or a go-see or a booking in New York. Because of a couple experiences that I've had recently where I purchased the ticket, you know, maybe a day ahead of time or 2 days ahead of time, and then all of a sudden the day before I'm supposed to be taking the bus up, either the audition falls apart, they change it, change dates, the booking falls apart, maybe I get a booking in another area on the same day, which means I can't go to an audition. And essentially, you lose your money. And so this just happened to me the other day for like the second or third time in the past couple of months. So what I decided to do was, it's going to cost a little bit more, but I'm going to wait until really the night before, before I actually purchase the ticket for the bus to head on up to New York. So just as a suggestion, if that's something you're planning on doing, you might want to wait until the last minute. Yeah, you'll pay a few extra dollars, in the long run, you'll be saving money because you won't have to cancel out. So anyhow, if you have any questions at all, feel free to email me at Aaron, that's A-A-R-O-N, at howtomodel.com. You can also ask questions and join me on my Facebook page. There are lots of actors and models from around the world who visit the page and ask questions and respond to other people asking questions. And that's simply facebook.com/howtomodel. And you can also follow me on Twitter, and it's AaronRMarcus. So anyhow, I hope this was helpful to you, and I look forward to talking with you soon. Bye.
