Aaron Marcus, an actor with 40 years in the industry, stopped saying yes to every audition. He turned down a $1,200 gig requiring a three-hour drive and a low-pay indie film with no hotel. Setting boundaries gave him relief he'd never felt before.
In this video, I'm going to be sharing with you how I changed my audition strategy after 40 years of acting. Also, watch this to the end. I've got a great bonus video for you. It's the 2 words that changed my acting career and my life for the better. Okay, let's get started. Hi, my name is Aaron Marcus, and welcome to the Acting and Modeling Quick Tips channel and the Actor Career Center. Look, I've been acting a long time. It's been a little over 40 years now, full-time, and I recently made some changes to my audition strategy. Let me make this really, really clear. I don't know that I would have done things any differently earlier in my career, and I'm not suggesting that you follow my advice. You know, it's not, it's not up to me to, to do that for you, but I do want to share with you what I just started doing recently that's changed, and it's felt really good for me. So starting off, I took every audition, every job I could do. If I was available, I auditioned. If I was available, I did the job. Look, out of 1,300-some jobs, or almost 1,300 jobs, I think I've turned down 5 or 6. So I don't turn down that many jobs. And look, I don't mind sharing this with you. I used to have this fear of if I said no to an agent The agent would get angry, the agent would drop me, the agent would not promote me as much as I would want them to. I wouldn't be on the top of their list. And, and I'm not saying that those things wouldn't necessarily be true. Hey, look, if there's an audition, or who knows, maybe I'm being considered for a possible project and I say no. Maybe the second choice, the actor is represented by another agent, and then this agent loses the job. So those things can happen. I'm sure they do happen. But it's also important to know that this is your life and you need to do what's right for you. Now, there are some, some actors I know because— and the reason why I know this Definitively is because I've been hired as a casting director primarily for one company. They do infomercials. I've probably done, I don't know, 25, 30 castings, and I try to find talent for these things and help out fellow actors. And I know there have been some people who have said, even like for a $1,200 job— I think it was about $1,200— on-camera narrator It's called— it's considered an industrial film under that contract because they would have to drive about 3 hours to get to doing the job, and transportation was not being offered to them. They're not being put up in a hotel. They said, nah, it's really not worth it to me. I always just thought, wow, I mean, $1,200. I, I've driven 6 hours. I've driven 11 hours to things That paid around the same amount of money. And just recently I started turning things down. Not, not that many things, but I have. There was a project that it was a very, very, very low budget. It was a union project, very low budget independent film. I think I would— they, they said it could be like a week. of shooting. Like I said, it was very small amounts of money each day according to union rules, lots of dialogue. And I was thinking about it and I thought, I don't want to invest that much of my time or my life into something that I would have to turn down everything else during that time period. There was some traveling involved. They were not paying for hotels, so it would have been a lot of time in the car. And I just thought, for me, at a point in my career, I didn't want to do it. It wasn't worth it to me. And which kind of shocked me because I've never, never thought that way before in my entire life. And I did. And when I thanked I thanked people very much for thinking of me. I just said, I'm just not going to be able to do it. I felt this sense of relief. It felt great. And that was a first. That was a first for me. And then there was another project also, same, same kind of thing. I just didn't want to do it. Didn't feel like it was worth my time. Or the effort that would go into doing it the way that I would want to do it properly. So that's really what I wanted to share. It's been, it's been such a major change in my life, and I feel freer by doing that. And I am really curious if you have ever turned down an audition, turned down a job Please share it with us. Let us know why you turned it down. You don't have to give us all the specifics, but I'd love to hear your reasoning so that way we can learn from you. Hey, if you haven't done this yet, please subscribe on my website. Just sign up. You'll be on my special mailing list. Just go to howtoact.com. How to act. And model.com. I even send you a great bonus video. It's 6 Secrets to Mastering Home Auditions. So if you haven't signed up to be on my email list, sign up there. And also on this channel, if you haven't subscribed or clicked the notification bell, which will allow you to always know when I upload a new video, please do that right now. And that way We can continue building this really, really great place where actors are sharing information, helping each other, learning from each other, which is what this is all about. I did promise another bonus video for you. You'll see it right up here, and it's the 2 words that changed my acting career and my life for the better. I know you're going to like it. I'm Aaron Marcus and can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya.
