Aaron Marcus walks through six reasons an actor should turn down a job: lacking required skills, being unavailable, bad financial terms, poor business moves, legal conflicts, or moral objections to the project. He emphasizes that saying no protects your career and brand.
In this video, I'm going to be sharing with you when you absolutely need to reject an acting job. And when you watch this video to the end, I've got a great bonus video for you. It's the 4 words you absolutely need to say when turning down a job. 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. Where I love sharing information with you, my fellow actors, from the many decades I've been working as a full-time actor. In this video, I'm going to be sharing with you the 6 times when you absolutely need to reject a job. And by the way, if you have any suggestions or experiences when you've had to turn down a job, please share them in the description area on the channel, and that way we can learn from you as well. So the first way and the first time when you absolutely want to turn down a job is if you don't have the skills. You know, they might not know. To give you a perfect example, there was a— this was just an audition for me, and the person needed to be able to talk in a— with a standardized British accent. I don't do that. And I didn't want to embarrass myself. I didn't want to embarrass the agent, and I thought it would be better just to say up front, that's not something that I can do. Sometimes they still might say, well, look, why don't you just give it a try? In that case, I'll give it a try for the audition. But yeah, I turned that one down. Number 2, perhaps you aren't available. Yep, that That happens. You're in school, you've got another job, you're going to be away on vacation, whatever it is, just let them know upfront that you're not available. Number 3, if you feel that it's just not worth it to you financially. Now, I have rarely turned down an acting job based on money. Look, being a union actor, I can only work on union projects, which means that I will at least get the union Minimum for the job. But sometimes they have these like ultra low budget projects that are far from me, and I just didn't think it was worth it at this stage in my career. Earlier on, I probably would have done it, but I didn't want to spend a lot of time preparing for a role and breaking even on it. So that, that might be a time, and that's something for you to Number 4, if it's a bad business decision for you. And that can mean a couple of different things. Maybe you are at a point in your career where you don't want to do a job where you say 2 words. Maybe you're looking for guest star or starring roles only, which, I mean, that's a very legitimate thing. The other business decision is maybe this is a project that you don't think is not only not going to help you in the future, but it might actually hurt you. This has to do with a modeling job, but it's the same concept. Here's the short version. It was a great ad campaign. They wanted somebody who looked very non-threatening, just a nice friendly kind of person, and it was for kids because you have to be very careful in today's time period. And sometimes even the nice-looking people can be horrible monsters. So I decided not to do it because I thought that it might hurt my chances of working with other children, you know, other kinds of ads. And this was a while ago. Because I had done a lot of work with kids in Parents magazine and, well, when Toys R Us was around and Crayola crayons, just to name a few. And I thought if I was being viewed as a bad human being with kids, it might hurt my chances of working in the future, so I turned that one down. Number 5, if you have a conflict, let's say it's a TV commercial and you have something running, currently have something running that is a conflict, you absolutely need to let people know and turn it down because there, there could be some really serious legal ramifications. If let's say you've got a Burger King commercial and this is for McDonald's and they're interested in working with you, yeah, you Absolutely need to say no. And the very last one, number 6, if you don't want to support the company— once again, this is probably more so for a TV commercial, but there, there have, have been a couple of times, and the very last time it was a political spot. And look, I don't feel like I need to, you know, love everything that the person, the politician says, as long as I feel like I'm not supporting just a horrible person. This one was, and I was supposed to be the guy on the street, and I am supporting this politician. It was somebody in the Midwest who was running for Senate, and I heard what this person had to say, why certain people shouldn't be in politics, and he was explaining why. This guy was so horrible and it went against all of my beliefs. I decided, you know what, I don't want to do anything that would potentially help this person get into office. And I said no. So financially, was it a good move? Nope. But you know what, life-wise it was, because it's not something that's going to keep me up at night thinking, oh, I shouldn't have done it. Looking back, And this is for, for you as well. You don't want to look back and do something that you're not comfortable with. Maybe— and this is also part of number 6— maybe, maybe there, there are things taking place in your scene in this project you're not comfortable doing. It goes against your morals, it goes against your beliefs. Whatever it is, just, just say no. And it's okay to say no. Your agent might not be thrilled. And that's okay as long as you tell your agent up front that you're not interested in doing it and these are the reasons why. That's, that's fine. So anyhow, yes, sometimes, and it's hard, trust me. I, and I've probably turned down 6 things in my life. I don't turn down that many things. But anyhow, yes, there are times you absolutely need, not just want, but need to say no. No. If you look up here, you will see the little icon that you can click on and watch this great video. Four words you always want to say when turning down a job. If you haven't done this yet, don't forget click the subscribe button and the notification bell so you always know when a new video has been uploaded. And if you like the video, give it a thumbs up. That's helpful. And please share. Share the video with your fellow actors. This is how we continue to build a channel with actors helping each other. And also, like I said before, please respond. And if you've ever experienced turning something down for whatever reason, please let us know, and I will respond to any comment that is made. Anyhow, I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya. See ya.
