Aaron Marcus spent seven years as a touring musician before returning to college for physical therapy, then stumbled into commercial acting when an actor suggested it as flexible part-time work. He committed fully 40 years ago and built a steady career through headshots, agents, and constant training. His advice: market yourself, build a non-competitive network, don't take rejections personally, and treat it as a marathon.
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In this video, I'm going to be sharing with you why you're going to be shocked about my acting journey. Also, when you watch this to the end, I've got a great bonus video for you. It's the dumbest thing an agent ever said to me. It's pretty unbelievable. Okay, let's get started. Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and welcome to the Acting and Modeling Quick Tips channel on the Actor Career Center. So I want to share with you— and, and by the way, normally, as you guys know, I really don't talk about myself very much. I'm not that interesting of a guy, and I actually— I'm more interested in other people's journeys, acting journeys. But I do want to share mine with you just because I think it might help you, especially if you are just beginning your acting journey. And so it's— and it is a little bit different than most people. So for most actors that I know, they've been acting a long time. They decided, you know, at a pretty young age they really enjoyed it. They spent a lot of time of their youth doing theater. They did high school plays, and then they just continued, whether it was on a full-time or a part-time basis. My journey was a little bit different, and It was, it was very interesting, I think. So to make a very long story pretty short here, I had dropped out of college because I decided to perform music with my brother, and we did that for 7 years. It was an incredible experience. There are things about it that I still miss. Things were going great. And my brother decided that he didn't like traveling, didn't like performing, which is not really good for singer-songwriters. So went back to college again, and I was doing a lot of investigation and soul-searching and thinking about what I want to do with my life. And I was already a lot older, kind of like mid to late 20s. And I decided on physical therapy and so went back to school, started taking all the classes I avoided all my life, all the sciences. And I needed a part-time job, needed to support myself while I was in school. And I happened to meet an actor. He told me he primarily did TV commercials, and I thought, that sounds like a great part-time job, especially as a full-time college student. Because that way I could, if I needed to take off to do an audition or if I had a job, which wouldn't happen that often, you know, I would just talk to my, you know, professors and, and just make it up later. And it paid well, much better than working at a restaurant or something like that, and it seemed like a lot of fun. So that was really how I got started in acting. And he told me about an agent to see. Went to see the agent, and the agent asked me— because at that time period you could just walk into an agent's office. It's very different than, than it is today. And the agent asked me what TV shows I've done, what commercials I've done, what movies I've done, what's my training. And essentially I said I had none. I did one high school play. I had a very, very small part. I thought it'd be fun to hang out with some friends, do the play. And she just said, look, we only work with professionals here, people who've had experience and training. I said, okay, you know, I get it. And I was about to leave and she said, well, look, while you're here, why don't you read some copy for me? And I had no idea that copy meant the words to a TV commercial, but at least I had enough sense to say, yeah, absolutely. Um, could I just step in the hallway for a second? Because I wanted to take a look at it. I had no idea what I was doing. And walked back in, read, and she said, actually, that was pretty good. Look, why don't you go out and get a headshot? Once you get a headshot, get back in touch and we'll, we'll talk more. Now, I didn't know what a headshot really meant, so I just said, any suggestions on where to get one? And she gave me the name of a photographer. Went to the photographer's studio, and I said, what do I do? And he said, make faces. I said, sure, I can make faces. And it was a horrible— it was a horrible session. And there was one photo we were able to salvage. And that's really how I got started. I was doing it part-time for 2 years, and I was finding that I was actually getting work, which shocked me. I was really enjoying it. I was getting commercial modeling work. I mean, nothing with TV or film, but I was getting some TV commercials and I was doing some extra work. It was great. I was really enjoying it. And as I was getting ready to apply to physical therapy school, I start really thinking about, is this what I want to do? And I was enjoying the acting work so much, I decided, you know what, I want to give it a shot. I want to try it for 1 year, see what happens, see what it feels like. Can I continue to get work? I knew that I could stomach the uncertainty of it because I was a musician for 7 years, and even though I was really successful at it, it's, it's still— it's not like having a steady job. And so tried it for a year, and I loved it, and that's turned into 40-plus years. I would love to hear what your story is. Please share it with us, you know, here on the channel. What was your start? Why did you get started? What was your acting journey all about? I'd love to know about it, and please share it with other people so we can learn from you. And, and don't, don't forget, um, if you haven't done this yet, please subscribe, click the notification bell so you always know when a new video has been uploaded, and, and share the link with fellow actors. That, that's the whole point here of having other people in the industry share information. And by the way, just a couple other things I just want to mention about my acting journey here and, and some things that I learned. I really didn't know actors at the very beginning, and so there was really no one that I could turn to. I did find that sometimes people were not so open to giving out information. They were really concerned of competition. And look, everybody does things differently. I'm not saying what's right, what's wrong. I can just tell you what's been really great for me is to surround myself with other like-minded people who like sharing information, who like helping other people, don't feel competitive with others. And by the way, that took years for me to get to that place. I did feel competitive. I did feel protective. And the other thing that I started doing at the very beginning of my career was I realized I needed to market myself. I couldn't rely on an agent or agents because in my market, it's a very small market where I got started, and it was 4 years before I hit New York, before I felt ready. And so I decided I was going to start marketing on my own, and I find that even to today, that's really helpful. Certainly any job that I might have an audition for that I get on my own, or a booking, I still will send it through an agent for a whole variety of reasons. And that's a whole other workshop, but— or workshop and also another video, quick tip video. But really try to create a group of people that you trust, that you like, and share the information because you are not competing with anybody else. There is nobody who has Your upbringing, your experiences that you can bring to an audition. It's very unique. And so I wanted to share that with you. Something else that also took me years to learn, for those of you who are just beginning and starting your acting journey, you cannot take anything personally in this industry. And once again, when I first started, for years, of course I did. Didn't get the audition, they hated me. Didn't get the booking. I'm not any good. You have to understand these are all business decisions, and I'm not saying maybe you need more training, maybe you need private mentoring and coaching. Absolutely, that could be the case, but these are not personal decisions. You're a good person. You're still a good person whether you get a lot of work or not. And the other thing too that I learned fairly early on after about a year Of working. I was getting some work, which I was thrilled about, but I could tell if I really wanted to pursue this, I couldn't just go on instincts and, and what I was feeling in the moment. I needed to study. And so I took lots of classes, studied with people privately. It, it, it really— it changed my career, being able to tap into things, have a strategy for For what to do for auditions, what to do when I'm on a set. I wouldn't have been able to do that without a lot of training. And still, I will continue to sit in on workshops whenever possible. So anyhow, I wanted to share those things with you. I hope this is helpful. If you are starting your acting journey, it's hard. Understand there are ups, there are downs. There are incredibly exciting things. There are things that will make you feel horrible. It's all part of the process. And the other thing too is this is a marathon. It's not a sprint. It does take time. So I hope this was helpful to you and please share your experiences with us. I did promise, and you can see it up here, there's a link to watch this pretty shocking video for me. To, to actually share. It was the craziest thing that an agent actually said to me. I'm Aaron Marcus, and boy, I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya. See ya.
