The Stink of People

When I go to auditions I enjoy the ritual of making myself up beforehand.  I feel like its vital to my performance and my chances.  I suppose its a way of hiding myself away and dealing with the vulnerability of putting yourself up for rejection purely on your own merits as a product; and its also a way of creating a persona.  Even my name is edited and polished in the professional world to most suitably and succinctly sum me up and provide me with a certain finish.  Before and after I leave a room, my name will fall off their tongues and create an atmosphere alone, a smoothness, an exotic taste in the mouth that will, oh yes it will, make them more keen to employ me.

It's a desperate business and I simply illustrate with as clear lines as possible how we cope and react to that desperation and what it does to us human beings.

I don't feel human before or during an audition.  I feel completely numb.  My own feelings and selfhood do not matter, what matters is creating a favourable impression, a glittering surface that doesnt reveal any hidden depths, just reflects back whatever impression the casting director, director or camera cares to project onto me.  On my way there, I sit on the bus, murmuring lines and looking vacantly out of the window in fanatic silence.  I am trying to invoke my professional persona; I am trying to annhilate my everyday existence: the food i ate this morning, my dreams at night, my mood.  I become empty.  I arrive, I smile, I respond, I joke, but I am simply a nice object that breezes into a room, lifts it with light, musical notes and leaves again, leaving a lovely scent of carefree confidence, which gives way to the low and positive utterances of my magical, semi-made up name.  

It's a wonderful, nineteen twenties esque fantasy.  When I leave I come crashing back to earth.  Feeling pours back into me, I feel sick with myself, I feel completely and utterly hopeless and helpless.  I feel like a fraud and I feel like I am not good enough.  The process of my invocation of my persona cannot help but drag out of the dead my worst self - the part of me that knows I am rubbish, that clings onto every negative comment Ive ever heard or thought I heard; the part of me that remembers and is built from every past rejection I ever received, oh it limbers up and shouts in my brain.  I am more human than ever in this moment.  I am struck by an existential crisis of self and a piercing loneliness.   Maybe that is the real reason I do this, maybe I see this as some reward: to feel. 

Yesterday I went to two auditions for commercials.  The first one was good and I have nothing to say about it because of the favourable experience, but the second one must register on my worst ever Hall of Shame hitlist. GOD. 

It was for a Dulux ident before Ugly Betty.  'Ingenue...Audrey Tatou...Art Student' was the brief. My agent was salivating over my chances: "this is your niche!"  I agreed.  I went along feeling pretty confident.  My hair having been recently cut gave me a polish that worked with my made up face and cute, arty outfit.  I felt good, empty, but good. 

I arrived and opened the door to the casting office and a blast of smell I can only describe disgustedly as 'people' smell hit me like when you get on a commuter bus and the windows are all steamed up because those warmth fanatics dont understand that if you open a window, so opens the whole atmosphere on a bus.  

Models stood like herons in the middle of the room speaking german and making it impossible to pass with their massive, expensive, designer handbags.  There were a few chairs lining the walls with girls slumped in looking bored and depressed.  'How long have you been here?' i asked one girl, 'an hour', she said listlessly and cast her eyes into her lap. 

I waited for about half an hour, chatting to another actor about the humiliation you feel when you go up against models.  Then I was called in. It wasn't scary - you went in groups of six because of the huge number of people and waited while each person did their ident and spoke about how tall you were and if you could 'do movement'.  

The casting director (OH how i long to out him so when he next googles himself which he must do every five minutes he reads this!) Mark Summers (DONE IT!) stood with his back to us as we waited, squinting into the camera and making catty, lackadaisical side comments to his minion about how he hated people filling in their forms standing up.  'My mother said never trust anyone who couldn't sit down for five minutes',  I wanted to tell him there was no room to sit down, the floor was filthy and that we had been pushed to fill out our forms as quickly as possible in order to get seen anywhere near our time, but I shut up. 

In a bored and impatient voice he told us to sit down and what we would have to do: an ident, a head shot, a mid shot and a full shot and that was that.  He wanted this all over with.

A beautiful, eastern European model stood infront of the camera first.  

"Right, Darling, she's a beauty photographer/she likes SHAPES/make a nice shape for yourself/that's it/think SEX IN THE CITY/ OK!"

I can only describe the way he spoke like this, it was punchy and soundbitey and mindless. A one size fits all mentality that everyone, including me, understood and abided by.

The girl effortlessly moved from pose to pose as he barked what kind of shot it was.  She was a real pro. Showy with it too, I couldnt help but squeeze the girl next to me, who looked at me in horror: mannequins!!  He wanted mannequins! 

A beautiful forty year old woman stood up next.  She looked so small and frail standing against the blue screen.  I'd seen her look furtively and critically around outside before the casting and heard her call her agent, panicked that everyone was young.  I had looked at her face closely, noted the marks of botox in her lips and forehead, her desperately thin legs and her carefully thought out pencil skirt outfit.  'Milf' was clearly her brief, or the cardboard cut out she was trying to fit her tiny self into.

She smiled on demand, flicked her hair on demand and so pointedly the minion next to the casting director had to suppress a giggle.  I could only laugh too, it was so painful a sight, there is no dignity in a woman of that age bowing to a system that makes you no more than a Warhol Campbell's soup number 30004456, (with added vintage factor). In fact, I know there's no dignity in it whatever age, but somehow I forgive the young for being impressionable.  I dont forgive myself.

My turn.  I stood up and oh so slowly and in silence got to my mark.  I could hear disapproving looks from the casting director behind me.  I anticipated his scrutiny but I didnt think he would lurch into rudeness so readily.  You know i like to transcribe dialogue. Here it is, without embellishment:

MS: 'Didn't your agent tell you you had to wear a dress?'

(I was wearing a dress: a shirt dress - art student- casual and feminine.)

Me: I AM wearing a dress!  

Stalemate. He looks at me, I look at him,  Im not going to concede. Or do I?...

Me: My agent didnt tell me anything..

MS: OH! They don't do they?! They never write comments in those little boxes either do they? I tell you, your commercial department, Ive had enough of them!

Me: ...Um...Really?

MS: YES!  ..................  Take off your cardi.

I took it off.  I had already broken into a sweat.  I could feel the eyes of the other people on me now as they waited for their turn.  I felt their thoughts.  They felt sorry for me, they watched me blush, weirdly compelled by the sight of vulnerability.  I know, Ive felt it.

Mark Summers stood with his hand on his hip waiting for me to copy him.  He stared at me, unblinking. When i meekly copied his stance he barked impetuously:

'MAKE A NICE SHAPE FOR YOURSELF! Youve got to make yourself look GOOD! She's a BEAUTY director! Just think FIERCE/ SASSY/ ATTITUDE/ SEX IN THE CITY!'

I wanted to shout ' I HATE SEX IN THE CITY! Ive never seen it! I never want to see it!  Its about as far from ME as fucking MARS!!!!!' ..... but i didnt. I complied. I tried. I failed miserably...

'LIFT yourself! Come ON! I know you're not a model but you can give yourself a nice SHAPE! GO ON! SMILE!'

I smiled.

'...Don't smile. Half-smile; cat-that's-got-the-cream!'

I felt the fear pulse out of my face and straight down the camera lense.  I looked like a maggoty naked person.  I could feel it.  The more he barked at me, the more tense I felt.

'Come on! RELAX! HEADSHOT RELAX/ MIDSHOT/ LIFT/ LONGSHOT... Name, agent to camera.  How tall are you, darling?'

Don't fucking call me darling.

'Right, thanks BYE!'.

I practically ran out.  I felt completely humiliated, hot faced and pitiful.  I cannot stand in front of a camera, be barked at  to strike a pose and do so, oozing whatever they mean by 'fierceness'.  I know exactly what they mean and want, but I dont want to do it, I can't do it and its not something I will do to demand or ever!  Especially being watched by other candidates.  Oh God, it was hell.

And that's about all I can say about this now. 

A Healthy Size 12

Yesterday I was booked to go to a commercial casting for a product cryptically called '.tel'.  I read the breakdown the agency had emailed me and thank God I did:

"Stunningly attractive girl, MUST be at least 5"5 and MUST have great legs"

It's so helpful that they're so straightforward and specific about what they want.  If only everything in life was as clear cut as casting.

Half-heartedly, I rang up the agency.  Its about as far from speed dial on my phone as you could possibly get, I have to trudge through my whole phonebook until I see a .tel style cryptic name that I dread flashing up on my phone when I get a call - or WORSE 'unknown number'.  God, so offensive. I always answer in the most cautious way, speaking in the voice of a grown up that I don't recognise as my own.   

"HELLO?!"

But this time Im ringing, which is bad in a different way, but at least I know what to expect.  

"Hi...I just got the breakdown for........ '.TEL'....and, the beautiful woman bit aside, I am actually JUST 5"2..."

I thought, 'if you ever fucking looked at my CV, I wouldnt need to explain this to you'.  

"OK! We'll check that out and be in touch."

I don't really want to go anyway.  The ignominy of commercial castings.  Having to sit there conspicuously next to a bored but effortlessly PERFECT model and sometimes even go in and audition with them.  I remember once I came dressed in an oversize pair of jeans and had to 'perform' walking around in a circle (this was meant to evoke walking around some European city-it was T-Mobile) with this Magnum ad type girl.  I never felt my femininity more compromised.  Never again, I thought.  Skirts and dresses all the way.  Not that that really made any difference.

In a perverse way, I enjoy the 'us and them' feel when auditioning with models.  It's probably the only moment in castings when I feel legitimate as an actress.

So I don't want to go.  I don't want to have to lug a pair of high heels (that I only wear for castings)  around university.  

A voicemail magically appears on my phone.  His voice is groaning with apology and embarrassment...he knows he's been incompetent.  The casting is off, they 'definitely' want someone tall... 'although, 5ft2 is a perfect height!'... ?

 I thought it odd that he imagined I could be offended that my height had worked against me.  I mean, weight, yes; but height?!  I can't do anything about my height; my lifestyle and dignity aren't really compromised if Im not right on a basis of height, but weight is a different story...

What I am about to tell you is probably the biggest milestone moment of my acting career.  Not just that, it's one of the most significant things that has ever happened to me and I know this is pathetic, you will see, but for various reasons, this is unfortunately just the case.

Almost a year ago I was having tense relations with my mother.  There is always an underlying level of tension ever since her disastrous behaviour in my late childhood.  A new form of this behaviour had surfaced last year, but this had more of less ended.  No, the tension was caused by me feeling criticised silently by her every time I saw her.  I felt her eyes glazing all over me - what I was wearing, what my hair was like, but more potently, what my figure was like.  I felt I couldn't please her.  I simply wasn't thin enough.  I hated her for it,  I hated myself vehemently for being so affected by it.  I was persecuted by the feeling that I was huge, flabby, over-weight.

One phonecall she asked me if I had put on weight.  I leaped to my defence:

 "NO, no NO I don't think so/I've always been this size/I'm wearing all the same clothes I ALWAYS wear and have worn for years!!"  

Deep down I felt completely ill-equipped to answer this question.  I felt like I was a few pounds heavier, but was so riddled with self-doubt and anxiety anyway that if someone turned round and said I had lost loads of weight, I would probably have been persuaded.  My sense of reality in respect to myself is.... just not clear.

I railed at my mother.  I shouted at her and told her how I felt she picked at me and how she had made me feel exactly how her mother made her feel: not good enough.  The telephone call ended in hot, angry tears.  It was a Saturday night.  My boyfriend soothed me.  I felt so grateful for him and glad that one person was happy with the way I was, even if both my mother and I weren't.  I received a text from her that read something like this:

"I wasn't asking because of me.  Julia had dinner with J and they were talking about what a wonderful actress you were and how sad it was that you hadn't had any work and J said that it was because he thought you had put on weight and that unfortunately set the odds against you.  I had to ask! Dont tell Julia I told you, she'll get into trouble with J..."

J is my agent, right?  I never speak to him, or see him but for once a year.  All my communication is done through his assistants.  I guess I won't really need to explain how betrayed I felt, how furious and above all, hurt.  

My boyfriend put me in the bath.  I screamed at the injustice of it, what a load of tossers talking about me behind my back and why didnt J have the decency to confront ME about it.  I concluded I would ring in the morning, storm into the office by lunch and tower over his desk with an incriminating finger pointing at him and anyone else in the room who looked at me in any other way than fear and tell him finally what I thought of him and where he could stuff his top acting agency.  Up my fucking obese arse.  Oh yeah, because J himself is fucking OBESE.  nO, no fucking... just obese.  If  I say fucking it sounds like an exaggeration.

When I had snivelled once or twice and washed my armpits, I developed my argument on a wider scale to rail at the industry in general.  Don't think my lightness of tone means that I don't think these things anymore, or feel these feelings any less keenly, I do.  

I genuinely think the situation actresses face is FUCKED.  

I faced a big challenge:  as I saw it, I could conform, or I could go my own way.  I seem to face this decision in different guises and at different times of my life over and over again.  I always make the same decision and I'm pretty pleased where it takes me.

What infuriates me and perplexes me and confuses me is this idea that thin=successful.  WHY? Why don't more people stop to wonder why?  This idea that if you're thin you are somehow more in control of your life than if you're not (and lets be clear, we're not talking about being obese, we're talking about being 'normal'..whatever that is.. They always talk about 'a healthy size 12', I guess that's what I mean).  But anyway, to have a mother who wholeheartedly prescribes to this trollop doesn't help my own state of mind.

Being determined to be myself and enjoy any success on that basis alone is a bit weird.  It makes life a constant battle.  I lose my confidence frequently and am, more often than not, walking around with an empty cannister of self-esteem.  I feel low, irritable, like everyone else it seems, I suffer from depression and anxiety, just to confuse what I'm really feeling.  But sometimes, OH so rarely but definitely as I write this now, I get glimpses and shards of satisfaction because the consolation is that I feel successful, I AM a success in that I am carving my own path and taking on the monster of the world on my terms.  I feel that subtle and graceful level of success even when the more obvious sort of successs isn't reflected in my dwindling career.   

It's not simple and it's not particularly clever, but this conflict and anxiety about myself conveniently contained in this weight struggle forms the muscle of my uneventful little 26 years of life that I wrestle with every day.  

Day One

On the first day I explain myself.  Well, I must explain myself.

Four years ago I was in a room that doesn't exist anymore.  This is a funny thing to remember.  The walls were packed thick with asbestos and the wallpaper was that weird rice pudding texture.  You could peel it off in great swathes, revealing a sort of greyish tumour of a flank of...well, asbestos I suppose.  The floor was always filthy, but nevertheless, we were obliged to writhe and lie and sit all over it, obedient in semi-supine, taking great lungfuls of the not so fresh air to expand our ribcages and hone our tool. 

The head of acting was a meglosaurus.  She waddled like the meglosaurus must have waddled as it heaved itself out of the Thames in Bleak House.  She clung on to strange, iconic habits like snuffling when she approved of something, closing her eyes when she didn't and using the word 'OK' not as an assent or thumbs up or a bridge from one subject to the next but as a plain full stop.  She didn't understand the brilliance of 'OK' - it's simplicity, its economy, its brevity - but took it in the same vein as she would take a Shakespearian 'O' in some dastardly soliloquy; O- went on full and forever, so you would be dying, breathlessly waiting for the cliffhanging K......................................................................... k. 

In between the OKs, she plopped and putted and shot out little nuggets of charged, gold tips for us.  Our first day with her at Drama School was much like the next and the next.  Fear imposed silence masquerading as reverence, deferential, obsequious laughter... and her, talking. Talking. Talking.  Opining.  Dictating.  She would, by any means, get her message across.  Her favourite tactic was to dispense smouldering and neat, grossly oversimplified rules and generalisations about 'The Business'.  They were contradictory truisms that had us puzzling over them for the three years of our training.  In the pub, in between lessons, or whilst comforting someone she had chosen to destroy momentarily we would spit "Fuck her, what does she know?  She's a fucking drama school teacher! SHE's a failure!"  Or we would say, "She says only the best people work and everyone else is unemployed, but then she ALSO says that everyone is unemployed at some point...so what does she mean?!"  

This brings me to the crux of her argument; her favourite truism that she succeeded horribly in scarring us all with and that she would proclaim at any given opportunity.  Ill try and remember it properly- so this is what she said:

"There are two categories of professional actors:  The Top 25%  and The Bottom 75%.  You will notice that the same people tend to have constant work.  They are the same people who are punctual to rehearsals and auditions, they never miss a performance or rehearsal; when they are sick they drag themselves to work and announce their arrival with beaming smiles and a ready energy; they don't complain about the cold, the long hours, the poor script.  They will drop everything to do a job.  They concern themselves with their own performances and maintaining a good relationship with their cast.  They NEVER judge someone else's talent or performance.  They go to the gym to make the most of their instrument, attend acting and voice classes religiously.  They do two things a day to promote their careers, they write letters, go to see as much theatre as possible, notice who the top and up and coming directors are.  They CREATE opportunities for themselves.  They work hard, make good impressions everywhere and are totally dedicated to their craft. 

 

"NOw, the BOTTOM 75% are the rest.  What characterises them?  Bitterness, laziness, a simple failure to commit themselves to the real demands of The Business.  They are as talented as the Top 25%, but they lack discipline and professionalism.  You will notice when you flick through Spotlight the enormous number of faces....faces you don't recognise, faces you do.  Who falls into which category?  The Bottom 75% are often out of work.  They despair at their unemployment and languish in the 'unfairness' of the industry.  They blame the industry, they blame their agents, but they won't blame themselves.  They won't go out and self-promote, they turn down jobs that they think are beneath them, they bad mouth other actors, friends even who are more successful than they are.  They take day jobs to support them when their not acting and lose their focus.  They will not work. "

I, like many have, not unwittingly, fallen long and hard and headlong into the dreaded Bottom 75%.   I laugh at it, I am tormented by it.  There was a time, I suppose, when I was in the top 25%, but I took a tumble and fell... from morn I fell, from noon to dewy eve, a summer's day.  I don't know if I accept it, but I suppose this is why I am writing, to find out.