You're not getting the f***ing job!
I took part in an online Q&A with The Wire actor Michael Kostroff (pictured) last night. What a breath of fresh air he was! Based in New York, he runs a popular class (which has spawned a book*) called Audition Psych 101, about how to overcome audition nerves, and get yourself into the right mindset for an audition.
The first rule? Tell yourself, "I'm not getting the fucking job!"
Now that sounds pretty counter intuitive - if I'm not going to get the job, then why am I there? Why bother? Well, because it shifts your attention away from the thing you have zero control over (i.e. getting the job), and onto the thing you do. Why am I there? To give a performance! And since this is the last time I'll ever get to do this scene you've asked me to prepare, I'm going to make sure it's the best I can possibly make it, not to impress you, but because I love to work on a character and a text, and mine them for all the nuance and fun and contradiction and drama that I can find in them, and then find a way to share that with you.
Many of you will have seen Bryan Cranston's wonderful advice on auditioning (below), where he says that his career took off when he realised that his job in the audition room was not to get the job (that's someone else's decision), but to create a compelling character that serves the given text. Kostroff's mantra is a brilliant way of reminding us not only of what we have control over, and what we don't, but also to love what we do, to take pride in it, whether or not someone's going to give us a job at the end of it. Too often we (by which I mean "I") focus on the difficult, painful bits of being an actor - the auditions, the rejections, the not-even-getting-auditions, the chronic financial insecurity, the AM I GOOD ENOUGH??? We forget that we love it. We forget to forget all of that crap, and just enjoy doing what we love. So, next time you go to an audition, remember: you're not getting the fucking job!
* Also available in the UK
