Starting. An. Acting. Career. Is. Not. Easy.
Getting a talent agent to represent you, may be the hardest part of your professional career.
Yesterday, I was on TWITTER.
Someone “tweeted”, the following :
“Am really getting sick of school, am ready to work, anyone know of any good agents?”
–Um–.
I took a deep breath, waited, and then took another one. I always knew that this moment was soon, I just didn’t want it to be so soon, and not just before a weekend… I knew that “bad news” time had come; and I knew that it was my responsibility to bring it.
I waited until late Friday afternoon, procrastinating…Okay, here’s my post on talent agents, and it’s for those actors who haven’t yet tried to get one. (If you have, you can read along, and weep with recognition…)
So allow me to really prepare those actors that need to know…

(Inside ICM)
Here’s some sorry, but necessary, actor truth:
When you all get into the business, you will come up against a big wall, and HARD. Especially, if you think like my twitter-friend.
There is a whole different world that actors encounter, when they attempt to become professional and working.
One of the worst of acting-career-wall-slams has to do with the subject of agents.
Do I know any good agents out there? Depends what the tweeter meant by “good”.
There are a zillion good agents out here…
…And they all work with names you recognize.
None of them are interested in you.
NONE.
I am sorry.
One of the things I hate about doing this is that since I have had a reasonably successful history in this business, and I am doing this as a labor of love (you all don’t hear any coins ca-ching from this, do you, and you encounter no credit card requests), I feel this crazy need to provide the truth, and not the hogwash you can glimpse at any time from the plentiful actor-hoax sites that abound on the net. (If you are mad at me for this blog post, and it’s contents today, and you want bull then just put “actor”, or “acting”, as a Google search word… you’ll find pages and pages of total fairy-tale-crap sites. Go there, then, because this stuff, today, is hard to deliver, and it’s not fun…)

William Morris, Current Building
The Only Agents That Represent Novice-Actors Are Mythical
It’s a myth that there are agents in tiny one-room offices, bald and chompin’ on a cigar, just a-waiting for you to arrive off the train.
Absolutely false.
(Don’t say: “That’s okay, Dana…I’m arriving on a plane” …
…Because I won’t laugh, and I will tell you, that there haven’t been any one-room agencies, like that, since before they invented the plane.
…There haven’t been any bald agents since before they put minoxydil out on the market.
…Because the agents got it sooner, like all cosmetic inventions,
…‘Cause this is Hollywood…
…And BECAUSE AGENTS ARE WEALTHY.
Why are agents wealthy? Because, their “calling” was not the arts, it was “business”. Because they are businessmen, and businessmen are in the business of making money.
That’s why those specific people are on “that side” of “the industry”.
Talent Agencies Are Big Corporations, Mostly
Any agency worth it’s name, is a “corporation”.

(...CAA Building Beverly Hills)
Any agent that drives a Mercedes, Lexus, or BMW, works for a corporation. Uh, once you get here, you’ll see that all the agents drive those cars. Brand new ones, too. Immaculate and shiny. Leased.
They pay for the lease, or their company does, by the massive amounts of money they make from the actors, under contract, to their talent agency.
They don’t sign people to contracts who don’t bring in big money. They really don’t ever consider signing someone for their “artistic talent” or “acting ability”.
They don’t look for artistic talent.
No.
They look for money.
CAA, one of the heaviest hitter of agencies, ever since it started, just moved it’s headquarters. It used to be in Beverly Hills. Now it is in Century City, right nearby.
When they were planning that original Beverly Hills office, they used an architect that is one of the most famous, ever. I.M.Pei. (He is the same guy that designed the pyramid portion of the Louvre, in Paris. )
And they had an extremely famous painter, paint a mural, in the lobby. Lichtenstein. No, they didn’t buy a Lichtenstein painting, nor did they commission him to paint a giant canvas in his studio and then install it in the lobby. This extremely famous painter actually painted the mural in the lobby.

CAA Century City
Now, CAA has moved to a larger building. Whatever did they do with the Lichtenstein on the wall???
(Will somebody look that up on Google for me, and let me know? I am too busy…Oh, and while you are at it… If you don’t know who I.M.Pei is, or Lichtenstein, or about the Louvre, please look that up too. Anytime you don’t know something, don’t stay ignorant about it, it will help you as an actor. Especially, when you work on a script, know everything and anything about that script, the culture that it deals with…)
My point is this. CAA will not be interested in you.
CAA has never been interested in ME.
I went there, once, for an interview with an agent, who was very nice. (Many of them are. Even so, they don’t want to know you, and they don’t want you to waste their time, having to explain that.)
I saw Kevin Huvane, once referred to as a “Young Turk” agent, and I was already somewhat established. But, CAA is for the very top of the heap. Celebrities, stars.
He told me, as many agents had over the years, to “Come back and see us when you’ve got a lead in a film”.
It’s that simple.
They work for the big bucks, and their job is to make deals for the big bucks, and it’s a simple equation…They agent talent that already has an established salary of “Very Big Bucks”.
Aren’t they looking for new talent?
No. Never. Not new acting talent.
Agents Are Called “Ten-Percenters”
They get 10% commission of whatever salary they negotiate for their client.
Let’s say Bruce Willis takes a new movie role, and his pay is 20 million dollars. What’s ten-percent of twenty-mill?
Same with Tom Hanks, and many other actors…
Would an agent choose to spend their limited work time on making two mill commission; and let’s not forget that the 2 million from a client like Tom Hanks is way more dependable, than a ten percent of maybe 200 to 500 dollars (ten-percent of 500 is fifty-dollars) for a newcomer. And that newcomer has a way-smaller chance of getting a job.
They don’t make money, they don’t get reputation, they don’t get bupkus.
Not for representing new people.

New William Morris Building (Plans)
When You Make Acting Money That Brings In A Hefty Commission…
That’s when all the agents will talk about your “acting abilities”. It simply translates into numbers, here.
They make no bones about it.
Agents are notorious for doing an about-face and heaping attention on those actors who suddenly start working.
That’s just the business.
I’m telling you so you won’t be surprised.
They won’t pay you any attention, at all, until you start to work.
Then you will be able to get an agent.
Crazy?
Welcome to Hollywood. That’s the way it works.

William Morris Drive
At Least You Are Now A Prepared-And-Aware Actor
Ever hear that saying? ”The truth shall set you free”? I think it’s from the Bible…(Could somebody fact-check that on Google for me, please, I am getting sick of doing all this work for nothing!)
The truth in our work makes acting into beauty.
The truth about the business can crush us; or it can make us stronger; as people, as actors, as professionals.
Here’s a big secret. It was always this way. Always.
I do think it has gotten ever harder, I think the doors have gotten heavier, more locked; and there are security guards at the gates, even. (None of that slipping your photo with resume on the back, under the door, like I used to do at the very start of my career, in New York!) (…And that didn’t get me representation, by the way.)
My first agent, in New York, was at ICM. A gigantic agency, a gi-normous corporation. Lucky me, I thought. Aren’t you thinking the same?
I did luck out, in that a friend of mine, became an agent there. Actually, two friends. One was a manager at the New York Improv, and the other was the assistant manager. I worked in the coatroom. Really.
ICM was starting a new comedy division, and took the guy who was the Improv manager to be an agent, since he knew all about the comedians. The guy who was the manager took the Improv assistant manager with him, and soonafter, the assistant-manager-signed-who-was-now-hoity-ICM-assistant-agent signed me, coatroom-girl-aspiring-actor as his very first client.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? In feeling, it was. I am actually smiling right now, with the memory of it. These guys were my friends, and it was so much fun…up, up, up, I would go in that Manhattan high-rise elevator, past the smooth woody receptionists desks, and my 8-by-10’s had a folder in a file cabinet…the cabinet’s size must have trumped the size of Trump’s.
The promise of it, sensational.
The truth of it…not much. Why? Well, I got to go up in that elevator more than actors generally do, because these guys were my friends and it was New York City, and I was in that area, a lot, for voiceover work. (Different category, different agency.)
I got to hear a lot about people like RIck Moranis, and such; because that’s who they were handling and getting auditions for. In a place like ICM, there isn’t a system in place, to “break in” newcomers. Agents at those places don’t have enough time in their schedules to do all that they need to do, for the bigger guys, a lot of the time. (Just go to any industry place at 7:30 AM and you’ll see all the bigger agents having what is known as a “power breakfast”. That is a breakfast meeting, where they are jamming in business before they have their 9 AM agency-wide meeting, every morning.)
I got lots of insider information about what it was like to be a big-agency-agent, and got to see what all kinds of stuff was like: “Variety” out on the coffee table waiting room, the lunches ordered upstairs, the “Breakdown Services” with lists and lists of projects and auditions…
However, only one audition, did I get, maybe, in a year.
How I went from ICM to a middle-size “boutique” talent agency, that was the agency that I stayed with, forever-after… is another story for another day.
Yes, there are boutique agencies around, and no, they are not interested, either. I’m sorry, but it’s a cruel business that way. The smaller agencies are also only interested in actors that are sure-shots.
In other words, they aren’t gamblers either.
Don’t expect them to want to be fisherman, either…to throw a lot of bait into the waters to see if anyone bites. Nope, they don’t. They, too, want the hottest thing, and they try to get it, at the mid-range level. Even though they are smaller than the bigger guys, they still don’t want anyone who isn’t a proven professional.
That means, in actor terms, someone who doesn’t already have a career. Someone who doesn’t have a “quote”. (That means a certain amount of money that you got paid, so far, that they can negotiate to get to be a higher amount of payment, on your next job.)
Can they get the biggest stars? No, but they get people that haven’t worked in a while, and they handle all the other people that you see populating your TV and movie screens, that aren’t stars.
Those actors make good money for those jobs. Decent money. Their salaries pay commission to the agents. That’s how the agencies pay their rent in Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, even in the Valley.
Agents work when they think there is going to be payment. Thus, they keep clients that continue to get commissionable work, and when they have room, agents will only sign on those actors that have some kind of track-record of earning.
No one is going to make it easy. I would say that trying to get an agent without any credits, is impossible.
If you don’t want to believe me, then good for you, because you have a strong overriding spirit that can help you.
You will need to do the impossible.
You need to know that.
This Is Even Hard On Me
I’m quitting for the day. It’s Friday night, as I write this, it’s dark already. David Tochterman and I were supposed to meet for a drink, as his post was up this week on Hollywood Actor Prep, and we haven’t seen each other in years. (L.A. is a large city, area-wise.)
And I want to get down to the beach area, because I haven’t been out, for fun, in that area, in a long time.
So I will edit, and add, to this post tomorrow.
I’ll also try to find some funny stuff, because this post is rough-stuff.
(Or maybe it is, just for me. I also broke a front tooth, this week, so I’m not the happiest camper…)
Keep on keeping on, with a smile…because good things are coming very soon…
Stay with Hollywood Actor Prep, and please spread the word, so that I know that people are really benefitting from the information I post…
Best,
Dana
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PS My Twitter name is __dana__ (that’s with 2 lower slashes on either side of my first name)
I announce, on Twitter, whenever I publish a new post on this blog.
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