Why We Fail in Auditions

How come some talented actors never make it? Some very talented individuals, who are amazing in class, do incredible work on stage, really nail it on camera, but when end up in the audition room, or in front of a casting director, they simply fail – they fall to pieces.

It’s the audition or casting session when it really counts, because you can be the best actor in the world, but if you fall flat on your face in the audition, you’ll never get the chance to show your skills off.

With all your sacrifice, your devotion, your hard work and training, you are well prepared to do the work, but there is still one thing that gets in your way.

Call it self-sabotage, call it neurosis, call it freaking out or being nervous – but we do this to ourselves. We arrive without adequate preparation, we’re perhaps a ‘little’ late, we’re full of excuses, well okay, and we’re full of shit. We try far too hard, we end up looking desperate, we end up putting them off, and we end up turning them off with our repulsive neediness.

When we leave the audition, we end up feeling empty. But it’s okay, because we’ve already given ourselves an excuse, we didn’t really try all that hard, so we didn’t really fail. It’s a rather ugly way of protecting ourselves, because we didn’t risk it all, we can persuade ourselves that we didn’t actually fail.

We tell ourselves that if we had really tried, we’d have gotten the job. We give ourselves a get-out. We condone our own failure.

We tell ourselves that it will be different next time, but we know inside that it won’t. Sooner or later, we persuade ourselves we just aren’t any good at auditioning. You give up, all that hard work, dedication, training and everything is thrown away because you’ve self-sabotaged yourself.

So… what would I suggest? How could we fix this problem?

It will take a serious change, but it’s worth it. It’s really worth it, if you want a REAL and fulfilling career in acting for stage and screen, you need to make that change.

You need to cut the shit. Look at yourself. What are the bad habits that you’ve created to self-sabotaged your career? What causes them? Why are you late for auditions? Why don’t you put time aside to prepare properly for auditions? Are you lazy? What’s holding you back? How does all your self-sabotaging fit together? To get past this problem, you need to really take a hard look at yourself, look at what’s REALLY stopping you from getting what you want, make a list and go after it, change your behaviour.

But the real key is this. If you really want to be successful in your auditions, you need to attract success. How do you do this? You take every step you possibly can to attract it, create the expectation of success by the actions that you take. SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW AND MAKE A LIST OF 5 BAD HABITS THAT ARE PREVENTING YOU FROM SUCCEEDING. Next to it, write what you WILL do in 2010 to change those habits. Now start taking action.

Or you can keep running away from the real world, keep giving yourself excuses and end up in one of those safe jobs that will allow you to say to anyone who’ll listen ‘I coulda have been an actor, you know’.

To You, The Best!

Mark Westbrook is a Professional Acting Coach and runs Acting Coach Scotland, a private acting studio offering acting classes in Glasgow, masterclasses, workshops and audition coaching for actors at all levels. His acting studio is based in Glasgow, Scotland, although he teaches all across the United Kingdom. All Blog Posts © Mark Westbrook 2009

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