How to handle rejection / failure in acting
Failure As An Actor
Being an actor, unfortunately, means that you will experience failure—likely more than once.
I’ve experienced it, A-listers have experienced it, and if you haven’t already, you will.
I’m not saying this to discourage you.
On the contrary—“failure” is part of the game and if you’re not failing, you’re probably not trying.
As you move along your journey as an artist, failure is a necessary part of the trip.
Because at the end of the day, it’s all about how you frame the experience.
Instead of beating yourself up over a botched audition or forgotten lines, think of it instead as feedback.
Yes, you’ll experience rejection and have tough moments where you feel like you royally messed up and there’s no possible way you can come back from whatever it is you deem a failure.
But trust me when I say that it is never as bad as you think it is.
As artists, we focus so heavily on our failures, almost ignoring the positive aspects of our careers and performances.
But our goal as performers should be to develop the ability to think extraordinarily, which in turn will help us frame those perceived “failures” in a more positive light.
Thinking extraordinarily means having the ability to experience failure and have the discipline to ignore it, move on, and immediately focus on the next audition or performance.
What separates those we admire in any field is their ability to learn from their failures, acknowledge, then ignore and move on.
That said, our brains are wired to let failure weigh heavily and to only see the negatives in a performance.
It’s a survival mechanism; if we think of the negative first, we can, in theory, avoid danger by taking the less-negative route.
But as a performer, you’ve got to rewire that part of your brain at least as far as your art is concerned.
How to Balance Failure and Fulfillment
Remember: You will get another opportunity and when you do, you can’t be dwelling on a past failure.
So here’s an exercise to help you get over it and move on for the sake of your work:
Write down two or three things you could have done differently that might have helped improve your performance.
Think about everything honestly:
Did you prepare as much as you could have?
Did you go to sleep at the right time?
Did you have one-too-many drinks the night before?
Did you leave yourself enough time to get to the audition so you weren’t stressed about traffic?
Then, write down two or three things you felt you did well.
This part is critical—you need to focus on the positive so you can ingrain the things you did well and give yourself a better chance of repeating them.
Train yourself to focus on the positive, even if you feel like nothing went well.
It can be something as simple as how you walked in and out of the room.
Or that you got there early enough to get a good parking spot.
Make it part of your mission statement as an artist that when you feel tired or stressed, you won’t make excuses.
Don’t give yourself an opportunity to not be fully prepared.
None of that, “I’m just too tired to work on this material.”
The thing that separates elite performers from everyone else is their ability to prepare when they don’t feel like preparing.
Your job is to hammer away at all cost at your craft even when you’re exhausted and don’t have the energy.
That is what will separate you from everyone else and it’s what will change the course of your career.
3 Reasons Actors Fail and How to Avoid That
1. Callousness and/or lack of talent
Believe it or not, majority of “actors” that constitute this business are truly here for the “show.” These are wannabe movie stars who love the romanticized idea of “being an actor” but couldn’t give a damn about working on the craft itself. They lack talent (or skill), and are often Entourage-inspired thespians who are here for the glitz, glamour and complaints.
Granted, there’s also a good bunch of aspiring performers who appreciate the craft and are eager to sweat over acting techniques, but there’s always this little bit that’s missing within their work. These actors try hard, but they’re still not… good… enough. At least not yet. This type of actors has the perseverance and desire, and they might or might not make it in the end.
Is that you? To avoid falling into this pitfall, spend some time soul searching. Are you in this for the right reasons? Will making a living from acting alone – without red carpets and movie stars to brush alongside – be enough for your happiness? To me, it sounds perfectly reasonable. If so, continue to work. Remember the importance of acting training, respect the craft.
Everybody defines success differently, but I’m here to suggest that it’s paying bills when doing what you love. Everything else is just icing on the cake.
2. Avoiding business side
It’s difficult to imagine that this still needs to be explained, but actors continue to be hard pressed to comprehend the importance of marketing and business skills. I appreciate your desire to consider Acting the art form beyond anything else, and if making small plays forever is what defines your success – great! However, most budding actors are in this for the bigger picture.
Is that you? Regardless of how much you hate calling yourself a businessman or an entrepreneur, you are one. You’re selling a product and a service – yourself, and your acting skills. This cannot be avoided, so you might as well try to get better at it.
Marketing yourself is an entirely different set of skills to acting, and more often than not, a chunk of bad actors achieve greater success (or get there faster) due to their ability to network, make connections, create new opportunities for themselves and act upon them. Aside from being a good actor (a good product), you must also know how to sell yourself (adopt a pretty packaging and show it to the world).
3. Lady luck
Fortune is the last and, quite frankly, the most prevalent reason why so many fail (or succeed). Marlon Brando once said that anybody who doesn’t use a word “luck” when discussing their careers is a liar, and this couldn’t be more true.
You can be the worst performer ever, and through no fault of your own find yourself doing a movie with Richard Linklater next week, if you get lucky. Or you can be the most talented actor who knows how to market yourself, but you break a leg and your career stops for several years, if you’re unlucky.
Is that you? Truthfully, it’s all of us. Some of us are luckier, and others are less lucky. Fortune doesn’t need to be explained, nor does anybody need to believe in it. It’s simply a term for a sequence of events and unpredictable outcome. None of us can control it.
Your job? Focus on the first two points from this list – develop a good set of skills and market yourself well. If you get unlucky, at least you’ll be able to retaliate. And if you get lucky? Well, I’ll let you daydream on this for a while…