Acting in Film

Introduction

    DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS
    Directed by Frank Oz. Orion, 1988
    Pictured with Steve Martin

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    If you really want to become an actor, but only providing that acting doesn't interfere with your golf game, your political ambitions, and your sex life, you don't really want to become an actor. Not only is acting more than a part-time job, it's more than a full-time job. It's a full-time obsession.

    your audition for the movies started the day you were born. If you wind up on the screen, it's because you've done something right since the cradle - and long before you ever made it to a producer's office.
    There's no one sure-fire trajectory to the movies, no one route to Hollywood. There's not one book to read, or one cafe to sit in. Your performance in all public arenas is part of the screen test. If you're in a bar where nobody's ever seen you before, you're being auditioned by the bartender. Ile knows that dude who comes in late Tuesday nights for a quick drink is married to the woman whose sister is the makeup artist on a sitcom. If you're taking your little girl to school in the rain, you're being monitored by the crossing guard. She changes costume and goes off as a part-time secretary to an off Broadway producer. You never know when or how the people you meet are going to suddenly set off the chain reaction that will generate your break.

    If you believe auditions only take place in a producer's office, you may just never get that call. Because the world is basically divided into two kinds of people: those who believe they're making it every day regardless of what "reviews" they're getting, and those who will never make it no matter how high they rise or how many statuettes line the mantel. Now, I'm not advising you to primp and prance when you take out the garbage. But know that the trash you take out today may wind up getting you the gold tomorrow.
    And you don't stop campaigning just because you've made it, either. I remember doing a film with Shirley MacLaine: Gambit. A tour bus pulls up pretty smartly as the actors are crossing the studio lot. Fans come piling out of the bus. The driver is trying to corral the actors into signing autographs on our way in. Most of the actors escaped the crowd through a side door. I, on the other hand, knew the bus driver had a jot) to do, and I was going to make him look good. I signed every autograph on that bus. No big deal, right? Until I tell you that the young driver of that bus turned out to be Mike Ovitz. See what I mean?
    There was no place allowed for the likes of me in the firmament of actors. Almost anybody has it made today compared to my chances thirty-five years ago. Well, I shouldn't say it was unheard of. Richard Burton and Peter Sellers did okay, didn't they? Not to mention my buddy, Sean Connery. He seems to be keeping the creditors at bay.

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    GAMBIT
    Directed by Ronald Neame. Universal, 1966
    Pictured with Shirley Maclaine

    When I told my friends I was going to be an actor, they all had pretty much the same encouraging words for me: "What are you gong to do? Sweep the stage?" None of us had ever met anybody who'd been to drama school. I'm not sure we even knew there was such a place as a drama school - never mind anybody who'd made it to the big screen.
    Let me run through my curriculum vitae before I landed my first role. See what you think of my chances. I had worked in a laundry. I'd done a stint in a tea warehouse. I worked pneumatic drills on the road. I was the night porter in a hotel. I washed dishes in all the best restaurants. I remember making jewel boxes at one time. And I was a soldier.

    BLOOD AND WINE
    Directed by Bob Rafelson. 20th Century Fox, 1997.
    Pictured with Jack Nicholson

    BLOOD AND WINE
    Directed by Bob Rafelson. 20th Century Fox, 1997.
    Pictured with Jack Nicholson
    I was not researching roles, getting into the heads of my characters, doing heavy background on their psyches, feeling their pain. Nobody invited me to join the Actor's Studio. I was paying my rent. It's very difficult for people to comprehend that when I say I was broke at the age of twenty-nine, that I literally didn't have the price of a bowl of spaghetti down at the local diner. They think being broke is being down to your last couple of grand in the bank. My bank was in my pocket, and my