Actor

Okay, my tips are going to sound a little contrasting. The first one is work hard, learn as much as you can, study whenever you can, be humble, be willing to learn always, and really just practice, practice, practice. My second tip is to try to like let go of all that work that you've done, which doesn't mean that you ignore it. It's just that you don't pinpoint focus in on like doing everything correctly and making sure you're following all the acting rules, because when it comes down to it, you need to be comfortable being yourself and not be worried about what other people think, which sounds impossible in this industry, but when you can get to that area where you are just comfortable and confident that you've done the work and you don't need to stress out about it anymore, that's when you'll find success and that's when you'll be able to bring yourself to the roles.

Tips for success. That's difficult because my success is a different definition than your success. So you need to define that success and build steps to get there. I am looking for specific roles and those roles don't come all the time. There's a lot of waiting, a lot of downtime, and in that downtime is my time to balance my life, come back to who I am, the essence of who I am, my core. There's a lot of actors that get lost out there because I'm going to be honest with you, when a project ends, literally that character that you were, that character dies and there's a grieving process for that and a lot of people aren't prepared for that. But you need to grieve and then you need to know how to move on. How are you going to distract yourself from the end of this project and nothing happening right now? Well, that's balance and you got to balance yourself. The success can't just be industry related. You've got to find other things that you can find success in.

Hi, Michael Flynn. Yeah, I'm an actor. So, tips for success in the acting business. It is a business. So, my tip would be get really, really good at it because I think that's what I'm pretty sure that that's what good actors and producers and writers or whatever, that's what they look for. They want the best absolute actor they can find to be in their film because it reflects on them, reflects on their film. They want their film to be as good as possible and really good actors can make a film better. That's all there is to it. Question is, how do you get better? And that can take a long time to go through that. But one of the best things is get training and stuff like that. But if you don't have something really inside you that works, that really makes you capable of being an actor, then it probably won't work for you. That's my guess. So anyway, but if you want to do it, do it.

Always be ready. Like, so always be working on your craft. So like, I was at a fashion show, you know, at one point in time, and then it'd been like three months before my next one. So you want to make sure that you are still going to the gym, that you're still working out, that your, you know, your physique is still what you have in your photos, in your headshots, in your body shots. You know, did you, did you have a tan? You know, make sure that your nails are manicured. You know, when you go to have an acting audition, make sure that you feel really good at it. You're crisp. You can, you can improv or if it's in person and they welcome improv, that you feel fresh and ready to do that, you know, on the fly. The same with auditioning, continue to read film scripts and be ready.

I would say first of all, be yourself. Find out what you do well. I know that I'm kind of a quirky guy who usually comes off pretty serious and upscale. I know my type. You want to know your type. You also want to know kind of your texture. I, again, I tend to do more serious things, although I love doing comedy, so even my comedy tends to be serious comedy. Find out how you're going to be cast in the industry. Never give up. If you want to be an actor, it's hard work. It'll take you years and years and years. The famous actors that I know, none of them are content with where they're at. So when you get your first job, you won't think, I've made it, I've done it. You're always going to want more. So just know you'll never be satisfied with how far you are.

My tip for success is learn. Get on the internet, download some scene studies, and study the scenes. Get with your wife, your partner, or a friend, and let them help you. Just work a scene until you get it perfect. Just learn. The more you learn, the better you get. That's all I can say.

My biggest tip for success would be to just do it. Just put yourself out there and don't wait for something to come to you. If you're constantly putting yourself out there, if you're constantly making things, working your instrument, being in other projects, meeting people that are also creating and have similar creative mindset like you do, then it'll set you up for success and it'll make you a stronger actor altogether. So I would just say don't wait, you're ready now. You're ready to start working right, right now and you can, it's just totally on you.

No matter who you are, no matter what project you're on, you are but a cog in the entire machine. You're a spoke in the wheel. Everyone that's there is being paid to do what they do, so they're all professionals. If no one's getting paid, then you can do whatever you want. But when everyone's getting paid, don't buy into this image of actors being pampered and taken care of and mollycoddled. Those are the jerks that no one wants to work with. The best actors I've ever worked with that are as famous as you can be, and I've met them all, not all of them, but I've met a lot of them, they're down to earth, they're grounded, they're real people, they have a job, and they know that everyone else on that set has a job as well. And they don't snap their fingers to get their coffee or their palm fronds. They're just good people.

I think that the best tip that I have for success is really just being yourself and recognizing your own strengths. Because at the end of the day, you bring something as an individual and an actor that no one else is going to have because every single person is different. And so being able to understand yourself and whether that's understanding your voice or understanding how to use your body correctly or whatever that is, understanding who you are and incorporating that into your characters makes it so much more personal and real. And I think, in my experience, has made it a lot easier to be cast and to be recognized as an actor.

I would say get experience. I talked about this a little bit, but as a crew member, there's a lot of positions you can get without having to go to film school, such as a PA or a producer's assistant. You basically are a gopher, and it might seem beneath a person, and it kind of is, but it's a great way to learn how films work, and more importantly, to see if you actually want to be an actor, because it is not nearly as glamorous as it looks. There's a lot of hard work, a lot of ups and downs, so if you can get these smaller crew positions, you can learn, like, hey, do I actually want to dedicate my time and so much of my energy into this? So you can learn a lot before you full-on invest everything you have into it.

Get your stuff out there. YouTube, literally, the reason why I get to do acting full-time is because of YouTube because people were able to discover the work we were doing on BYU television. On YouTube, we had a few sketches go viral and it's made a huge difference because those viral sketches helped lead me to commercial work and other things. So even those silly moments and stuff, put it on YouTube, create your own channel, take your social media presence, all those things successfully. You don't have to be an influencer. That's a different thing. You can be a serious actor, but even like Will Smith, all these actors are starting to take social media more seriously because it can be a great resource to landing better jobs. And even if you have a few hundred followers.

There are a ton of things you can do to set yourself up for success. Training, as I've said before, is a really big one. Just keep training, but also bring yourself to every role. Don't try to create some unknown entity, but try to find ways to connect to the role with yourself. I find that that's always an added advantage when I can bring a piece of me to each character. Another one would be watch movies, watch performances, go to the theater, go to shows, steal from the best. That's a huge trick. If you see someone doing something and you like it, try it for your next performance if it makes sense. Another tip I would say is do less. Always do less. A lot of people try too hard with acting. Pull back. It'll look more natural.

There's two tips that come to mind when I think of tips for success. The first is to train, keep training. You're never done as a student and so even if you're at the level of Meryl Streep or Tom Hanks, you know someone, an A-list, you're still working on your craft. The other tip is to experience life. You can't build that empathy with these characters and create these backgrounds for these characters if you have lived a sheltered life and haven't experienced a lot of those feelings. It's hard to create those feelings if you've never felt grief or happiness or euphoria and so a big piece of advice is just get out there, go live your life and make memories, have adventures. It'll translate into your performances.

My tip for success is to just go out and make your own content. It's the best way to get yourself out there and to get views on you and your acting. Just find some friends, get your phone, you can even just film all the parts yourself. There's a lot of content out there right now. Just go out and have fun making stuff.

So my first tip for success is to have the passion. You have to desire this job more than anything else. And you have to be willing to put in the work. Like, if you're a guitarist, you're gonna play the guitar every day to get better. As an actor, you have to figure out what it is that you can do to get better as an actor, each and every day.

Whatever your call time is, arrive 30 minutes early. If your call time's 8am, be there at 7.30. You'll thank me for it. Everyone will thank you for it. There's less time than you think. Everything will go smoother. Just trust me. And then also, know your lines. This goes without saying, but like, learn your lines. Show up. Be a professional. Be serious about continuity. Pick things up with the same hand every time. The editor will thank you. The scripty will thank you. Your performances will be better. They won't cut you out as much. Be a professional.

I'm an actor myself but I also work with actors and creatives and the number one thing I help my people with is their mindset because this is an industry with a lot of highs and a lot of lows, a lot of ups, a lot of downs, a lot of wins, a lot of what's going on and so the number one thing I help them remember is that everything is working out for you and what is for you cannot pass you even when you're like super invested in a role or a job that you really thought was going to yours, a character that you really wanted to play and you didn't get it, it's easy to feel heartbroken but you have to remember that the things that are meant for you are always going to be yours. This is also an industry where people really focus a lot on competition and in my opinion there is no competition because competition is scarcity energy, competition believes that there's not enough for everybody but if you are an abundant person, if you have an abundance mindset, you know that there's more than enough in the world, there's more than enough to go around and there will always be enough for you.