Supporting

So this is how pathetic the acting biz is: yesterday I went in for a tiny part in a feature film; Latina Nurse, accent, 7 speeches, 2 lines.
I knew EVERY one of the other 11 girls that had been called in. (We were sent straight to callbacks) The ONLY thing we had in common? We were Latina. Most of us had been in the business over 20 years. A lot of us are classicaly trained theatre actors. Some of us were VERY pretty, some not so much. All of us are no longer in our 20's. Some of us have had success. All of us were fighting for a role that was basically exposition.
Hi-diddle-dee-dee.
I should call my agent...

A tribute: The stupid things actors hear....

Things "civilians" say to actors (and probably shouldn't):

How do you know what to do with your hands when you're up there on stage?

How do you memorise all those lines?

Wow, that was really "something."

After a show, a woman comes RUNNING into the Green room, grabs my face and says, "I can FIX your nose!"

You should get a "real" job so you know what it's like to go to work every day.

My favorite..."so what DOES the Director do anyway?"

Well, to we voice over folk, a least favorite phrase is "Do you act, too?" *sigh*

Once I did a show in age make up, a lead. After I came out I was asked "Were you in the show, too?"

Oh! Or the ever popular... "Were you ever in [fill in the blank]? Now THAT was a show!"

That costume makes you look fat.

You sure sweat a lot .

The one that makes me crazy, "I've always thought of trying that."
Sure, it's easy. Give it a try.

"i did a play in high school!"

Or the ever popular, "What have I seen you in?"

I guess the camera doesn't add 10 pounds.

Wow you ARE smaller in person...

Nice costume!

"Why don't you just do a bunch of commercials at least to make some money"......yeah duh! why didnt I think of that!

Ha ha ha ha!!!! This is friggin' hilarious! After a performance of Caberet & strutting around on stage for over an hour in little more than a bikini, a little old lady approached me, during the lobby meet & greet we were required to do after the show, and she said "You were really nice." I stayed skinny to wear that & dry hump a chair so I could be nice.

Oh, where to start.
"What movie have I seen you in?" "Actually, I do theater." (very apologetic in her misunderstanding) "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were an actor."

(Gushing) "You were soooo great. We loved it. Everyone looked like they knew their lines."

And in interactive theater where we deliberately create "Harvey Korman" break the 4th wall moments -- "It was real good. (in a hushed tone) But not everybody stayed in character."

AND MY ALL TIME FAVORITE: "Is that your real butt?"

acting is not a real job, its a hobby, right?

To a director: You should tell the actors to speak louder.

"How do you get so funny?" As if that's answerable.

"So when are you going to get a REAL job?"

"What TV shows have I seen you in?"

Unfortunately, I've gotten this one a few times: "So, uh...heh heh heh...are those tits real?" Sigh.

I recently told a friend that I'd quit acting and she said, "Wow, R! That's like me giving up scrap-booking!!"

oh! Or once my Mom suggested that I come with her to meet Glenn Close so she could see if I "have something!" (like herpes?)

I always get...Why don't you just go be in a movie?

For the first ten years of my marriage, my husband kept waiting for me "to grow up."

Have I seen you in anything?

For Actors: Uh huh, yeah, but what's your other job?

And I have to throw one in for Stage Managers of course!

-What do you do?... See More
-I'm a Stage Manager.
-Oh, so like... you want to be an actor?

I remember, we're doing the Scottish play at PAC and as Hecate I'm holding my arm out like Darth Vader and across the stage Di is very dramatically choking and rising up....very scary. And they asked ME how I did that.

Various Contributors. Please keep adding!

It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's.... My Dad!

My father is an extraordinary man. His public face is that of SuperDR, efficient, brilliant, able to soothe a patient in a single visit. His family face is a little bit more Clark Kent. Fun, kooky, slightly nuts. Abuelito is adored by his grandchildren and children alike.
His main interest in life is his family. He might follow sports, or TV shows, but he drops everything when his family needs him. Come to think of it I don't think he follows sports.
He IS obsessed with the French language, and watched movies with the French turned on, which can be terribly disorienting while watching action films, where most of the dialog consists of grunts and groans. But those are French dubbed grunts and groans, which can elicit giggles from the less advanced of us in the family.
He is also a poet, and I hope he publishes them, or at least puts them up on a blog like this one so they can be read by the wider public. Writers need an audience too, dad!
One crystal clear memory of my Dad that made a huge impression on me: We were at Disneyland waiting to get in, impatient, excited, and in my case, surly since I was a preteen and desperate to be cool. An elderly woman had a fainting spell, her family panics, my dad puts on his cool, collected Doctor face, assists the woman, calms the family, makes sure the situation is well in hand as paramedics arrive, then gets back in line with us, shedding his SuperDr persona and going back to being our beloved, befuddled Papi.
I love you, Papi. We are a better place for you and your superpowers.

SHshshshshshattered...

I just dropped a wine glass, which since it was on my super cool industrial loft concrete floor, shattered into a zillion pieces. I was washing the dishes and was so distracted that I simply dropped it onto the floor. I have been obsessed with the recent murders that have rocked the OC acting community. A local actor, Dan Wozniack confessed to murdering 2 people, dismembering one, a war vet, and flinging pieces of his body in a local LB park, luring a woman to the apartment of the guy he murdered and shooting her to throw suspicion on the dead guy. And before anyone I love panics, (I'm looking at you Ma...)I didn't know the guy. He had worked for Tom's Gourmet Detective and at the All American Melodrama, I know plenty of people who know him, who counted him as a pal, but I myself didn't know him.
Here is one of the grand Guignol grotesqueries I can't stop thinking about. He murders and dismembers a human being, then continues to his performance of "Nine" that night at Hunger Artist in the OC. THEN the next day he murders the girl... and performs in his closing night. With his fiance, who is in the cast. Jeeeeesssuuusss.
The way I figure it, (and I promise I am obsessing) he decided since the guy he murdered (for a paltry $2000) was an Afghanistan war vet, he would be an immediate suspect for the girls murder because of PTSD, or what have you. So this poor, innocent girl, lured to the apartment of a guy she tutored, died in what to me was the coldest most calculated and horrifying part of the story: The murderer needed a prop. She was set dressing for his own personal Murder Mystery.
I have worked with plenty of weirdos, psychos, pathological liars, and addicts. The theatre can be a dumping ground for the walking wounded, who use it for their personal therapy session. Plenty of people need psychiatric help, not a two year conservatory degree. But what drove this guy to murder? It had to be premeditated. He lured the soldier to a theatre, probably because the prop shop had all the proper tools to dismember and dispose of a body. (I'll never look at load out the same way again.) My god. He needed money, he was about to be evicted. He was arrested at a Hungtington Beach restaurant... something as prosaic as Hooters perhaps? The Mundane Murderer; murder most foul? Even Shakespeare would have found it implausible.

I am sitting here fairly bored, chomping on one-half of a banana. I am on a diet, but my body hasn't seemed to have gotten the news. In spite of working out HARD 5 times a week the scale hasn't budged and neither has the oatmeal that is residing on the formerly flat little plain known as my belly. I feel betrayed by my metabolism. I don't get it... nothing is working... Even the miracle that is Pilates hasn't gotten the job done.
On top of THAT annoyance, is the fact that I am CRAVING to work on something. Adult. Nudity OK. I think I am done with kiddie shows for a while. T's publishing deals are all in the machine, so I have been working on my own scripts and I vacillate between pleasure at their cleverness and sheer unadulterated loathing of my use of the cutesy-poo.
On top of THAT, We NEED to get ourselves into a house somehow. With a nice yard. Otherwise someone is going to murder someone here in the secret annex. (which for the record was 200 sq ft smaller than our little hovel) T, L and I get along splendidly, but in the heat of the summer, with builders drilling and screwing and hammering next door, and one episode of "Thomas" too many.... I'm pretty sure I will be the sacrificial lamb.
We have tons of cash, our only debt is our very small mortgage. We are PARSIMONIOUS to a ridiculous degree. We could go to many states in this country, plop down our suitcase full of $100's and buy a nice house. It's so freaking' tempting. We have looked at Minnesota, Biloxi, Seattle. But NOOOOO.... here we are, in SoCal... It's so BORING! I am done with the traffic, the heat, the traffic, the lack of greenery, the ruination of the land by developers, the bloody TRAFFIC! Why the heck does anybody want to live here anyway? It's not that nice. Look at Newport Coast, ugly look-a-like houses, peopled by Real Housewife types and their spawn. Beaches overrun by tourists,and Frat boys. Bleah. And anyway the last commercial I shot, I shot in my own home on my own computer. So do we REALLY need to live here? Maybe we should move to Arizona... Oh no wait, the cops would assume I was Lilo's nanny, ask for my passport, I would mouth off and get hauled to the pokey...
Sigh.
Seriously universe... gimme something interesting to do!