Читать книгу Breaking into Acting For Dummies - Larry Garrison - Страница 80

Your acting resume is meant to highlight your acting experience and qualifications, so don’t list anything on your resume that detracts from your acting career or experience. Here are some items to avoid listing:

 Your age: Usually give an age range with a span of about ten years. If you’re 65, but you look 50–60, you’re better off choosing what you look like.

 Salary requirements: Never do that.

 Career objectives: Everyone reading your resume already knows you want to act.

Many actors exaggerate their past experiences because they falsely believe that doing so makes them look more credible and professional in the eyes of a casting director. Casting directors know that everyone has to start out as a novice and that even the biggest stars were once beginners with no credits, too. So don’t be ashamed of how little you may have accomplished so far, instead, revel in the fact that you’re a “fresh talent with a different look.”

Even worse than exaggeration is outright lying. Although people may stretch the truth a bit when creating a corporate resume, lying on an acting resume can get you in serious trouble in show business. If you lie about performing in a film, casting directors can often verify your claims by researching online or talking to people in the biz they know.

One of the most popular show business websites is the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), which allows anyone to search a film or television production to find out about an actor’s, director’s, or producer’s previous experience. If you list a film or TV credit, make sure that it’s real, or else someone can easily find the truth with just the click of a mouse. Lying simply brands you as an untrustworthy actor, and if a casting director can’t trust you to tell the truth about your acting experience, why should he trust that you’ll be able to act in a role?

Casting directors are people, and most people respect honesty (even if they’re not always very honest themselves). If you lie and get caught, you’re liable to hurt your career worse than any amount of lying would’ve been able to help it.