Emily Ellet

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?  “I mean what I say all the time!” you’re probably scoffing to yourself.  “What’s so hard about being an actor if that’s all there is to it?” The difference is that when you say a sentence in real life, it comes from all the feelings and circumstances you’ve experienced in the months, weeks, days, and often minutes leading up to that moment.  You can’t separate what you’re about to say from what you’re thinking and feeling, unless you’re a phe

It’s so kindly meant, I know, and it’s such a universal understanding that auditioning all the time is a heartrending experience because of all the rejection.  But I’d like to set the record straight once and for all: rejection is not what makes the actor’s life so hard. It would actually be wonderful to have a casting director say, “I’m sorry, but you’re not what we’re looking for.”  Or to have a producer frown and say, “I don’t like your voice very much.”  Or to have a writ

Missing from this photo – a distinctive crouched posture. There’s a fascinating disconnect between theatre programs around the country and the acting business they’re supposedly training you for.  Nearly all programs emphasize the transformative power necessary in an actor: as a petite lithe female, I should nevertheless be able to play a seventy-five year-old man with ease if I’m a real actor, or so the attitude goes.  So we learn Stanislavsky’s methods for psychologically c

This is me.  No, seriously. It is a fact that as a nonunion actor/singer/dancer, waiting is your #1 job.  Standing in lines, crammed into holding rooms, or fidgeting on the bench outside the room.  People tell you that your job is auditioning, but it’s not – it’s surviving the eternal waiting period to psyche yourself up for your (literal) thirty seconds to perform for someone who may not even look up from their iPhone.  And you do this every single day. Well, on the days whe