One of the ways by which astrology tricks human brains is via the Barnum effect, which is the process by which individuals take general and vague statements that could apply to anyone and anywhere, and find personal meaning in them.
If you actually do cold readings, it's very close to how people actually talk, because you're experiencing these thoughts anew every moment, and trying to make them come out coherently.
I auditioned for 'The Office,' and I don't know if it was a role I could do, but I liked the character. You do one take, and you're reading with a person who's just sitting in a chair and not really... you're not playing off someone, which is what I like to do. I like to play around and find the moment.
Well, the hard part about doing auditions is that the person reading you the lines, they're not really into it. They're just going, 'Oh really, so why do you think that?' And they're just looking at a piece of paper.
Honestly, acting is the most work when you're unemployed. For me, the actual acting part is never hard. It's the politics and basically everything around the acting that is difficult.
Improv definitely made me a better auditioner, without a doubt. We did do an audition semester in grad school, and that was helpful for those times that you have a script and you have a few days to prepare it, to really work on sides. But the auditions I was doing in New York, if you got it the night before, you were very lucky.
I've never pursued a role. I always hear stories about actors going after parts and I'm, like, 'How do they do that?' It seems so weird. It seems like a total myth or something.
People used to ask me questions on my blog about how to break into the acting industry. You often have to start out in parts where you have very few words, but you still have to try to make an impact.
Acting was absolutely my first focus. I graduated high school in L.A., and two weeks afterwards, I moved to New York City, and I got a job in a mail room, and I got an agent, doing what actors do, with head shots and all the rest of it.
There's acting, and then there's auditioning; mastering auditioning is sort of the first thing an actor really needs to nail down when he or she wants to get a part.
All the cold-reading clairvoyants and the nonsensical astrologers and absurd ESP merchants and other such people who talk about vibrations and energies.... God, if there's a word that drives me mad it's "energy" used in a nonsensical way-don't get me started!
Acting takes a lot of practice, but so does auditioning.
I think there are a lot of actors who are excellent at cold reads, and they go to an audition, and they read the part and nail it, but then when it comes to the performance, they don't have something.
Personally, I need to learn every word on the page before I go in and audition. I have not mastered the skill of holding pages in my hand and acting with pages in my hand. I find that every time I have to look at the page it takes me completely out of the scene.
I like auditioning. I like working on material. I just love working. I like the chance to work on material. Sometimes it helps to not be going into a room cold and to know people. I've spent a lot of years getting to know people in the business, and that really helps. It depends. You can have some pretty terrible auditions.
I recommend doing some sort of acting class, something that can eventually get you in front of an agent or a manager, and practice is very important.
I did everything pretty cliche as an actor in New York. I read the trades, I sent out 'head shots.'
Auditioning is an entirely different part of what we do as actors.
As an actor sometimes we sit and wait for projects to be handed to us and we don't really work. We expect our agents and managers to know who we are and to see who we are and offer us a part or send us out and submit us.
I'm good at cold reading; I've made a living doing this, and most of the time I do audition, but it's very tough. It's a very uncomfortable, awkward process. You never get used to it, really.
