"Aspiring Actresses"

[Lyrus]

Is it just me ... or has there been an increase in them recently?

I apologize if I sound sexist for I mean no offense when I say this, but really: Do these women think that just because they can look a little pretty then they have a golden ticket straight to Hollywood? What exactly is this attraction to the film industry about, anyway? What is so great about it? Do these girls not realize that a happy ending for someone in the film industry, most of the time, doesn't exist? And what is sad is, most of the time these women are not prepubescent dreamers, or their daydreaming would be acceptable. They are generally 16-29 year olds! Are these people not adults? Sigh. And of course, most of the time these 'aspiring actresses' tend to be eyeliner whores or partygirls whose only claim to fame is that people know their vagina better than their face. I have no idea how many times I have heard this line before:

"Oh I'm an aspiring actress, sometimes I film movies for practice."

And when I ask, "Well have you ever gotten any work?" The answer is always no. Hell, even when I ask "Have you been to an audition, even?" The answer is still no. By the way, I don't mean to offend any serious individuals who actually earnestly work hard to become actresses. I refer to these as "working actresses", not "aspiring actresses."

Well, thats the end of my rant. Anyone else meet of these strange people lately?

[Oniya]

It probably doesn't help that there have been a spate of people that are, as one commentator put it, 'famous for being famous'.  I first heard this term applied to Anna Nicole Smith, for what it's worth.  There's this image out there that if you're seen on the right person's arm, you have it made and you'll never have to do any real work.

I'm willing to bet that these 'aspiring' actresses have no conception of the rigors of actual film work either - getting up at the crack of dawn to do readings, living in a trailer while on some 'exotic' (read: middle of nowhere with actual bugs and weather) location, and redoing a scene 83 times to fit the director's 'vision'.

As Dionne said back in '68:

L.A. is a great big freeway.
Put a hundred down and buy a car.
In a week, maybe two, they'll make you a star
Weeks turn into years. How quick they pass
And all the stars that never were
Are parking cars and pumping gas.

[Lyll]

Lately I've had some surprising experiences, that's sure. I get times by times requests of young girls (boys too) who would like to become actresses (actors). In a good case, these are youngs who spent a time in some theater school, or at least at a course, in a less good case they don't have any experiences, but they are talenteds, and in the bad case they are just "aspiring" without experiences, knowledge and either, sadly, talent. The foundation where I work as a director is opened to everybody, the main "selection rules" are first the commitment for the profession, saying the "call", and second the talent. (the third is being trustable and the activity). I'm quite a patient person (colleagues say this at least, however it can happen that I work with a lot of polite people together (: ), and I take as a challenge to bring out of people interested in the theater play what we just can (I mean, them and me while working together). I don't take hopeless anybody, maybe a bit labor-intensive, but I love my work, so no problem.

Lately I had to realise surprisedly, that even in my not-too-big country in Eastern-Europe, the professions related to theater (actresses, actors, costume- and setmakers and directors) began to become much more popular than they were earlier, 10 years ago. Not mentioning the probable causes of this change, I have had some experiences what would be funny, if they wouldn't be so tragic. I got letter already from 15-25 years old girls who took a hard job - obviously - for convincing me how much they would like to become actresses, but weren't able to write a letter 3-4 lines without serious grammatical faults and mistypings (on their first language, of course). (I can accept that someone can be a very talented actress without wide grammar knowledge too, but basically the reading is an important part of the job - and I say this as having two actor colleagues who have dyslexia, but can express themself enough elaborately.)

Their motivations in general:
1.) earning a lot of money (what they think, the culture is a big business?)
2.) without hard work (I met 2 of them who said: "I would like to be an actress because I don't feel like to work.") (it's so obvious they don't have a clue about the whole job)
3.) meeting boys (omg)

After all, this kind of girls don't get jobs in the theater groups, because nobody (neither me, neither other directors I suppose) take them serious, but the tendency is still sad. I hope it will pass away like other fashions, and until this time, I keep my humour sense and the smile.

[Trieste]

What you're referring to are not 'aspiring actresses', even if that's what they call themselves. What they are are wannabes. There are plenty of actual hard-working aspiring actresses out there - and when you imply that only children dream of being actresses on the stage or screen, Lyrus, you marginalize those hard-working, decent people. It's like the women who are 'models', and then the women who are actually models. One group thinks they can make it by just being pretty (and sometimes they're right, depending on circumstances) and one group is willing to learn how to walk, how to pose, how to sit in a makeup chair for three hours without whining...

[Lyrus]

The fact they all refer to themselves as "aspiring actresses" just makes me give them the label and be done with it, Trieste; though I must again, express my apologies to any actual hardworking actresses reading this thread. It irks me when they believe they are "liek, so much betterz" than actual actresses in the film industry. And while that is sometimes true in the case of some starlets who cannot act and merely repeat the same pose, same line, and same face over and over again, its infuriating when they cannot act and believe they can.

"So ... how well can you act?"
"Oh I'm really good at it! I've been doing it for like, forever!"
"So am I right in assuming you landed several jobs?"
"Nope, not yet."
"How can you not have had a single job if you've done it 'for like forever'...?"
"Oh I act in front of my mirror. Sometimes my friends film videos of me."
"... With a video camera outfitted with nightvision mounted on a tripod I Imagine."

But as someone whose experimenting with scriptwriting as well as other forms of written works, I get rather enraged at the thought of my stuff being used by complete morons. If the film industry does take me up on my stuff, I'm not sure whoever they pick will even be suitable anymore.

[Trieste]

Well, what else are they supposed to call themselves?

[Lilias]

I've never had any brushes with the species (I live out of the way, and don't move in particularly artistic circles, anyway - the closest I've come to the film industry was being delayed on board a plane just landed at Heathrow because the second unit for The Bourne Ultimatum was filming in the arrivals lounge), but the attitude is nothing new. It has been here since the advent of cinema itself, and, if anything, was particularly rabid during the silent screen era, when beauty trumped everything else. It went slightly towards the back burner with the fall of the great studios, at the end of the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, but I don't believe it's a species heading for extinction any time soon.

[Will]

Why is this in Elliquiy U? XD

[Trieste]

Who knows?

[Lyrus]

Well, I had no idea where it fit.

*shrug!*

[LIAR]

Well, what else are they supposed to call themselves?

Hopeless dreamers.

[Lyrus]

Social moths.

[Paradox]

Well, I had no idea where it fit.

*shrug!*

Either Off-Topic or On-Topic would have been a decent place for it.

[Will]

Or Bad & Ugly.