Interviews
Interview: American Idiot’s Trent Saunders Talks Life on the Road, St. Jimmy and Belting Out Green Day Songs
Trent also talks about how he got the part and audience craziness
Q & A: Anne Heche on Her New Religious-Themed Comedy, ‘Save Me’
Anne also talks about trying to quit acting when she was younger and more!
Q&A: Scott Foley talks ‘The Goodwin Games’ and Why He Loves Working in Television
Scott: “My job as an actor is to find the real moments of the characters”
Click Here For More Interviews!Acting Advice
Fail Boldly
Make the choices that you are scared of. Experiment. Play. Fail!
Keep the Drama on the Stage: How to Get Along with Your Fellow Actors
Ego and competition! 3 Steps to get along with your actor friends
The Actor’s Guide to the Twitter-verse
There’s a right way and a wrong way to tweet. Dallas shares 2 easy tips to help you make the most out of your tweets
Want To Read More Columns? Click Here!
Latest News
The Great Gatsby’s Carey Mulligan on Auditioning with Leonardo DiCaprio: “We spent about an hour and a half together auditioning, and I loved it”May 9, 2013 | Leave a Comment
Carey Mulligan won the part of Daisy Buchanan over many of Hollywood’s most famous starlets. But the actress claims one of the best rewards was working with costar Leonardo DiCaprio.
“We were doing a scene right towards the end of the film, and Leonardo was playing Gatsby and he was playing Tom Buchanan and Nick Carraway,” she said in an interview with The New York Post. “So he’d sit in one chair and play his character, then he’d jump in another chair and play Tom, and then be standing up and he’d be Nick. He was learning all the different lines. He was incredible.” Continue »
May 9, 2013 | 2 Comments
Lists always annoy me because of their ridiculous rankings. But I think this one in particular might take the cake for ridiculousness.
Reader’s Digest published a list of “The 100 Most Trusted People in America.” According to the magazine, it “teamed up with research firm The Wagner Group to poll over 1,000 Americans and discover which individuals and the ideals they represent have earned our confidence.”
That’s pretty heavy criteria. So naturally according to those thousand Americans, the most trusted person in America is… Tom Hanks?!? Continue »
May 9, 2013 | Leave a Comment
On May 16th, The Office will be closing its doors. After an eight-year run, Jim Pam, Dwight and the rest of the gang will be moving on to bigger and better things (hopefully). I’ve watched every episode of the long running series and I’ll definitely be sad to see the show go.
Before getting the role of Jim, John Krasinski was like almost every other actor in New York. He’d work his job as a waiter during the week then run off to an audition when he could. He had booked a few things but “not anything that would allow me to claim that I was a working actor and didn’t need another job,” he said during a conference call. Booking The Office was like winning the lottery, “except with a winning lottery ticket you just get money, and with this you get a whole change of your life.”
If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll love this interview. And honestly, even if you’re not, there’s some great stuff in here about what it’s like to go from hustling for auditions to becoming a star on a major network show. In this interview, John and Executive Producer/Writer Greg Daniels talk about the end of The Office, John’s audition, his past commercials and more. It’s a long one but it’s really great.
The Office airs on Thursdays at 9 on NBC – for only 2 more weeks! Continue »
May 9, 2013 | Leave a Comment
While the Oscars can’t seem to find someone who wants to host more than once (except for Billy Crystal, who probably clears his calendar every year just in case), the Tonys will be going with a regular: Neil Patrick Harris.
The 2013 ceremony will be Harris’ fourth time hosting in five years (Sean Hayes hosted in 2010). He’s gotten great reviews each time out, so why not? According to the New York Daily News, which broke the news yesterday (everyone else confirmed it today), Harris has “quietly” been going to all the nominated shows over the past few days. Therefore we can probably expect the usual song and dance greatness Harris can bring to the stage riffing on the nominees and nominated shows. Continue »
May 8, 2013 | Leave a Comment
Inside the Actors Studio, hosted by James Lipton, will celebrate reaching 250 episodes with a special 2-hour show on Wednesday, May 29th at 7p.m.
Lipton sits down for brand new interviews with former guests including Actors Studio alumnus Bradley Cooper, Robert DeNiro, Jennifer Lopez, Christopher Walken, Barbara Walters, Dave Chappelle, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, Ellen Burstyn and Spike Lee. Continue »
May 8, 2013 | Leave a Comment
Most actors — no matter how successful — likely have played some role that they’re not exactly proud of for various reasons. Maybe it had to do the with the quality of the film, or they did something embarrassing in it, or maybe it was a commercial for an awkward product (nobody really wants to be the smelly person in a deodorant commercial, right?) When it comes to indie star Greta Gerwig, she has gone through phases of regretting some of her past films — particularly when the offers weren’t coming in.
Gerwig admits that she has changing perceptions on her past work, and some films she previously regretted she no longer does. She explains, “I’ve never worked on anything that I haven’t in some way enjoyed. I’ve gone through times where I regretted movies that I now don’t regret. I was naked in lots of stuff for a while. And it was like, ‘Why have I been naked in everything, and I’m a whore, and everybody thinks I’m a softcore porn star.’ I was so ashamed. I remember going through all these like great actresses, like Cate Blanchett’s never been naked, Meryl Streep’s never been naked… Even when people would present me with like, ‘Well, Kate Winslet was naked,’ I was like, in a period piece! Now I don’t feel ashamed of it. So much of it is based on where you are as a person.” Continue »
May 8, 2013 | Leave a Comment
Written by Dallas Travers, CEC
If you’re like me, you’ve realized that Twitter holds a lot of potential for relationship building in the business because of the direct line of communication it offers you.
Everyday, I see more actors, agents, casting directors and filmmakers engage in powerful online communication using Twitter as their tool.
Everyday, I also see a lot of actors waste time tweeting away and wondering why their followers aren’t responding.
Well, there’s a right way and a wrong way to tweet, so let me share two easy tips to help you make the most out of your tweets. Continue »
May 8, 2013 | Leave a Comment
There’s not much background Mackenzie Crook can get about his character, Orell, on HBO’s Game of Thrones besides brushing up on the novels. That’s because it’s hard to investigate being a ‘skinchanger.’
“There’s a limited amount of research I can do about warging, what it’s like to do that, because obviously people can’t,” he said in an interview with Vulture. “But it’s a really interesting character to have, a really deep and thoughtful character. I’m not usually asked to play those types of guys. He’s got depth, definitely.”
Crook has become somewhat known for roles that feature his eyes—as a wooden-eyed Ragetti in the Pirates of the Caribbean films and now when Orell connects with the eagle and his eyes turn white. “That was put in post,” he admitted. “I just had to hold my eyes open, unblinking, which was kind of difficult in Iceland, because I was staring right into a blizzard. Snowflakes were landing on my eyeballs, but I wasn’t allowed to blink for the duration of that shot.” Continue »
May 8, 2013 | Leave a Comment
Olga Kurylenko is ready to prove she’s more than just a pretty face. Although she got her start modeling and starred as a Bond girl in Quantum of Solace, she’s hoping to branch out more.
“That’s not what an actor hopes to play,” she said in an interview with The New York Post. “They’ve mostly been dull and just arm candy.”
With her new role in Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder, Kurylenko did as much preparation as possible. “I had to read three Russian novels: Anna Karenina, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov,” she recalled. “They were very tiny little novels. After that it was just discussions about what I drew from the books, how we can compose the character, and what similarities are there between [her character] and the different female characters in those books.” Continue »
May 8, 2013 | 3 Comments
While he never garnered great reviews, Mike Tyson just completed a three-month tour of one-man show Undisputed Truth across the United States. Snicker all you want, but Tyson has built up with a noteworthy acting resume over the last few years, with scene-stealing cameos as himself in The Hangover and The Hangover Part II and a featured role in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. However, Tyson is adamant that he plans on continuing his acting career, and even has a specific Shakespeare role he would like to tackle some day.
He revealed his knowledge of the Bard to reporters a few days before his show ended its run in Chicago by asking, “Wouldn’t Shakespeare be awesome? That black guy … could you imagine me in Othello?”
Tyson later backpedaled a bit on whether he was prepared to play the Moor of Venice, but also confesses that he believes he can do it, saying, “Anything you give me time to prepare, I can do. I don’t think I am ready for that yet, but I would like to try.” Continue »
