Time to get your groom on…

Last night I was having dinner with some friends, one of whom is an actor. He is very good looking and has always worn color contacts, so his eyes kind of pop out at you. He is looking for a new manager and I got him a meeting with someone who I really like. I think they will be a good fit. Anyway, as the drinks were flowing and I was being asked all kinds of questions, I looked at my friend and said, “Look, before you go into meet the manager, I have to ask you about your eyes.” He looked at me inquisitively, “Are they contacts?” “Yes” was the answer and I proceeded to tell him that I thought it would be a good idea to go to his meeting “au natural.” He was confused, concerned and perplexed. The color contacts make us look at his eyes, but I get the feeling that the reason he is not booking as much work as he could be booking is that the eye color is so intense that it is distracting to his acting and his auditioning. If the Casting Director is distracted, that is not a good thing. I should be focusing on the acting not the eye color.

 

At another audition this week, an actor came in and did a very good job at his audition for the Director. After he left the audition room, I asked the Director what he thought. The Director thought he was good, but something was wrong. “It’s his hair,” I said, nonchalantly. When he was auditioning, he kept looking down at the page and on the top of his head was a shiny bald spot. His hairstyle was also not enhancing his acting; it was kind of covering up the imperfections. The actor is in his 20’s so, when auditioning for a leading action hero, the bald spot and bad hair style got in the way, it will subliminally make the Director (or me) feel like something is just not right.

 

Now, I kind of hate telling you all of this, because it make what I do seem sort of petty, but in reality, I deal in what looks right for a role on a giant screen in a movie theater. Actors have to be aware of how they look, it’s part of the deal: You get to be famous and successful and we get to scrutinize every ounce of your body. Of course there are a lot of exceptions, and what I am writing about has more to do with younger actors, but we all judge people every day for the way they look, and if someone is making you feel differently about them and or their performance because their look isn’t matching up to the characteristics and needs of the character, then this can sometime, more often then not be a problem for the actor in getting hired.

 

Distractions like colored contact lenses, bad hair, iffy skin issues, these can all affect the outcome of an audition.