“Why don’t you just do an advert?”

I was chatting to my mum this morning, filling her in with what I’d been up to, and why I hadn’t called for ten days…(sorry, Mum!). During the conversation about my abnormally busy last week, I said the words “two of the auditions were for adverts, so I wasn’t really expecting to get those”, to which she replied “you always say that about advert castings, why? Why wouldn’t you get them?”

It got me thinking about that particular aspect of the world I live in. Now… first of all…. there are some BEAUTIFUL commercials made. There are. Like this one, for example … OF COURSE IT WAS GOING TO BE THAT ONE! DO YOU NOT KNOW ME AT ALL?

Yes, I know, it’s “The Man” trying to sell you something, and I know we’re supposed to be Sticking It To Him, but sometimes it’s something you need. (YES! I DID totally need that serum for my face which cost a million pounds and, now it turns out, flakes off the second you put foundation over the top of it. I DID.) Whatever your opinion on the matter, advertising funds networks and theatre companies, which in turn fund productions, so the reality is, that if you want to watch Broadchurch (you should!), somehow that needs to be paid for. You’re at perfect liberty to get up and go for a wee, top up your glass of wine, or check twitter to see what everyone thinks about Broadchurch (#OMG!), Trump (#NotMyPresident), or Ed Miliband’s excellent rendition of Take On Me (#SWOON!). Nobody has chained you to the sofa…. or if they have, and that’s what you’re into, then by all means, proceed, I’m not going to judge.

But I’m not here to defend the World of Advertising, my thoughts are about the big, bad, excellently toned and coiffed World of Acting, and the relationship actors have with adverts.

“So, why are you becoming an actor?”

“Because I really, really, REALLY want to be in a commercial”

….. is a conversation that nobody in the history of the world ever had…

The actual conversation goes:

“So, why are you becoming an actor?”

“Because I love people, and I want to get inside their heads (not in a weird way). I want to experience how it feels to be them. I want to get a tiny bit of an inclination of how that feels. I want to get on stage and transport an audience to a time and a place they’ve never visited before. I want to tell them stories of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. I want to show them that the horrible situation they’ve been in is a situation which other people have found themselves in too, that someone else has felt their heartache, their fear, their loss, their elation. I want to make them laugh, I want to make them cry, I want to leave them lost for words at the enormity of what humans are capable of, both good and bad. I want to take them away from the exhausting, stressful mundanity of every day life. For two hours while they sit in the dark, I want them to forget about the report they’re struggling to write, the divorce they’re going through, the fact that their child needs a clean P.E. kit for tomorrow morning, and they forgot to stick it in the machine”

…. or something along those lines anyway.

In the past, Normal Humans have asked me, “If the RSC won’t see you for an audition, why don’t you just do an advert?”

“Absolutely. Of course. I’ll just call the casting director to inform them they can tell Sony I’m free. No idea why I didn’t think of that myself, what a big Silly-Head I am…”

Every single actor entering the industry* shrugs their shoulders and says “yeah, I mean I wouldn’t even mind doing an ad” to impress upon you how open minded and hard working they are.

Nine months down the line, and that’s changed to “I’d like to get an ad, they pay quite well.”

Nine years down the line, it’s “OH MY GOD, PLEASE JUST GET ME AN AD, AND I’LL LOVE YOU FOREVER, AGENTY McAGENT FACE!”

A casting director once told me that when she puts out a casting call for an ad she gets ON AVERAGE 1,000 applications for every role. That is a LOT of faces for her poor assistant to click through. From those, maybe 20 or so are called in for the role. Then you have to be the face that’s agreed on by the casting director, the director, the advertising agency (where multiple people are involved in the decision), and the client (again, where multiple people are involved).

At this stage I’m very tempted to draw you a probability tree for a visual aid, but I won’t. I promise. I realise that maths is a bit of a niche fetish. Basically, you get the gist… the chances are small, and there really is little you can do about the fact that you look very like the woman who poured coffee over the creative director at the ad agency that morning…. and if you do, and that clumsy idiot ruined his thousand pound pair of trousers… let’s face it, you ain’t getting that job.

Nevertheless…. you turn up knowing the odds are slim: you look straight down the lens, you tell them your name and your agent, show them your profiles (good practise for when you’re arrested for picking up prostitutes on Sunset Boulevard, and they need mug-shots), show them your hands (this is a true thing, Non-Actors reading this, it really is), you take a deep breath and get on with your job. This normally involves 5 minutes (roughly) of public humiliation in front of anything from 1 person operating the camera, to a room of about 15 people…. but don’t you worry! However many people are present, you can rest safe in the knowledge that this delightful experience is being filmed, and that means that your performance will never die… so somewhere out there is footage of me:

• Shouting aggressively into an old lady’s face;
• Removing my t-shirt and swirling it round my head (don’t worry, we were warned this would happen, so I had a crop top on underneath… maybe that’s why I didn’t get the job);
• Having animated banter in Italian with Nobody whilst playing an imaginary computer game (the guy I was supposed to be doing the scene with was sent home because the main requirement was ‘must speak fluent Italian’ and it turned out he thought having a great, great grandmother who immigrated from Italy 100 years earlier and had died 20 years before he was born would cut the mustard);
• Miming taking a glass out of a dishwasher and being DELIGHTED at how clean it was, then doing a retake and looking “a bit less delighted, it’s only a clean glass”;
• Miming eating a delicious roast chicken with a plastic fork which had been used for the same purpose by at least 20 people before me (don’t worry – I’ve been checked at the clinic, I’m fine);
• Miming pushing a wheel barrow and then potting a series of imaginary plants whilst looking “happy doing this, but not too happy, because you do it every day… but not bored, definitely not bored…”

The list goes on… but that’s fine, because there’s also footage kicking around of friends of mine:

• Prancing around a room pretending to be a leprechaun;
• Singing joyfully whilst miming drying himself with a towel (ALWAYS with the miming, something which pretty much every actor you ever ask HATES with a passion);
• Dancing with a chair in a sexy, yet funny, but not degrading, definitely not degrading way;
• Standing on a table pretending to be a chicken…

This list, too, goes on… and on, and on… I guess it’s at least a more interesting reply to, “so how was your day?” than “yeah, fine, just the same…”

So, any Castings Directors reading this, I’m letting you know that I’ve got a window, and I’m available for that commercial you’re casting, and I don’t mind “just doing an ad”…

*DISCLAIMER: I do not know every actor currently working in ‘The Industry’, so I can’t speak for everyone, I can only speak from my own experience.

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This post was originally published as ‘The Anxious Actor”