How do I become an actress?

How to become a famous actress?

• So i'm 16 years old and for my whole life so far i wanted to be an actress. I would like to be on tv acting on either Disney channel or movies, anything. Just to get myself known. I would always tell my parents how badly i wanted to be an actress, and i was always forced to push that idea away. I was told its impossible and to be realistic. But I want to try, you cannot succeed if you do not try! I have NO acting experience, but my friends say i'm hilarious and we always make skits with our cameras and they say i'm a good actress. A lot of people have told me i could be a model too, with my long dark brown hair, blue eyes, and i'm really tall. I want this pretty badly, how can i go about chasing this dream? Please don't tell me to be realistic and that its not possible. If anything I do have a very good backup plan as in i'm an A student and studying to become a psychiatrist if I do not make it into show business. But to be on tv acting was my dream since I could remember. How can I become an actress with little or no experience so far. Also while I'm still young?

• Answer:

  Okay - the first thing you should understand is that is doesn't matter one jot how much you want to be an actor. Wanting something doesn't make it happen. If you have no acting experience at all, it's totally possible that you have no talent for acting whatsoever - what your friends say is irrelevant. Also forget the modelling thing - it takes no talent, no intelligence, a career lasts a year or two at best, and I'm told it's incredibly boring. Which is all fine if you're not very intelligent - but as you obviously are, I bet you'd hate it. But what could make it happen is years of very hard work. At 16 you're far too old to become a child actor, and you'd have to start classes as soon as possible to find out if you have talent, and if you do learn everything you can and get plenty of experience in stage plays and shows, at school or in the community - then you'd need to try for a place at a good drama school on a 3-year full-time degree-level course. Put the whole Disney thing out of your mind - all the acting on the Disney Channel is terrible - exaggerated, unrealistic and very childish. If you're going to be an actor, please aim to be a good one! It's also extremely optimistic to aim at getting 'known' - almost all actors manage to find two or three weeks' acting work in a year and the rest of the time are auditioning while working a 'normal' job in an office, a call-centre, a bar or a restaurant. It's a very competitive business, and the chance of you ever getting a good role in anything are remote, let alone becoming well-known. If you'd be happy working that second job, getting a tiny role here and there, never being recognised in the street and so on would make you happy - go for it. Most actors want no more than that and anything more is just a bonus. If what you really want is recognition, forget it and become a psychiatrist.