Life as an Actor: Sometimes Stranger than Fiction

In the film Stranger than Fiction, I play best friend to a man who realizes his every move is being written for him. I can relate. As an actor, I depend on writers to give me something to say. I can be witty, suave, inept or mentally ill when given the right material. Here, as a writer (not that I presume the label), I am stuck with my own experiences as an actor, which, as it happens, can be a bit stranger than fiction.

With me so far? (Us emotional actors like to know we're getting through to our audience.)

When I say, or rather, write, "stranger," I don't mean the extremist antics portrayed in Us Weekly or Star Magazine. Those are the very highs and lows of a select group of star targets. No, I mean that peculiar career of pretending for a living that I and thousands of others have chosen for ourselves: a career that includes everyone from the journeymen actors struggling for years to get their first big job to the gene-perfect delivery boy "discovered" at the local Jamba Juice.

See, acting is a backward profession from the very beginning. Most careers involve a month or so of interviews that can lead to a lifetime of work. Acting involves a lifetime of job interviews, or "auditions," that can lead to a month or so of work - if you're lucky.

And if you are - lucky that is - there's the glorious booking. The job. The "real" work of an actor. But reality can be tricky. Living in New York as a struggling actor, I sometimes never knew where next month's rent was coming from. But then I'd book a commercial and find myself flying first class, eating fine catered food and chatting up the CEO of some Fortune 500 company. The next day, I'd be back in my Harlem studio wondering if my check would bounce.

A few years later, and one or two more jobs, and I've had the pleasure of meeting and working with some incredible actors. Sure, I could name names, but that's what Us Weekly is for. But no matter how successful, we all still ask the question, "Where's the next gig?" The applause dies down, or was never there in the first place, and it's up in front of the tribal council once again, presenting our case, or "actor preparation," and then allowing the next actor, who typically looks exactly like us, to step in our place. Contentment is hard to come by when you never know if you'll be working in a month.

Not that I'm knocking it, or even suggesting the uncertainty isn't worth the payoff. Unfortunately, for a lot of actors, the payoff is hard to come by. The reality is, there are more than 120,000 members in the Screen Actors Guild and more than 45,000 members in the Actors' Equity Association..

But we're not in it for the reality. We're in it for the fiction.

We're in it for the moments we're allowed to step into a character and speak words we could never have thought of ourselves. Sure, we pretend for a living, but when faced with the unpredictability of life as an actor, I'll take the safety of three acts and a predictable story arc any day of the week.