Acting

It's that time again! The 4th Annual Stage 32 Oscars Contest is now live! This is your opportunity to vote for who you think will win each Oscar this year. All you have to do is go down the list, point, click, and submit. It's that simple! The top 3 Stage 32 members with the most correct will win the following prizes:     1st place - Grand Prize Winner – A Stage 32 Prize Pack from the Stage 32 Store (bag o' swag!) and 1 free Next Level Webinar of your choice     2nd place –...

For those of you that have been in the community for a while, you will know that Stage 32 encourages gender equality in the creative industry. When Stage 32 exec, member, actress and producer Alysia Reiner (Orange Is The New Black, Sideways) formed her own production company Broad Street Pictures last year we were in full support. Together with her producing partner Sarah Megan Thomas, they sought out to "find wildly entertaining and thought provoking tales about brilliant women doing rad thin...

The Only Rule is Success. Sounds easy, right? Not always, but it is something you can trust.   I was taught three things growing up:   1) You can be anything you want to be if you are willing to work for it. 2) You have a gift and talent, learn your skills. 3) The questions are what is interesting, the answers are all around you.   My life began on a beach in South Texas, with a family from a farm and a college town in Arkansas.  I always knew what I wanted - to get to LA, and...

One of the biggest challenges we face as artists is how to balance the creative and business demands that are required to have a successful career. Oftentimes, it is these difficulties that lead us down a path of 'getting a real job' or 'settling down' – and giving up on our dream, but, if you’re in this industry, you’re in it for a reason – because you HAVE to be. Living a life of comfort and stability is nice, but not if the cost is your dream. Speaking as one of you and having faced this chal...

Many of us feel panic and dread when we sit down to write our bios, cracking under the self-imposed pressure to paint a perfect portrait of who we are in this point in time.   But what if I told you that a great bio simply started the conversation of what you can bring to a project and then motivated your reader to to keep that conversation going with you – through a meeting, an audition, a Twitter follow, or a viewing of your reel? Most of us make the mistake of writing a bio that looks bac...

Our Founder and CEO, Rich "RB" Botto, was a guest on the extremely popular Actor's Anonymous podcast hosted by Jordan Burbank and Weesam Keesh of MTV's Awkward, The Mentalist and NCIS: Los Angeles. In a lively and spirited hour or so (filmed at the Stage 32 offices), the trio discussed a life in the arts including RB's early days of acting and his pursuits in screenwriting and producing. They also discussed the importance of support in a creative's life, as well as the need to embrace a collabor...

I was 8 years old, knowing I wanted to be an actor, but I was 909 miles away from Hollywood. This was... brutal. Obviously, I had no control over anything. I would beg my parents to take me to “where they make movies.” My parents moved from Los Angeles to Idaho for a calmer life and they told me I was free to move to California in 10 years after I graduated from high School, which I did.    In Idaho, I was 909 miles away from where I wanted to be...Hollywood   When I was 8, my dad said...

Much has been said on the topic of non-U.S. actors landing prime acting gigs in Hollywood, but much of it accuses America of offering inferior training, which I don’t believe necessarily to be true. Though it may account for a small part of the difference in success between actors from different countries, for my money there are many other highly influential factors than training alone.   Lower cost, good training Regardless of the standard of acting training, the United States has inc...

An actor walks into an audition and says to him or herself, “If I don’t get this part, that’s it. I am giving up acting.” The list of successful actors that have thought of quitting is long. The path is filled with rejection. You have to know that. Every time you put yourself out there, know that it may be "no" for now, but your big "yes" could be just around the corner. Today, I'm going to go over some famous faces that almost gave up, and, if they had, we'd miss out on some of the best ch...

Last time, I gave you important introductory pointers on how to conduct interviews. Most importantly, I talked about researching your subjects, holding a conversation and not an interrogation, keeping eye contact and making your interviewees feel comfortable. Here are a few more tips that have helped me over the years. PUBLICISTS CAN BE YOUR FRIENDS You’ll run into several kinds of publicists if you’re interviewing celebrities. First, there will be the studio, network or set publicists for t...