Headshots

THIS WEEK IN PURSUIT OF A HOLLYWOOD CAREER

Something kept telling me to take a commercial acting class. So I did. 

That was the first time in the ten years since I’ve lived here in Los Angeles that I fell under the spell of the seduction of possibility that hovers over this town like a harvest moon. 

I had ulterior motives in taking the commercial acting class. You see, most of the working writers I know started out pursuing an acting career. So I got to thinking maybe I could pretend to want to be an actor so I could end up as a writer. Brilliant! I signed up for the class and no sooner had I read off the expiration date of my credit card when the fantasies started. 

I had daydreams of being interviewed by Dave on my sudden rise to acting fame, and with coquettish charm I’d tell him that what I really wanted to do was write, and how badly I felt for all the serious actors out there who were pursuing their dream and here I was, an imposter, a writer who achieved success as an actor. 

Then I started thinking if I told that little story people might resent me, they’d hold it against me that I had success doing something I wasn’t even taking seriously. How dare I. But I would need people to know how incredibly ironic my acting success was. But if I admitted that I never really wanted to be an actor in the first place, I’d lose my credibility as the actor I never wanted to be. Oh, this fantasy was turning all around into a nightmare. Suddenly there were stories about me in the tabloids depicting me as a fraud. That I’d slept my way into the acting jobs I was getting because I was devoid of talent, and even worse, that my writing was just shy of mediocrity. That’s when my world would be crushed. I’d no longer have the lucrative acting career that provided me with the contacts to try and get my scripts produced. There’d be no development deals, no lunches at the Ivy, I’d be washed up, back at square one pursuing my writing, only now my work would be tarnished by my failure as an actor.

The time I spent daydreaming about my acting career made it clear to me that I had too much time on my hands and I was probably procrastinating about writing. I tried not to draft my academy award acceptance speech until after I had taken the first acting class. 

It was probably after the second class that I realized how much fun I was having. It was joyful to participate in something I didn’t take so seriously and that to my surprise I was actually good at. So, I surrendered myself even further to the Hollywood seduction, I decided to get headshots.

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