The Acting Business Boot Camp Podcast

About Eric:

Eric Nelsen is a multiple Emmy Award winning and Tony Award nominated American actor and producer. He is best known for his work as an actor in Hulu's revival of All My Children playing AJ Chandler, and most recently, his recurring role in season 4 of Showtime's hit drama The Affair. 

On stage, Nelsen portrayed Brett Sampson in the original Broadway production of 13, and starred in The Good Mother, produced by The New Group. He has appeared in over 30 television series, including The Blacklist, Girls, The Following, NCIS, Blue Bloods, and iCarly.  Nelsen has also appeared in the Universal Pictures film A Walk Among the Tombstones opposite Academy Award nominee Liam Neeson and Coming Through the Rye opposite Academy Award winner Chris Cooper.

In 2018, Nelsen most recently won a ...

So many feelings come up around the opening

• I’m not ready...
• How do I do this?
• Will I sound like a fool talking to real people?

There is a special anxiety around it.

There was anxiety around the pandemic because it had never happened before…but that same anxiety is around opening up because it’s never happened before either.

What are the things we can do to take care of ourselves emotionally while this is going on?

Fear and anxiety are never going away, but how we handle those can change.

When we stay in anxiety, we are in victim energy, catabolic energy— energy that eats itself, it's self-destructive.

We want to be in anabolic energy.

How can you break it down? Baby step it.

• Turn our attitude into if I’m anxious about xyz…then what you want to ask yourself is “how can I take responsibility for that?
• ie: If I’m afraid of redoing my resume, then what is one small action I can do to work towards that?
• Go as slowly as you need to in...

About Mark:

Mark Ivanir has been working as a professional film and television actor in Los Angeles since 2001. His first major film role was in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Oscar-winning epic SCHINDLER’S LIST. He rejoined with Spielberg twice, first for a cameo appearance in Terminal, then again for his much anticipated Tintin. A pivotal role in Robert Deniro’s 2006 film, The Good Shepherd, landed Mark a role in Barry Levinson’s What Just Happened, this time acting alongside Deniro. Currently, Ivanir awaits the release of four studio features: Johny English Reborn (starring Rowan Atkinson), Everybody Loves Whales (staring Drew Barrymore, Kristen Bell, John Krassinsky), A Late Quartet (co starring Philip Seymor Hoffman, Catherine Keener and Christopher Walken) and 360 (co starring Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law, Rachel Weitz and Ben Foster). He has booked over 35 Guest Star and Guest Lead roles on television shows such as: 24, Monk, CSI NY, Law and Order, Fringe, CSI...

Think of something that happened to you that you’ve held with you throughout your career and created some sort of thought attached to it.

Think about how that instance is holding you back.

“Forgiving is not forgetting, it’s letting go of the hurt.”

Resentment- the only person it’s hurting is you.

Think of resentment as a replay on a football field.

When you have a resentment, and replay what happened in your head, you are reseeing it.

Ex: Two guys collide, and you hear the break of the bone, and the commentators go ooh that was a bad break, and they watch it again. The next time you swear the sound got clarified, louder, and you swear the grimace of the guy who got hurt got bigger, the color got brighter.

And each time they play it again, the sound gets louder, the color gets brighter.

Resentment does just that.

“Don’t allow someone to live rent free in your head.”

How many resentments do I have that are taking up energy and space?

...

About Ed:

Ed Lewis is a Voice Director for Video Games, Animation, Audiobooks, Commercials, Documentaries, Promos and for pretty much anything else you want him for. Ed’s extensive experience casting Film, Television and Theatre for ten years, paired with his actor training from the University of Michigan give him a unique perspective on how to approach Voice Over projects. He treats his work as a VO Director exactly the same as his time directing auditions for The Wire, Chappelle’s Show, 24 and others.

Ed’s experience working in casting with amazing directors like David Simon, David Koepp, David Esbjorson and all other sorts of Davids has taught him how to direct projects from children’s animation to first-person shooters. Communicating with actors can be a challenge, but Ed has the vocabulary, insight, experience and knowledge to communicate the client's vision and to make the recording sessions productive with even the most difficult and complex...

When are we doing too much?

When are we doing too little?

What is our responsibility and what isn’t?

My Part vs. Not My Part

The Serenity Prayer

Grant Me the Serenity to Accept the Things I cannot change

I cannot change other people, places, or things, or outcomes.

I did my part but I can not control how that director took my performance in my callback.

Courage to Change the Things I can,

I can only change myself, my attitudes, and my actions.

And Wisdom to know the difference.

Wisdom to know the difference between the things I cannot change, and what I can change.

Thank you for helping to change the things I can control, and to let go of the things I can’t.

Recovering your True Self—The awareness of who you will are

When in doubt, leave it out.

Don’t just do something, sit there.

When in doubt, slow down, pause, journal, and make a plan for how you are going to take care of yourself. 

Journal, talk it out, find a bookend.

Show me what I need to learn...

About Maria:

Maria Dizzia currently teaches an ongoing scene study class at The Freeman Studio in NYC. She has taught both Public Speaking and Acting at the University of California at San Diego as well as master classes at Wheaton College, Penghao Theater in Beijing and the Sichuan People's Art Theater in Chengdu, China. She was a Beinecke Fellow at Yale School of Drama and a 2011 recipient of the Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship.

Broadway credits include: In The Next Room by Sarah Ruhl (Tony nomination Featured Actress; Lincoln Center). Recent theater credits include If I Forget by Steven Levenson (Roundabount Theater Company),  Belleville by Amy Herzog (Drama Desk Nomination; New York Theater Workshop, Yale Rep), Annie Baker's Uncle Vanya (Soho Rep), Drunken City by Adam Bock (Playwrights Horizons), and Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl (Second Stage, Yale Rep, Berkeley Rep). Outside of the United States,...

Email [email protected] to get a replay of the Webinar.

“If we treated our friends like we treated ourselves, we’d all go to jail.”

There are no mistakes.

I use my mind to govern my brain.

The mistakes stem from my brain, or my heart, or both.

Why is it so bad to give yourself a break?

Ask yourself what was the lesson, what can be learned from this experience?

The next time I’m in this situations, this is what I intend to do.

There are no mistakes there are only choices.

If you let go of it being a mistake, and allow it to be just something that happened, then you prevent it from becoming an assumption.

The Thought, Action, Emotion Triangle.

Why do I feel that I always screw up __________?

What do I need to work on?

Reframing thoughts empowers us to be more positive about what’s happening.

When we are more positive about what’s happening, we get more positive results.

Change can’t to choose not to, change should to...

Sign up for the FREE Webinar HERE.

How David got into casting.

The only thing you can control is the work that you do in the room.

When you need a surgeon, you want someone who knows anatomy. When you need an actor you need someone who knows the anatomy of a scene. Acting is a craft and you have to learn your craft.

The Three Jobs of an Actor:

1. Becoming the best actor you can be
2. Learning the business
3. Maintaining your health and your mental health

What makes a great commercial audition:

• An authenticity
• A point of view that is specific and personal
• A willingness to play
• Not bring a fixed point of view into the room

Auditions are performances

Auditions are not opportunities to sort of kinda maybe get it right…

If you come into the room and give me nothing, the Casting Director has nothing to work with

Don’t be afraid to make choices

There is no right choice, there is no wrong choice, there is just your choice.

Commercial acting is how much you can be yourself in front...

Sign up for the FREE webinar HERE

Helen Keller, “to keep our faces towards change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate, is strength undefeatable.”

Why is it so hard to be ourselves?

Big T Truth vs. little t truth

When you let your ego drive, you give up your power

Giving yourself the courage to be yourself.

You can not buy peace of mind, it needs to be earned.

Truth, is infinitely powerful

little t truth is EGO

1. Easing
2. God
3. Out

little t truth is based in fear

T- we are in reality

t- some sort of obsession or worry

Thoughts: Use your mind to govern your brain

Take a blank piece of paper and put a line down the center

• Right side little t truth
• Write down all your negative thoughts
• Left side Big T Truth
• Write down the opposite
• “I’m not good enough” —> “I am enough”
• “I suck at commercial auditions.” —> “I master my commercial technique and I am successful in all my commercial...