*This essay was previously featured in BangPDX in the USA and Pen and Ink in the UK. 

I am not an actor. All through my tenuous career in film I made sure to emphasize that I was more a friend of people who made films and this proximity allowed me one-off opportunities to do all sorts of interesting things while they plied their craft but those frivolous roles never felt preemptive of something bigger. The films I acted in were of a new genre wherein realism was prized above all else so boring, intentionally-average guys like me were specifically chosen for our mediocrity. Actors had white teeth, gym memberships, personal hygiene. I had alcohol bloat, dirty hair and cavities.

After my second acting job, The New York Times called my performance “commendable and realistic” and I was vain enough to allow one of the other actors to introduce me to his manager, in hopes that maybe she’d take me on as a client. 

We set up a meeting in her office off of 6th Avenue, in Greenwich Village, spitting distance from where the first film I was in had shown on the screen at the IFC Theater. When I walked in I noticed she’d gone to the trouble of hanging up the film’s poster prominently inside. I wasn’t sure what her intention was by displaying it up there. The movie was still in post-production and had yet to be released so it wasn’t yet possible for her to have actually seen it but I suppose it was just a gesture to remind me why I was there in the first place. It felt sort of like a store bought “Happy Birthday” banner, something so obviously temporary that it’s almost foolish to display at all.

We had a brief meeting. I was unshaven and hungover in wrinkled clothes. My posture was bad, my breath, everything most career-driven actors take care to polish I ignored. She asked me what kind of work I wanted to do and what I was comfortable with. Did I do stage productions or just film? I admitted that I had never aspired to act before but that the films were fun and I’d be happy to do more of the same. “But I have to warn you,” I reminded her, halfway out the door, “I’m not really an actor.”

Before long my new agent sent me on an audition, something I had only ever done once, back when I didn’t really care about being in a movie. It was for a part as a young, artsy slacker-type who’d be a roommate to the lead. I’d have only five scenes-a miniscule contribution compared to my previous films.

Everyone says that auditions are just like job interviews and they are right. It’s like a job interview except everyone brought their own massive ego along instead of a hard copy of their resume and everyone wants the position desperately and is pretty sure that it’s one step closer to their inevitable vision of success. It’s competitive and horrible. Everyone comes in dressed for the occasion, they sign in, they sit and wait and are called in one at a time. Everyone waits in the same room staring at everyone else, the competition that we all hope to eliminate. It’s a nightmare. 

I gave an intentionally subdued reading after overhearing all the over-the-top, cornball things that the actors who’d gone in before me were saying and doing. They seemed to mistake volume for authenticity and I decided i’d be low-key and natural by contrast. I read the lines in a normal volume, not a whisper or an overly-loud, stage voice. Just normal conversational speaking. The scenes were brief and it was over within five minutes. I left with low expectations.

A few days later I received a call from a number I didn’t recognize and I was certain it’d be my new agent telling me how bad I was at the audition but it wasn’t her. I was surprised to hear from Jay Van Hoy, the producer of the yet-to-be-released film-the one already earning wall space in my agent’s office. Jay was a cool, gregarious guy who’d worked for the prestigious Hollywood producer Scott Rudin for years before branching out on his own to produce small, independent films like the ones I had accidentally gotten in twice.

“How you doing, Cris?” He asked me. We’d never before spoken on the phone or really at all. During the production of the movie he’d produced, I’d been pretty focused on getting as drunk as possible every night after the production and whatever focus was left over went into the movie. So I never got to know Jay but he said he had an offer for me that he thought I might be interested in. He said that he was working on another film, another small, family project, a very personal story about a man and his father. Would I be available to come and read for a possible part in the film? After my underwhelming meeting and lackluster audition I was surprised at a second opportunity coming so swiftly along. 

“Make a tape.” Jay said. “I’ll send you the sides and you just make a tape, real simple. Just read the lines into the camera and let us see your face and hear your voice. I think this could be perfect for you.”

It’s a strange thing to be all of a sudden pummeled by opportunity when all your ambition is aiming for is a cheap bottle of wine and a Metrocard. I can only recall it now with the clarity of hindsight and say something very vague and dad-sounding like: if you aren’t prepared for everything, you’ll end up falling for anything or some horseshit like that but there’s an element of truth to this. It’s not like I all of a sudden realized I didn’t want to be a loser anymore. I had my cynicism and humility and I believed them to work for me at the time. But I was still vulnerable to the allure of hobnobbing with the celebrated and the ego boost of having collaborated with them.

I made an audition tape with my friend’s borrowed camera and was able to send the footage via email as soon as we had finished shooting it. I had done some independent research about the director of the film I was reading for a part in after noticing his name on the pages of the script and thinking it sounded familiar. Mike Mills. Aside from the alliterative aspect, I knew i’d heard that somewhere. Wasn’t there a Mike Mills in REM? I looked it up. He was a director of music videos and a few films, most notably Thumbsucker, a film featuring several huge names like Vince Vaughn and Keanu Reeves but also a totally unknown young actor name Lou Taylor Pucci. “This could be my ticket.” I thought to myself. If Mike was not opposed to using complete nobodies in his movies, he might think I was all the rage.

I got an email from Jay that was a forwarded message from Mike, reading:

“I like him! Can we see if he can come out to read? ASAP?

-MM”

Because my taped reading was so promising and a role in such a prominent film would drum up publicity for the one they were still working on, my colleague from the first two movies actually paid for my flight out to Los Angeles which was great because I’d never kept a spare $300 in savings on the off chance i’d need to fly somewhere for a huge, life-changing opportunity. It was incredibly generous of him and I knew I’d have to land the part now that someone had made a monetary investment betting on my success.

In the time between buying and boarding the flight to Los Angeles I had learned that the lead actor, already cast to portray a man nearly identical to Mike Mills was none other than Ewan McGregor. Woah. This was big. I had never been in anything that involved someone who was actually famous. Not that I cared about famous people but I figured that movies with people like him got seen by everyone and to be in one, even briefly, probably meant i’d never have to work in a cafe ever again. Right? Didn’t it? Perhaps I didn’t actually know anything about the business or career-side of acting and film. I knew that chumming on set with guys who were popular enough to be recognizable to my grandmother was promising and a lot of people claimed to have found success by accident. I sat in an aisle seat and tried to memorize my lines. I thought about what a movie like this could do for me and what it could mean for my career, a career I never put faith in or thought I wanted.

I secured lodging with a friend Josh in Los Angeles who agreed to offer his couch for the length of my stay but would be busy working and couldn’t hang out with me or drive me to the actual audition but had secured me a ride with his girlfriend. Josh was a very good looking guy and so naturally his girlfriend was equally attractive. She was an aspiring actress and just before he left for work, Josh told me not to mind her, apparently because she was fuming with jealousy over my haphazard turn of fortune in comparison to her years of fruitless struggle. The ride to the studio was very tense, with almost no conversation other than a perfunctory “Good luck.” when I got out. I wore a light blue Oxford button-up with slacks. The character was supposed to be a close friend to the lead, to Ewan, and I was advised to try and look as old as I possibly could. It was a stretch, to be sure, my face still retaining the sort of youthful chub of adolescence. I had purposely not shaved so as to have the appearance of a 5 ‘o clock shadow, something I was still years away from actually growing in that amount of time. I looked pretty good. Not Ewan-status good but definitely up to par to portray his smarmy, dipshit lackey.

I located the building I'd been told to go to and saw other men loitering about with familiar pages of sides and expressions of panic. The difference between them and me was they were all well known actors. One of them was a fan favorite on a major network sitcom, another an up and coming actor who I had recently seen in a movie opposite Sam Rockwell based on a book by the guy who wrote Fight Club. No one told me the competition was going to be actual famous actors. It was also never mentioned to me that I was being considered amongst men who were so obviously right for this part and had actual skill in areas where I only offered my acquaintance with the producer. I started crying in the way that your lungs and extremities show, but your eyes somehow manage to conceal in the interest of poise.

Aside from Ewan being such a big draw, Mike Mills is also a huge deal. He made a movie years ago wherein text appears in white on an otherwise black screen, one sentence at a time for an entire hour plus. There's no sound and the text that the viewer reads is a line by line description of the plot of E.T. It’s hard to convey the genius of it but to emphasise my evidence for such a case, he managed to make a movie that mocked movies without using any of the elements we recognize as cinematic. To say it was progressive, original and totally brilliant at the time of it's conception and release is an understatement. What’s worse, this was something I had not yet thought about. Because I was such a novice actor, without management or representation, no one ever explained to me the concept of seeking out innovative people to work with so as to better your own career. I'd never thought about any career, especially not one involving acting. The most anyone film related had ever told me was that i needed a mint or where the bar was. Now I was up for a job I'd never get, especially if the guy whose decision it was knew what a farce I considered acting-as-work to even be. It occurred to me that collaborating with people you respect is never bad, no matter what the job is. If I could work at Starbucks with Lou Reed or install plumbing with Frederico Fellini, surely I would learn something valuable. Maybe Mike Mills was a kindred spirit. Perhaps he’d see the obvious kinship and he would know we shared the disdain of inflated ego and shallow, surface beauty. 

I looked up and saw Jay waving me inside.

We went into a small office where I met Mike. He was dressed in chic, skinny black jeans and a clean, unblemished white shirt with a sliver of black necktie. Had I gone to Cooper Union and married Miranda July, I would have dressed the exact same way. Instead I wore secondhand pants from the Gap that someone gave me.

“Thanks for coming out on such short notice!” Mike said, beaming, “Maybe one day i'll surprise you out in New York and return the favor!” he chuckled. I remember thinking to myself “Please God, let him not be joking. Please let this man I respect and admire truly desire my stupid, empty friendship.”

We walked into an even smaller room with a few chairs on one side, lined against one wall. On the other side was a camera aimed at the center of the room. Everyone else sat and I stood. A pretty young woman stood behind the camera to read lines with me. Ewan's lines. 

“Whenever you're ready.” Mike sat smiling with an open notebook containing the script on his lap. I knew there would be no true preparation for that moment. There’s never a preface to the whimsy of destiny presenting itself to you just as there is no warning for when it might pass you by. I hadn't a degree from a prestigious art school. I hadn’t a background in stage or improvisation. I had a friend's recommendation. That was all.

Somehow I managed to look at the girl behind the camera and deliver lines the way they were written in the script. I was accurate but also malleable. When she smiled or inflected certain parts with humor, I met her there and accented my responses with equal joviality. We completed the scene and waited in silence for direction. I briefly suspected that someone may have begun clapping, slowly, but they didn't.

“OK,” Mike said, “OK, yeah...”

I began to mentally prepare for the next scene that I had memorized. I felt almost cocky from our flawless read-through of scene one. Perhaps acting wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Perhaps Lou Taylor Pucci was willing to have drinks later that night. Would it be too forward to ask him to dinner?

“OK, that was great but let's try that one again and this time just try and....try and use the space, you know? Just try and use the room.”

Out of complete lack of any other ideas, I did the scene again only this time, I walked back and forth in a straight line that bisected the room, almost as if marching at the same time I delivered the lines. This ridiculous movement was the only variation between my initial reading and the second one. If I was indeed “Using the room”, it was not in a way anyone could have guessed or intended. When we finished that second time, it was obvious something had changed. Not only was I devoid of any of the raw promise I held only moments before, but now preproduction time had been wasted on my reading. Someone would likely be scolded for my failure to perform and I pitied them. More than that, I pitied myself. Why hadn't I gone to art school? Why hadn't I worked towards a discipline of some kind? Use the room?

In the same way that young punk kids suspect a wealthy, all-powerful "they" of being responsible for the cumulative suffering of the nation's dejected population, i was starting to believe that all directors speak in a secret vernacular of nonsense only decipherable to students of pretentious acting mentors like Strasberg and Stanislavsky. Perhaps it was a filter through which novice little dilettantes like me were siphoned out. Either way, I was not cast in Mike Mills’ film.

I went home feeling like untapped potential. Suddenly my dismissive attitude about other actors and their exaggerated grandstanding didn’t seem so warranted. I meditated on my blunder. Couldn’t I emote insincerely? Couldn’t I mimic real emotion when I genuinely felt none? I certainly did it a lot on real life. I did it in romance, in conversation, in friendships. I did it at work almost constantly. Yet when called to display this instinctive penchant for imitation, I fell flat. I felt like an egomaniacal dick but also like one who could have killed next to someone like Ewan McGregor.

When I got home I called my agent to see about the other audition, the one I’d been on before my trip-one that would have seemed like an unsatisfying consolation prize at that point. I thought maybe she’d meet with me again and I  could explain my recent experience. If she’d heard of Mike Mills maybe I could spin the whole thing to my advantage. She didn’t have to send me out for supporting roles in no-budget indies. I was getting called out for the big-time on my own! All I needed was one or two auditions to redeem myself. I’d learned from my arrogance. No more low-key, naturalistic. No more playing it cool. Any room I entered from now on i’d use to the point of exhaustion. Did I mention I can sing? 

I got her assistant, who put me on a long hold. Finally she picked up, sounding flustered. 

“Hi Cris, Listen. The feedback I got about you wasn’t great.” She said. “To be perfectly frank, casting asked me why I’d sent you.” There was some perfunctory consolation while I tried and failed to interject. I didn’t even get a chance to mention my trip before she sighed and said, “I’m really not sure what I can do for you. They said you didn’t do much...that you didn’t even seem like you were an actor.”