“I bet that would be a fun career… pretending to be different people on Television and Film. I’d love to be an actor for a day.”

I think what a lot of people forget is that most of the WORK for an average working actor… isn’t actually acting… it’s auditioning; hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of job interviews in the span of a career. I’d say there’s no factor more responsible for actors quitting this profession than the soul crushing nature of the audition process.

1.) You print up your script pages (sides).
2.) You work on them for hours, perhaps even trying to memorize them a bit.
3.) You dress to impress.
4.) You focus your mind.
5.) You sit in traffic, sometimes for over an hour.
6.) You pace the waiting room, going over the lines in your head.
7.) You judge your look in the role against the other actors in the room.
8.) If you know any of their work, you compare your skills.
9.) You walk into another room of writers, directors, producers, and you try your very best to deliver a crystal clean performance… no stumbles, tongue twists, or paraphrasing of lines.
10.) You leave the room and go back out into the traffic… sometimes you go home… sometimes you head to your next audition and start again from #5.

If your overall audition delivery that day was at least 90% of what you were trying to do, you have a chance… and you may wanna treat yourself to something… ice cream… a trip to the local comic book store.

But anything under 90%, and you struggle to keep from replaying the mistakes in your head.

And every once in a while, less than 5% of the time, you get a call from your agent telling you that someone would like to hire you. And the sense of euphoria is so great that you’re able to payback all the debt on your soul you’d taken out the other 95% of the time.

I’m a pretty superstitious person. You might not think it since I’m such a science nerd… but I am.

Last time I mentioned on my blog that I had booked a role on a TV show it was an episode of The Office… that episode never aired. So a part of me is, of course, nervous that I’m sharing my latest good news.

Today I got one of those calls from my agent. And it turned out to be a very rare call… much less than 5%. I was told that both of the television shows I auditioned for yesterday were interested in hiring me.

I don’t wanna share the names of the shows yet. I don’t know why… maybe superstition. And all the details haven’t yet been worked out. It’s possible the two shows will conflict and I’ll only be able to do one. If you remember my Stuido 60 post, that does happens.

I also can’t really talk about the plots… which means I can’t go into specifics on the roles. I wouldn’t want an actor cast in one of my projects to do that.

But I will say this… the two shows are very similar. They’re both on network TV, not cable. Both roles are one time guest spots. Both roles are very much Cabrera. One of them is very much the Cabrera you know.

UPDATE: I can now say, having shot both, that the shows are Numbers and Without a Trace. The episode of Without a Trace entitled, Hard Landing, will air on CBS, April 7th, 2009. CBS Press Release.

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