Keep on truckin' . . . .

I worked on two auditions last night from my agent, both for industrial narrations. One was a straight narrator script, and the other was the character of a soon-to-retire husband talking about the options for him and his wife. Both were right inside my wheelhouse, but there have been so many perfect fits over the years for me that I don't know what to expect. All I can do is give the best performance I possibly can, and after that it is up to the client. You never hear anything if you are NOT chosen, so it is pretty frustrating, and easy to get discouraged.

Then I saw this article (via scoop.it, thanks to Sirenetta Leoni) about the struggle Mark Ruffalo endured before he made it:

If you happen to be feeling down or dejected because things aren't happening fast enough for you career-wise, consider this...Oscar-nominated actor Mark Ruffalo went on over 800 auditions and got 800 "no's" before he was cast in "You Can Count On Me." As the article points out, that is an epic amount of rejection, even by Hollywood standards.

As your acting and voice acting coaches always tell you, you have to believe in yourself and your abilities. We're sure that Mark had friends and colleagues who were booking more frequently than he was, but obviously he avoided measuring his success by how others were doing and didn't allow his lack of bookings to get him down. We're sure it wasn't easy at times, but he persisted, and just kept auditioning and believing in himself, instead of throwing in the towel.

Thanks to the folks from The City Workshop for putting us onto this Esquire article from several years back. It's the first time we heard this story about Mark, so we're guessing that most of you haven't heard it before either.

Esquire: "This man went on eight hundred ill-fated auditions. Auditions for bad karate movies and shows about cops on bikes. Auditions in which -- and this one is hard to picture -- Richard Grieco trash-talked him.
Even in a town where rejection is as common as multigrain pancakes, eight hundred auditions is a lot. Epic even."

 800 auditions! And he kept at it. I guess persistence can pay off, eh?

Thanks Sirenetta! I needed that!