How To Stay Motivated in Your Acting Career

Having a strong personal manager and talent agent to represent you in your acting career can be very motivating. It’s exciting to go to auditions for the types of film and television projects you’ve been dreaming of being cast in.

Unfortunately, more often than not, you most likely feel your team is not getting you the number or quality of auditions that you think they should. That is, if you even gotten your agent and manager in place.

But even if you’re not getting the auditions you think you should, it doesn’t mean that your agent or manager is not good. They may be or they may not be. But if you’re not getting auditions, it might also simply be a function of how competitive the market it and what you have to offer compared to other actors being considered for the same role.

The hardest part is trying to to stay motivated while pursuing your career and getting very little return on your efforts. Most actors want to at least being a consistently working actor, but only a small percentage reach the career level of really what they would call a “Working Actor,” and a super small percentage reach the star level of actors like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, or Jennifer Lawrence.

And… some do reach that level. And ultimately, one of them could be you! But you somehow have to hang in there through the frustration to even have a chance. So what do you do?

First, you have to truly, really, deeply accept that you may never reach the level of success you want and then see if you’re still inspired to keep pursuing this career. Would you continue going to classes, doing student films, plays in 30 seat theatres, and no budget films if you knew you would never make more than $10,000 in acting? If you love it so much that you enjoy it anyway, then keep doing it and stop worrying about it. Just do it.

If you wouldn’t keep pursuing your acting career if you couldn’t make money, that’s okay, too.

Nothing wrong with wanting to make money at your acting career and it does not undermine how important it is to you. You should be paid for your acting talents if you provide entertainment for enough other people. It’s called being a professional actor.

Regardless of where you fall on the continuum of commitment, it can be challenging to stay motivated when the rewards are few and far between. But there are a few things you can do.
1. If you want to be a professional actor (get paid for it), you have to shift your mindset. Get your attention off of your frustration and lack of motivation and declare that you will take matters into your own hand to make things happen. If you’re not sure what to do, then it may be time for you to work with me (Melody Jackson). I do career coaching and strategy planning for actors to help them get in an empowering mindset and to come up with a plan for their careers.

2. Stay inspired and motivated in between jobs by learning new skills such as dancing or playing musical instruments or going new places, even around Los Angeles. It makes life more interesting in genera.

3. Don’t limit your performing to film, TV, and commercials. Consider doing plays or creating a YouTube show. These other activities can be very rewarding as a creative outlet and let you do your thing, not to mention the fact that talent is discovered all the time on YouTube and sometimes in plays.

These are just a few things you can do to keep yourself motivated and put yourself in the driver seat of your career – even when you’re not yet seeing the results you want.

If you’re anxious to move forward to the next level in your career – whatever that may be – then check out our coaching and strategy sessions and agent and manager targeting to help you get your team in place and to put you on track for becoming a working, professional actor.