Ready for Your Close Up? Preparing for Acting Auditions

Auditioning for a part in a television show, stage play, or movie can be a nerve-wracking experience. You need to get all your glamour shots ready, so you need to dress your best and be in good makeup and going into the audition in character. You need to get your resume in order, your documents in order, perhaps even your SAG card in order!

With the right preparation, however, your acting audition can be a walk in the park. All you need to do is follow these tips, and you might get that role you’ve been dreaming about for a long time.

- Some producers will allow you to apply beforehand for the audition, and they will give you specific lines that you should say, or scenes that you should act out. If you are working on a well-known story or play, read as much as you can on the character that you will be acting out. Ask yourself what the characters past is, and how it affects his or her present. What motivates the character? What does the character look like? All of these should help you deliver your lines better.

- If you have no lines or scenes to base your audition on, you still have to go to an audition prepared to act up a storm. Get sample scenes from the Internet, or buy a book with acting scenes that will require you to use a wide variety of emotions.

What time will the audition be? Schedule a certain time of each day to match the audition time, plus and minus an hour before. For instance, if your audition is on a Thursday afternoon at five, do your own auditions every day starting Thursday the week before, from four to six in the afternoon. Soon, auditioning and acting will feel like a simple routine.

- Some producers will require you to send them an audition tape. All the former rules apply: practice as much as you can, and perform your scenes perfectly. Dress up as the character, act as though you were already shooting your film, and get all the aspects of the audition tape down pat, from images to sound. Show how professional you are as an actor, and the producers will treat you like a professional.

- Relax! You are the character, and your nerves aren’t playing a part in the movie, show, or stage play. As long as you know your stuff, then you can be the best actor that you can be.