ACTOR BRANDING MYTHS IN 2024

ACTOR BRANDING: WHAT IT AIN'T

An actor's brand is their chosen visual archetype and resulting marketing strategy that they promote to professional casting offices.  If there is no demand for an archetype from a particular age/genotype/enneagram type, it is a poor marketing choice and as such, a poor business strategy.  The expected outcome is business failure.  

In America, Americans do not cry when businesses fail.  If the neighborhood 7-11 closes, the American immediately starts shopping at the Circle K across the street.  No tears are shed.  Don't expect any if  you persist in your insistence on leading with an unwanted or unneeded product or service and this decision (or non-decision) leads to career implosion.  Even your mom will remind you she advised you to go to med school or law school.

Let's look at a few of the myths and urban legends that cause so much confusion among actors:

1. PSYCHOLOGICAL MUMBO-JUMBO aka AN AFFIRMATION OF YOUR SELF-WORTH Actor branding is not about feedback on your total self-worth or realizing a psychological self-reflection that supports and acknowledges your self-worth as an actor:

"Your current look and personality and marketing approach is your essence, who you are and everybody ought to love and support you in your artistic journey."  

"You are talented and beautiful just the way you are and eventually casting will figure out how amazing and talented you are and lavish you with auditions for highly sought after roles in movies across from major stars."  

…so that you can realize your fantasy of becoming a famous Hollywood actor.  LET'S BE CLEAR: If it's an artistic journey, move to Boise, Idaho and focus on community theatre.  If you want to work in Hollywood, in the ultra-competitive film and television industry, wake up and smell the business principles.

2. ACTOR TYPECASTING IS A DRAWBACK.  This myth is popular among journalists who write editorial pieces about movie and television stars.  Such discussions of typecasting reference vague ideas from the world of Shakespeare or other lofty artistic endeavors that suggest actors who are typecast are somehow artistically bankrupt or lesser than versatile Oscar-winners like Daniel Day-Lewis or Meryl Streep.  In such cases the point of view of the writer is incredibly naive because the relative difficulty of breaking into journalism to write editorial articles about famous actors is not even remotely on par with the level of difficulty vis a vis that of an unknown character actor arriving in Hollywood at age 22 to pursue an a career as a working television actor.  This is especially problematic if this worldview has been developed by writing editorial pieces on A-list actors whose careers have their genesis in child movie stardom.  Probably the most egregious use of survivorship bias to support an ill-conceived thesis about the role of typecasting in career opportunities of the general case (the working character actor).

3. WHO YOU "ARE" IS HOW YOU SHOULD BRAND: The look that you adopted at age 17 or among your adult social peer group (so called “normal life”) is somehow "intrinsic" to who you are and what archetype you should play on television.  While there is no question that genotype has an influence on what archetypes might be possible for a character actor, all factors related to socio-economic background, socialization, peer groups and other culture factors are, in a word, irrelevant when deciding what brand to establish in Hollywood.  

I have said this many times before and will do so again: “Hollywood has a significant demand for professional actors who can play drug dealers and murderers in crime procedurals.”  However, NOBODY IN HOLLYWOOD wants to hire an authentic drug-dealer or murderer to play one on television.  What is needed ARE PROFESSIONAL ACTORS WHO LOOK LIKE DRUG-DEALERS AND MURDERERS.  If you cannot grasp this simple concept, Hollywood is not the place for your small business endeavour (ie. acting career).  This does not imply all actors should play drug dealers or murderers or that you should style yourself in this manner.  

In addition, we find that the human being is capable of a wide range of body morphology and visual styles given the exact same genotype.  For example, two suburban American men with largely the same genotype fall into different lifestyles and trajectories.  One undertakes an Olympic bid in the decathlon while the other chooses to eat Doritos and become a Twitch Minecraft streamer.  The fundamental question always reduces to "nature vs. nurture" and in the case of the character actor, you need to decide how important this career is to you ("How bad do you want it?") and reorganize your entire life, if necessary, to achieve this aim.  It would be my opinion that in most cases, the total sum of your personal identity (read: cultural baggage) is an oppressive weight that you first must divest yourself of in order to see clearly what the opportunities are (market demand) for the looks that can be achieved with the sole limitation being the immutable aspects of your genotype.  The basic idea is that the Olympic athlete cannot live the lifestyle of the Dorito-munching Twitch streamer if they are being realistic about their career goals.

4. ACTING TEACHERS CAN "DESIGNATE" YOUR TYPE - That an actor can sit in a circle of thirty actors in an acting class and have their acting teacher "designate" the archetype they are to ultimately play on television.  While there can be no question that an outsider's viewpoint may be considerably more objective than the viewpoint of the actor trying to self-evaluate, this activity completely ignores the wide range of archetype or life changes that are available to a human being if they only were to (check all that apply):

• Radically change their personal style, including their hair, wardrobe or "presentation".
• Get tattoos, piercings including both the real or illusory kind.
• Get a ripped body for their adjusted visual aesthetic by training with LOGAN HOOD (Zac Efron's trainer) or taking Pilates.
• Move to England for a year and study at The Old Vic or RADA.
• Learn a sought after skill like Russian language, playing guitar or performing stunts.  Ideally the latter combined with the ripped physique from LOGAN HOOD.

This list is neither exhaustive nor a recommendation for you.  Can we agree that Zac Efron looks radically different in The Iron Claw than he did in High School Musical?  Ask yourself if these changes were the result of strategic advice from his talent reps, publicist, business advisors and a result of life discipline?