#6 YOU SO FANCY (DISEASE)

Iggy Azalea is fancy because she sold 72 million records in an era when 300,000 is a solid number for albums like the new Taylor Swift that just dropped or whatever (the latter who is also quite fancy).

I was trying to decide on #6 but I had an invigorating chat with a client today that reminded me of how deadly "fancy disease" can be.  I could think of 30 motivating anecdotes for this blog and here are just a few of them:

1. You just booked three Co-Stars and now you have five and think you are a "Guest Star".  News to you: a Guest Star (we're talking about adults, not child actors) is someone who has 100 episodes of a successful show as a Series Regular, is currently not contractually bound to a new series and so is "Guest Starring" on various projects until their next series comes along. Your Co-Star friends who claim to be Guest Stars just went on Actor's Access and edited the center column of the resume.  It only takes 5 minutes.  Unlike booking a series, which can take a lifetime.
   
2. You booked 2 Co-Stars on the same day (actually has happened twice with my clients) and now you need a new agent, a new manager and whoops! looks like that career is now in the middle of the lost decade.
3. You booked 3 Co-Stars this past summer from 40 auditions and now you're unable to do short films unless they have a "major star attached to them." 
4. You've never been hired by anyone to be the star of a feature film, but you don't like the script for this one.
5. You don't want to audition because you've never heard of the director.
   
6. You can't do unpaid student projects because you're "a professional actor."

It is unfortunate that I am still seeing, on a daily basis, actors making these bad decisions that are, unfortunately, likely to cost them a decade or more in lost time.  I say “or more” because I now know of quite a few talent (not necessarily my clients) who are now into the second decade of lost years.  And I’ve had clients referred to me in their late 40s who are at the end of the second decade of “lost years”.  

So this is the #6 reason you just lost a decade in Hollywood. Originally a client email:

FANCY DISEASE - Career momentum and attention from casting can lead to a distorted view of where one actually is in the “grand scheme of things”.  The false belief that one is farther along than they actually are.  Even a noteworthy booking WORTHY OF BRAGGING ABOUT still is rarely the basis for becoming fancy.  Here’s why:

Take your top three "bestest" or most braggiest credits / bookings.  Whatever it is that you think “makes you fancy.”  Somewhere out there in Hollywood/New York/London (or in the case of Series Regulars, “in the English speaking world”) there is another thousand actor/actress who have literally 10 times the number of comparable credits AND YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF THEM EITHER despite the fact they are competing with you in your category for the career-changing roles that you usually audition for during "back-up reads," if at all. 

If your achievements include an Ovation award, theirs includes a Prime Time Emmy.  

If you have an Emmy, they have an Oscar nomination.  

You have an Oscar nomination, they have two Oscars.

And so it goes.  There's always someone.

Back when I was a junior agent, Erich represented a child actor who was 14 to play 8-12.  That young actor’s resume, at age 14, was almost as long and impressive as my most established character actress, Kay, at 50-ish. He had, by 14, something like 30 television credits including a Recurring Guest Star on WEEDS (SHO).   So, assuming no career fails, by the time said child actor reaches the age of 22, their resume is unbeatable (compared to the college graduate who just arrived with their drama degree) and they still could be completely unknown to both you and the public.You may not know them but be assured that casting offices are aware of them.

And they are still NOT FANCY.  

By the time they are age 33, their resume, compared to yours, is even more imbalanced.

And they are still NOT "HOLLYWOOD" FANCY.

In other disciplines there is a related mental affliction called “expert’s disease”.  You might want to check that out as well.  In Zen Buddhism these psychological distortions are well understood and you might be able to grasp a solution from the cover page of this book: