Why modelling will help your acting career – combined with game changer

A great acting teacher of mine, Greg Bach recommended a lot of things to me, but in particular two books – Leading Ladies of the Studio Era and Leading Men of the Studio Era. These contain stories about 50 of the most unforgettable actors and actresses of that time. I really enjoyed reading these, although I confess that I focused mostly on the book about the actresses.

One of the things I noticed was that all the actresses had dancing in common. A lot were pro dancers, but all of them were great dancers even if they weren’t at a professional level. They could also all take great pictures and pose amazingly. I had already been doing some modeling, mostly at the request of a few photographers, but after reading those books and making that connection, I decided to do more and more modeling and I am now doing it about twice a week, if not more, in fact I sometimes book out way too many things in between work and stuff.

Part of becoming a model was to just be more comfortable in front of the camera, so I am really enjoying that process and getting better and better at taking pictures and looking at myself honestly to see if I’m able to improve my look. Back in the day the studios used to own the actors and actresses and if they told you to change something about your appearance, you did it. This lead to me realizing that I needed to look at myself and my career as a product, the way I believe a lot of famous singers and actors do. They see themselves as a product and they market themselves that way, so taking pictures is a great way to look at myself, to look at my product, and see what jumps out at me and change it a little to make it look exactly how it’s supposed to look for the part.

Taking pictures is very valuable for an actor or actress, just the act of being in front of the camera. Headshots are not enough, you have to be comfortable just being all these different things, and I try to – in all my photographs – do as many different things as I can. So I’ve done pirate shoots, glow in the dark shoots, whatever is different and fun. I’m doing it because I want to be an actor and that’s the way I look at it – I’m an actor, I want to look as different as possible, on as many different shoots as possible.

I would definitely highly recommend these books for actors wanting to get into the business, even for models, really anyone. They’re great books and they talk about what some of these artists went through to become successful, and honestly, the #metoo movement is nothing compared to what these poor women went through. Again, I haven’t really read the stories about what the actors faced, but I’m sure they went through a lot too. 

It’s definitely inspiring to see that they’re not just great actors, but human beings with a lot of love and energy and kindness and how they just made things happen, no matter what. They’re pretty amazing people to read about and I thoroughly enjoyed getting a glimpse into their lives.