Ever wonder why the acting and modeling world is so harsh?--Most people would say it's one of the hardest industries to get into and people are mean and ultra competitive about it? Right? You've heard things like that before haven't you?
Let me explain why that is using a couple of different arguments:
Back in the good ol' days of Hollywood, before it had it's own zip-code, producers would send out recruiters to acting theaters in the midwest and the east. --They handled it very much like NFL or NBA recruiters do: they look at the skill of the actor and whether or not that actor can draw a crowd and make money.
As films became the premiere source of entertainment, more and more people wanted to visit this mysterious place called "Hollywood" and they got star-struck and wanted to be a part of it. Eventually, young girls and boys ran away from home to go to hollywood and audition for parts. They no longer needed to send out recruiters, they had plenty of people coming to them.
The only problem was, these people were:::boys and girls they had little acting skill, they just had big dreams and they were still quite young. It's hard to sell a movie to adults if the stars are all young. That's why we saw an influx of kid movies that entertained young kids who were dropped off at the movie theater to enjoy garbage. The theater was still making money though so what did they care?
Well just like any business that gets big tries to do, they tried to expand into Adult films. What do adults like? T&A--skin--cleavage of all kinds. Young women. And that marked the beginning of the smutty era which was later brought down a notch by the MPAA rating system. (that's another story)
Let's fast forward to the present day because the rest of this argument can be told running on the ethos I just created about knowing my history:
Today, the tools have been refined for picking out a good actor from a bad one. It's crucial in the business because no one will want to see your film if the acting sucks. There are also a lot of phoneys out there in the business as well, people who are trying to make money in a dishonest manner.--that would include porn movie makers and people who are trying to scam actors and models (who granted, are probably the most fragile people in America). The dishonest ones are often more believable and legitimate than the honest ones are--they have to in order to survive.
So let me recap:
People who hold auditions have to deal with actors who suck but think they are good, people who are weary of scam artists, and they have to decide whether or not they are getting into something with questionable morals. Oh, did I mention that by very nature of acting, they are likely to have emotional problems and that makes them very fragile?
So over the years they've developed a system where they are very brutal, (picture simon cowel on american idol) and they are very demanding, and the competition is high (but in reality it's just like any other job: there are 90 lowlifes for ever 10 people you would compete with, and in acting those 10 get eliminated not by skill but by whether or not they look the part).
Mix it all together and fragile, over-dramatic people who are often flakey and unreliable (those 90 lowlifes only do it because they see it as their last resort to getting a job) and these people are all told they need to compete with one another because that's what you do with a job. So some things are said, feeligns are hurt, audition holders get frustrated after sitting through person after person and they get very skilled at seeing through the low lifes.
When someone comes along who is really worth the time and effort they're willing to sign papers and put them through training. --Training, that's right. The reason why the acting level doesn't matter as much as the "look" of the actor (it's more than just physical looks, but that's a good term) is because if they have average acting skills they can be put through training over the next few months--paid for of course by the studio--and they become better.
Now this isn't true for British acting (case in point Harry Potter) but British cinema is a little different from American cinema, and I'm not quite sure why they do it the way they do it. Sometimes they get great actors, other times they get cheezy actors who belong in british comedies and not the big screen. American Cinema has the money and the means to teach up and coming stars how to really act. And even when that fails they have the most talented directors in the world to give further coaching so that the actor does exactly like they are supposed to.
Again: getting a job as an actor isn't hard--provided there is a movie being made that you fit perfectly. The only hard thing about it is that in order to succeed you have to jump when the sargent says jump and you have to shoot when the director says shoot. (I'm telling you, in a lot of cases it's just like joining the military, only harder to get into)
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