Preparing for New Roles

Hi There,

If you told me a year ago, when I started The Dialogue, that by May, 2021 I’d be a small business owner and expectant mom I would say you were mad.

But you’d also be right.

Taking on new roles is something actors spend their whole career braving. The number of perspectives you get to experience in your lifetime as an actor is thrilling. Those perspective shifts make me think about how similar preparing for a role in a film is to preparing for a new role in your everyday life.

Role prep of any kind starts with a big-picture overview of the character and narrows down to specific days, specific moments. Once you’re in the daily grind, it’s easy to lose sight of why you started—and only focusing on minutiae leads to myopic oversight. So broad-view-thinking and moment-to-moment thinking are both important.

It took me years to tailor an approach that works for the most challenging role preps—from actor to business owner. The key ingredients are nothing new, but the tweaks I made along the way made all the difference for me. Because these little tweaks lead me to take necessary action I would otherwise miss.

In this One-Year Anniversary issue of The Dialogue, I’m sharing my approach to tackling new roles.

I’m also announcing a Member’s Only area for the website.

It’s called The Prompt Book, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Find out more at the end of this month’s Dialogue.

Be well,

JC

Because I usually focus so much on top-down thinking, I’ve had to kick my own ass into detail-oriented goal setting and scheduling mode. It took a long time to find the right combination of tools that keep me in consistent forward motion. The three steps below are not groundbreaking, but these tiny tweaks changed everything for me.

Start with the Big Picture

The highest level. My favorite part of the process. Visualize what I want to bring into reality?  I can do that all day.

When it comes to working on a role, this is the picture you start to form after a few reads of the script about the story you’re bringing to life. Bigger than just your role in it the project, it’s the theme, the meaning, the “why” of it all.

In terms of your career as an actor, it’s what drives you to pursue a life in this crazy business. Maybe it’s the desire to help people connect through stories, a way to help inspire empathy. Maybe it’s a way to shine light on topics that are important to you. In order to convey meaning, all characters need a reason to exist—whether fictional or real.

Defining this “why” is such a vital part of taking on any role. In overwhelming moments when anxiety and uncertainty take hold, or if feels like you’re just going through the motions, coming back to this big picture “reason for it all” is key to staying grounded.

Give me a good playlist and a lovely day walking around New York City, and I’m somewhere lost in the big picture of my plan. And adding a creative angle to this part of the process always inspires me. Facing a new role? Go to a museum that suits the project. Redefining a vision for your life? Go somewhere new—even just a new neighborhood—and let your mind wander, allowing your creative insights to inform your “reason for it all”.

And then once you have a clear sense of your big picture…

 Clearly Define Your Goals

“What does done look like?”

I wish I knew who to cite for this quote. Thinking about “what done looks like” has helped me many times over the course of multiple careers.

For years, I set out with insanely vague goals like “be a good actor”. With a goal that ambiguous, I had no idea how to work towards it! And who would need to say I was good? Me? Never gonna happen. If I didn’t know my destination, or how to recognize getting there, how could I evaluate progress?

The simple twist of rephrasing the goal from a statement “I want to be a good actor” to questions “what does it mean to be a good actor, and what does a good actor do to be good” gave me a place to start and a way to be “done.” The work would never be finished, but I could design a day and plan out what I would do to work toward becoming a “good” actor. It became a process-oriented goal instead of a hazy dream.

I’ve learned that the key to getting good answers is to ask better questions.

When I’m working with actors, I work in layers. And this is one of the reasons why: it narrows the big picture and allows you to feel like you’re thoroughly exploring one element of this new person you’re bringing to life. And even though the exploration will continue onto filming, we can bring in a sense of “done.” Or at least “done for this portion of the work.”

When you’re not playing a role in a project, you’re constantly playing the role of CEO in your career as an actor. I see a lot of wildly talented artists lose their way here. If you set out to “be a working actor,” what does that look like in terms of defining “working actor”and the actions involved in being one?

If instead you ask “what does a working actor mean to me, and what does a working actor do” you’re getting closer to building a day-to-day life that supports what you’re aiming toward.

Any goal that helps you come up with a list of actions is key, because from there…

Design Your Day & Live Your Plan

I despise the word schedule. Schedule my day? The minute I hear the word “schedule”, my inner child rebels and wants to do nothing but ignore whatever is on it.

But design?  I will happily design my day. It feels less rigid, more creative.

Finding your own words that ignite you to action doesn’t seem like it would make much of a difference, but for me – it really does. For years, I fought scheduling and planning day-to-day tasks, choosing instead to keep track of them in my head where I didn’t have to face the controlling nature of a “to-do list”. But once I started thinking of my time in terms of a designed plan, with actions I specifically chose to pursue my specific objectives, suddenly I started looking forward to writing them down. Because I could clearly see the connection between my tasks, my goals, and my reason for doing them.

When these actions connect to your bigger picture, getting them done walks you closer to your dreams. And when results inevitably seem invisible and your routine becomes a rut, a quick walk around the block, revisiting your big-picture “why”, can reconnect your day-to-day actions with the fulfilling reason you practice them in the first place.

I’ve used these steps over and over. Inspiration, clarity, action. Like I said, nothing groundbreaking in the steps. But any plan that makes you do the work will change your life. Whether it’s fully inhabiting a character in a dream project, or fully inhabiting the person you live inside every day.

Iger describes his autobiography as a book about “being guided by a set of principles that help nurture the good and manage the bad.” For me, it was an inside look at how some of the top decisions in the entertainment industry come to be, and how much is always left to chance in creative fields.

My top takeaways: [Emphasis my own]

• [Iger] talks a lot about “the relentless pursuit of perfection.” In practice, this can mean a lot of things, and it’s hard to define. It’s a mindset, more than a specific set of rules. It’s not about perfectionism at all costs. It’s about creating an environment in which people refuse to accept mediocrity. It’s about pushing back against the urge to say that “good enough” is good enough.
• Don’t be in the business of playing it safe. Be in the business of creating possibilities for greatness.
• People sometimes shy away from big swings because they build a case against trying something before they even step up to the plate. Long shots aren’t usually as long as they seem. With enough thoughtfulness and commitment, the boldest ideas can be executed.
• If you’re in the business of making something, be in the business of making something great.
• Innovate or die, and there’s no innovation if you operate out of fear of the new or untested.
• I can’t overstate how important it is to keep blows to the ego, real as they often are, from occupying too big a place in your mind and sapping too much of your energy.

Purchase on Amazon:
https://jamiecarroll.me/ride-of-a-lifetime-amz

Purchase on Barnes & Noble:
https://jamiecarroll.me/ride-of-a-lifetime-bn

Purchase from an Independent Bookseller:

https://jamiecarroll.me/ride-of-a-lifetime-indy

Or, check the stacks of your local Public Library.

In this Vanity Fair challenge, screenwriter Emily Carmichael (Jurassic World) takes on the challenge of constructing a scene in seven minutes with a hyper specific set of parameters and notes from producers. It’s an eye-opening insight into the mind of a writer at work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoM-tQOOcPw

So, I’m launching a space dedicated to all the bits of knowledge that fall under that category.

From clips of workshops I’ve held, how to optimize your presence on casting websites, along with recommended reading, voice and movement coaches and more.

This is open only to clients and subscribers.