Expert: Taylor Sheppard - 6/14/2008

Question
I am a 26 year old male living in central Minnesota. I recently became a big Vin Diesel fan about 2 years after The Chronicles of Riddick was released. That led me into thinking about becoming an actor. My only real motivation for wanting to pursue this is as follows: I stood in front of 350 plus people at a friend's wedding, read some bible verses, and then sat back down. After the service, about 7 or 8 people commented me on how natural and confident I was. There are other things like plays I have been in, other public places I have read, and the curiosity of the acting business.
  I look at actors/actresses and wonder how complicated is it to publicly emote, take the role of someone else, the business side of things, and why they do what they do.
  Is it possible to "get in"? I am a single Dad with joint custody of my 4 year old daughter so if I choose a career, I do not have room for living on the edge trying to be a good father. I also work out and am in better shape than the average person my age if that helps.
  Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.
Thank you,  Brian

Answer
Hi Brian,

All good questions. Many a career has started because someone had a curiosity, an intrigue with the art behind something. What makes it work?

For acting, there are many reasons that people get into it. Some because they were steered into it by life, some because they have a natural joy of performing, some because they are shy and want to do something that allows them to "be" someone they don't get to be in real life, and probably the WORST two reasons: because they "wanna get rich and famous" and because they think they will be loved by everyone unlike in their existing life.
I was motivated by being shy and because it is FUN to be able to be evil or whatever, because in real life I have generally been the nice guy who    
doesn't want to hurt people's feelings and this is a free license to do what a character does and get away with it. I must confess that I still worry in the back of my head that if I do my job well, someone will forget its a movie!

Your situation with being a solo dad is honestly not the best, but if you are willing to work really hard to balance things, you can at least be involved to a degree in the biz, even if you don't get to be a major star. Just don't get the idea you can quit your day job and support her and you on the money. Most actors have many irons in the fire, so to speak, so they can afford to get by. It IS a gamble. Only about two percent of actors make that crazy money people dream about and your daughter is THE most important thing. If it were just you, then I'd say just go for it. In this case, just take some classes when you can fit them in and see what comes of it. You may find that as you get deeper into it, you are bored silly with it. It can be REALLY tedious much of the time and you have to love it.

You may find that voiceover work for commercials is your forte. That can be some good local work that helps out on bills from time to time.

Check it out! You never know!

Best,
Taylor