How To Get Actors To Say Yes To Your Movie
As of the time I am writing this, I’ve made eleven feature-length films, working with well over a hundred actors across them. Some of them have been friends, which makes it easier for them to say yes, but a lot of them have been complete strangers, primarily found through Backstage. I’m good at that—if I know someone is right for a role, I almost always can get them to know it too. Read on and you’ll be just as good at that as I am.
The first thing to understand is that they must be genuinely right for the role—there needs to be something undeniable about what you’re offering them. An actor wants challenging roles sparingly and roles they can do in their sleep plentifully. The part should be so up their alley that they know it would be impossible for them to hit a wrong note with their performance—it should feel like something not just that they CAN do, but that they were MEANT to do. Golden opportunities like these are rare for actors—usually when they are reached out to, they don’t feel ‘seen’—they feel like one of dozens of actors being tapped for a role that is ultimately pretty generic. Don’t write generic characters—write specific ones, and find the specific actors who would be perfect. If this means browsing through hundreds of actors on Backstage just to contact one or two who you know the role is right for, then do that, put the time and energy in. That’s your job, not the actor’s job—fuck demeaning cattle call auditions and all that. By all means, make a posting for your film on Backstage if you want, to see who reaches out to it, but only contact those who are genuinely right.
When it comes to getting them to sign on, you need to consider what they as an actor are looking for. What actors want to know, most of all, is that this project will happen, and will be completed, and will see the light of day. So many actors put tons of time and energy acting in projects that never end up shooting, or are shot but just end up unedited on someone’s hard drive, or are never given a proper release, just left stuck in some limbo of tiny film festivals that no one has ever heard of or would ever go to. If you can make it clear to the actor that you are different—that you actually complete and release films—you are already so far ahead of the pack you have no idea. That’s what they want to see, more than they would ever like to see a dime from you—they know that you don’t have any money, and are in the same boat as them financially or worse. All they want is for the thing to actually happen, and come out. If you can’t honestly assure them of that, then you have no business hiring actors in the first place.
Above all else though, you need to communicate with them properly. It’s important to understand the psychology of someone who has been approached with an opportunity. If you give them too much to have to agree to right off the bat, you might scare off people who would have been totally game had they not felt bombarded by you and your information. The best approach is to let the interaction unfold naturally, politely—maybe not ‘slowly’, but gradually. If you answer all their questions before they even get to have questions to ask you, they’ll feel like they have no decision in the matter. People want to feel like they are in some control, heading down a path of their own volition—no one wants to feel like they’re being dragged by a rip current. And of course, your goal isn’t just to get people to say yes—your goal is to get people to say yes and mean it. They will only mean their yes if they’ve had time to properly consider what their ‘yes’ entails. This isn’t to say that you won’t occasionally still have some people who back out of a project for whatever reason—life happens. But if people are backing out on you all the time, maybe you’re unintentionally creating scenarios where the actors you hire are feeling overwhelmed, or like they didn’t get a chance to think through what they agreed to.
Acting is fun and easy if the role and the opportunity are right for the person—you don’t want to work with anyone for whom the experience will be difficult, a slog. You’re not sadistic—you don’t want to see your actors unhappy. Follow my advice and you will have great people to work with who have a great time doing so.
Thank you for reading, and if you enjoyed this piece, and enjoy my films, consider contributing $2 per month to my film studio, Kill The Lion Films.