Below is an elaboration on Step 1 in “My 10 Steps to Start Your Acting Career For International Students”
Step 1
The first three months: Get your stuff together: Find a good place to live, buy a car if you can afford it, establish healthy routines. Don’t dive into auditioning yet. Focus ONLY on taking acting classes. Stick to them. Get comfortable with your Actor’s Instrument: the body, the voice, the imagination. Take this time to settle in into your new home and with yourself.
What It Means
Get your stuff together within the first three months. This is crucial. You have to cover the basics and have a strong foundation to be able to reach for the stars.
Why three months? Because it’s long enough but not too long. This is just a checkpoint. Let’s say you have a year in the US as an international student. The goal for me was not to “have one awesome audition as an actor in LA!!” during this year. The goal was to get used to the auditioning process and maybe even hopefully book a few projects.
These were the essentials for me:
A Good Place To Live
Your place should be your oasis in Los Angeles. Rent is ridiculously high here so you will most likely share a place.
It is really important that you share with someone who is like you: if you’re a bit messy, you don’t want to share with someone who is Hitler in the kitchen and if you’re ultra tidy you don’t want to share with someone who is a slob.
Talk about this with your future roomies. When you come home, the last thing you want to worry about is not being able to relax. Maybe you’re super social and like to have people over all the time, maybe you value alone time more – live with someone who is like you 😀
Also very important: Choose a neighborhood where you are close to school and feel safe. You will save gas money and it’s worth it to pay an extra couple of hundred bucks in rent to live in a good area. See it as Life Insurance.
A car
Los Angeles is pretty hard to get around without a car. I was reluctant at first because we use public transport all the time in Sweden. But here, it’s a downgrade unfortunately. It’s not very safe in the evening and most importantly, it takes forever. Two hours in rush hour from Santa Monica to Hollywood and that’s not even halfway through town!
I was ok to use the metro/bus the first few months because I was just focusing on the acting classes. I stayed within the same area of LA and got to know it well.
However, once it was time to start auditioning, I traveled all over town and not having a car became a pain. Planning to leave about 1-2 hours before the audition to get there by bus on time, despite that you still might be late.
Then you have your 5 min in the audition room, only to go all the way back for two hours and feel frustrated. Maybe not the first few times, but the glory wore off fast.
Before considering a car though, work out how much the total will be to buy the car, car insurance, gas, parking, unexpected repairs… it might be the same monthly cost to Uber or Lyft.
Anyway, I decided to get a car for two reasons; means of transportation as well as keeping me safe. I don’t have to walk alone to the subway or wait alone at a bus stop in the evening anymore.
A Stocked Fridge
Seriously, it’s going to feel awesome when you are in a rush and have a lot to do, you open up your fridge and there’s food there to fuel your body! Prioritize it. This also means you won’t eat as much fast food and keep costs down.
A Daily/Weekly Acting Class
This MUST be part of the basics for a new actor. Take as many as you can! Find out what you like. Dive into scene study classes, on-camera classes, audition classes, voice, improvisation, technique classes, etc.
Commit to three months where you ONLY focus on this. No need to chase auditions yet. There are plenty of projects in LA. See the training as your daily/weekly actor gym before you hit the big race. You have to feel armed and ready. If you have a lot of acting experience or non at all, this is where you will find your community and make friends too.
These options were my basics. There are probably many more things you can think of: finding a gym, establishing creative time, make time to explore, etc. – it is LA after all!
But I made sure to get these four factors in check right off the bat. If you do too, you should be all set to focus on your acting without stressing about any immediate external things.
After you have covered the basics and established a strong training routine, keep the classes up for the rest of the year.
Next, let’s prepare for auditioning…
I really like your idea of “My 10 Steps to Start Your Acting Career For International Students” project. The journey of building your life in a foreign country is not easy. Thanks for sharing yours. Your experience will be really helpful for not only the actor-to-be but also for all the international people here in LA. Looking forward to your next post!
I didn’t realize that non-actors can also find this helpful, but I guess that especially the first step is important to anyone who moves here. Thanks for letting me know 😀
What a great, in depth guide! As a native Angelino, it’s so fascinating to read on how the international community joins up with ours. Some of these things hadn’t even crossed my mind before, but they’re so important to know! (Especially the car issue haha, I guess that shows how LA I am!)
I’m so glad to get some feedback. I hope this will be helpful to international actors out there. Thank you!