Coping with Rejection

Acting is a personal profession, that is, we are the product/service that we sell. For this reason, like in many of the arts, we take rejection of our product very personally. We can’t help it, we are our art form, so when we aren’t right for the commercial. When we aren’t ‘Irish’ enough or because we aren’t as skinny as the last girl, well, we can’t help take it all to heart.

But listen up:

You’re going to deal with professional rejection all of your career, it is something you must come to accept, just like the rain, traffic and taxes.

Even the very top earning professionals are rejected during the casting process: it’s not personal, it’s industry-wide.

It doesn’t matter whether you thought you were RIGHT for the role, it doesn’t matter if it’s your favourite play, you must let go.

For you are not in control.

And if you are not in control, you should leave those things alone.

Don’t expect to get a place, a job, a role, expect nothing. Accept it when you get it though :o)

If the rejection comes with genuine advice, it might be worth ‘strengthening’ your dancing or your accents or your verse work or whatever, but otherwise, don’t take it personally, march forward, without anger or malice. You shouldn’t hate them for making their choice. In their shoes, you would also choose the person that you thought would return their investment.

Casting takes all types, all shapes and sizes, all ages, race and colour.

But how do you cope with continued rejection?

Well, you have two choices.

The first choice is to give up. Go be a high school drama teacher, it’s a stable, reasonably paid job (I’m told). It will give you that deathly state of ‘stability’. That you must crave. Of course you do, we all do.

The second is to simply resist the temptation to settle for anything less than what you want.

Rejection is natural.

So is success.

If you want one, you must accept the other.