Acting Tips: Adopting a New Name

Something that used to be routine, but now seems to have fallen out of favor in recent years is the carefully considered stage/professional name.  Yes, it can feel horribly awkward answering to a name other than the one we grew up with, but equally true is that few of us have Rosalind Russell or Olivia de Havilland printed on our birth certificate. (Russell actually thanked her mother for giving her a movie star’s name.) 

Back in Hollywood’s Golden Age, actors didn’t hesitate to replace their birth names with something that was easier to pronounce, a better fit for their looks or personality, or eliminated confusion with another actor. Olivia de Havilland’s sister Joan went through several last names before coming up with “Fontaine” and sudden success. 

And success is what you’re after, so consider a new name carefully. The unwed mother of British actor Alec Guinness may have taken his last name off a bottle of stout, but whatever the truth it was often assumed throughout his life that he was a member of the rather prominent Guinness family (darn the luck!). Would Marion Morrison, Maurice Micklewhite, Doris Kappelhoff, Archie Leach, Krishna Bhanji, Alphonso d’Abruzzo, or Issur Demsky have had the same careers as John Wayne, Michael Caine, Doris Day, Cary Grant, Ben Kingsley, Alan Alda, or Kirk Douglas? Probably not. Yet I see a lot of actors these days hanging on to names that for various reasons work against them.

Here are reasons to consider a name change early in your career, some of which need no explanation:

1. You want to avoid confusion with a better-known actor or celebrity.  Actor Albert Brooks entered the world as Albert Einstein. No joke. Michael Keaton was born Michael Douglas. (I was the first Kathryn Browning on IMDb. Now there are five. It keeps the pressure on to be the one that’s “better known”.)

2. Your name is boring and/or commonly seen everywhere.  A lot of actors with the last names Smith, Johnson, White, Brown, Jones, etc. either replace it or dress it up with a standout first name.

3. Your name has an unfortunate association in English: Lipschitz, Leach, Barren, Cheeter, Slye, etc.

4. Your name is from a language or region that no longer expresses what you look like or who you are:  The world has become a melting pot.  If your great-great grandfather’s name was Wong, but you don’t look Asian you’re going to be confusing a lot of casting directors. 

5. Your name is hard to pronounce and frequently misspelled. 

6. You’ve always disliked your birth name or it never felt like a fit.

7. You want to protect your privacy and identity. You keep your personal life separate, your kids/spouse don’t live in your shadow, and you can travel and do legal business under your birth name. Also, when random strangers come up to you on the street and say, “Gosh, you look just like….” You have the option of laughing and saying, “I know! Everyone tells me that!”

8. You receive a sign! You’re considering a name change and out of the blue, you see a name in print, someone calls you by a different name, a name appears in a dream, whatever, and your head says, “That’s it!”  

For me, most of the above applied.  Confusion: I was named for a famous actress and daughter of an equally famous radio personality. Too common: Growing up there were at least a dozen girls in my high school with the same first name (often attached to a last name that made it a joke). Frequently misspelled: For some reason people almost always add an extra “n” to my first name, which makes it a pun.  Disliked my name: It never felt like a fit and the first and last names said together created an “ah-ah” sound that was hard on the ear. It was a sign: my husband and I were mulling over various actress names and my husband blurted out “Kathryn Browning!”  Why that? I asked.  “I don’t know, it just suddenly popped into my head!”  

And that last one is as good a reason as any. I would add that my husband doesn’t remember that story at all, which means it REALLY WAS a sign. 

Acting Tips: Getting Clips for Your Reel

It's 2021 and finally I have a new credit. (Whew) A week ago, March 12th, I appeared as Dr. Iris Carson, a couples therapist to Sharon and Rey on the CBS daytime drama The Young and the Restless. Four scenes and 35-40 lines. Wonderful people at CBS. Professional and friendly. My whole time there went like clockwork and was such a positive experience. I even had a parking space with my name on it. (Funny how much the little touches mean to an actor.)

Now, how do I get my clip? Years and years ago I addressed this topic from my perspective as an East Coast know-not-much and it seemed terribly difficult. Now that I have an agent the whole process is much easier. Olivia at MZA referred me to sceneclipper.com where actors can get a downloadable high-res copy of their scenes, any length, for a mere $10.  In fact, for a bit more, they'll even string your clips together into a reel. The caveat is that you do need to be an "industry professional" and the staff at Scene Clipper need to approve your account application. Read the terms of service here.  It seems to me that having professional representation was required and one way they determine you are a pro. Check it out, just to be sure.

My YnR scenes won't show up for a couple of weeks yet, but I was able to find and view my scenes at other cable and broadcast shows I'd been in, such as House of Cards.  Also, since a clip is $10 regardless of length, and since I have my own editing program, as most actors do, I found it easier to just grab the whole section in which my scenes appear and to cut them out and string them together on my own. Anyway, it's good to be back, even if the production people I meet - for the moment at least - look like they're dressed in hazmat suits. I have four auditions hanging. Keeping a good thought.

Acting Tips: How to Recognize a Great Role

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've been taking Helen Mirren's online acting class at Masterclass.com and it's something I recommend. If you're looking for advice in any career field, get it from someone who is highly successful at it.  Mirren has won the Triple Crown of Acting in both the United States and the United Kingdom. She knows her craft.

One bit I found particularly useful is her advice on how to recognize a good starring or supporting role. You should already be able to recognize a good script. If you know a century of film inside and out, and you should, your ear will tell you if the dialogue works and the story is compelling. 

But is the role for which you're being considered a good one? Mirren has a formula:

1. If you're offered the full script to read, look first to see if your character is in the last scene and what your character does. If your character is important to that scene, as opposed to just hanging out or tossing a line, it's probably a very good part. 

2. If it's not in the last scene, find the last scene in which your character appears and assess the power of that scene and how far it is from the end.

3. If your character has no impact in the last scene in which it appears, if it just disappears, then it's not a good role and there is no point in reading the full script.

4. If the character has an impact at the end, or an impact at the point where it exits the film, then read the script through from the beginning, knowing that it hardly matters how often your character appears in the film, because you know it's is going to play a pivotal role in the story. Think of Robert Duvall's "Boo" Radley in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird.  Duvall, who had already appeared off-Broadway and on television, didn't even have a line, but it was a powerful role - his first in film - and he knew it. 

I've really been enjoying this online class, because it presents the kind of practical information that I haven't seen since I took Geoffrey Soffer's Workshop in Washington, DC, ten years ago (see the link to my featured post at right). Actors are always learning, and this has been time well spent.

Acting Tips: Creating a Vision of Success

 As I told a fellow actor this morning, I am ready to shake the dust of 2020 off my shoes and get moving! What an awful year! Coming off of a national, multi-platform commercial for Rocket Mortgage in late 2019, I expected work in 2020 to really take off. Instead....bupkis! No work and almost nothing in residuals. (Even my old shows didn't air.) To top it off my agent decided to leave Los Angeles permanently and waved good-bye to all of her actor clients (I think she went home to Sweden!)

But in every crisis there is opportunity. Remember that. Already I'v booked a new agent and a new agency and I'm getting auditions, even with the current slowdown in Los Angeles. Feeling upbeat and working on being more relaxed on camera (your skills can get a bit rusty after periods of inactivity.)

Now, as I do every year, I've also taken time to review my life and career goals (and no, they're not the same thing.) Something I believe in absolutely is that if you can see a better future for yourself you can live it. The more you can imagine yourself in a future situation - in a setting with near cinematic clarity, down to the tiniest details - the more likely you'll be able to make that vision a reality.  

How does that work? Instead of writing "I want to become a famous actor" (remember, O.J. Simpson and Sharon Tate are "famous" actors), write something like, "I see myself booking leading/supporting roles in highly regarded dramatic films shown in movie theaters, and seeing my name in foot-high letters on the screen."  Or maybe "I see myself booking a breakthrough dramatic role that gets me noticed in the film industry, and my agent fielding phone calls with tons of opportunities for me in bigger films."  Or "I see myself becoming a truly fine actor, winning an Oscar for a wonderful performance, and mounting the steps to thunderous applause in a huge auditorium to accept the award in person. I'm writing my acceptance speech now." (As a young girl, Oscar-winner Kate Winslet practiced her Oscar acceptance speech in front of a mirror, holding a bottle of shampoo!)

Dream big and don't be vague about it. None of this "I just want to act" business, which I hear from too many actors. As my author husband says, if you don't know where you're going any road will get you there. Don't settle for any road. Think about the kind of work you want to do and where you want to go with it, and write it down. 

Also, don't tell anyone what your Big Dream is. This is where writing it down differs from the Vision Board idea that has become so popular. When Big Dreams are made public, others have a tendency to shoot them down, even those who love you. Don't give them the chance. Discuss short-term goals certainly, because others can help you connect with what you need, but keep the Big Dream in your heart.

And do everything you can to make it happen. Follow leads, research, make friends in the industry, prepare yourself as an actor. Ask, as Sean Astin asks in the 1993 film Rudy, one of my favorites, "Have I done all that I can do?" When you've done all you can do, good things seem to come like a bolt out of the blue.