Actor Goal Setting: Skill Goals, Not Outcome Goals

Twenty years into this career I looked up the failure rate for actors, out of curiosity, because until that day it had never occurred to me to check. Failing was never on the table. Not because I’m special, but because I decided early that quitting wasn’t an option, and once quitting is off the table, the only question left is how to get a little better today. That is what goal setting is for. Not the dream. The today.

So let’s set some goals, and let’s set the kind that can’t betray you.

Begin big, and be careful what you wish for

Set your ten year goal first. But watch the wording, because most actors set goals they don’t control, and a goal you don’t control will do one of two things. Either you won’t reach it, and now you’ve broken the rule about not quitting, or you will reach it and discover the thing you thought you wanted doesn’t make you happy, which leads to the same place. Here’s what the wrong kind sounds like:

• “I want an agent.”
• “I want the lead in a movie.”
• “I want to be the star of a TV show.”
• “I want to be famous.”

None of those are yours to decide. An agent decides the first one, a director the second, an audience the last. A goal you can’t guarantee isn’t a goal; it’s a wish. An actor’s goal is skill based:

• “I will have ten Shakespeare monologues mastered.”
• “I will have a strong voice and precise diction.”
• “I will have read twenty plays and ten books on acting.”

Then the fun part. Get the skills and the other things, the agent, the role, the booking, start to arrive on their own, and when they do they won’t feel hollow, because your attention was never on them. It was on the craft. The pursuit of mastery, the incessant, tiny steps to becoming better, is what you should chase after. Not the agent, the booking, or the award. I wrote that in the book and I’d write it again.

Work backwards

Ten years done? Now five. Then one. Then this month, this week, today. The question at every step is the same: what could I do today that gets me closer to this week’s goal, which gets me closer to this month’s, which gets me closer to the year’s? When the chain is built, today is never a mystery.

Start small

It’s extremely important that you start today, and just as important that you start smaller than you want to. One workout doesn’t undo ten years of belly fat, and one binge day of acting work doesn’t either. Instead of “master a monologue by tonight,” commit to choosing the right monologue and printing it out. That’s the whole goal for today. Tomorrow, the first eight lines. The person who does something small every day beats the person who does something huge once, every single time. Happiness lives in the progress.

A twelve month plan you actually control

Here’s what a skill based year looks like for an actor starting out. Notice that nothing on it depends on anyone else saying yes.

• Month 1: Be in a weekly class. Choose two contrasting monologues and get them memorized cold. Start reading one play a week.
• Month 3: Ten minutes of vocal warm ups every day, no exceptions. Four monologues in the bank. Twelve plays read. A headshot that looks like you.
• Month 6: A scene, fully worked, that you could put up tonight. Cold reads at home twice a week. Your first book on the craft finished, second one started.
• Month 9: A commercial read and a dramatic read you could do on camera without notes. Improv one night a week, because the audition will ask for it.
• Month 12: Ten monologues. Forty plays. Every audition you were invited to, done and reviewed. And a next year written down before this one ends.

Do that year and I can’t promise you an agent. Nobody honest can. What I can tell you is that the actors who get agents are, almost without exception, the ones who did a year like that first, and didn’t need the agent to feel like an actor.

Do you really want this?

One last question before you write anything down. The answer may be no, and that’s okay. This isn’t for everyone. But if it’s yes, then the ten year goal is already set. You just wrote it. Now pick the monologue.