Be Careful of Compromise: Your Morals, Your Talent and Your Worth as an Actor

Early on you take what you can get. Roles that pay nothing, projects a few hundred people will see, sets where the writing, the directing and the editing are all somebody’s first try. That’s not settling. That’s paying your dues, and some of those projects turn out to be wonderful. I did plenty of them and I’d do them again.

Compromise is a different thing, and it hides inside the same decisions. There are three places it gets you: your morals, your talent, and your worth. Here’s how to hold the line on each without turning down the work you should be taking.

Your morals

Values, ethics, faith, the personal lines you won’t cross; these differ from person to person and that’s exactly as it should be. The mistake isn’t having the wrong lines. It’s not having drawn them before the script asks. Nudity: full, partial, body double, depends on context? Love scenes, kissing, drinking, smoking, crude humor, religion, language, politics? If you haven’t answered those questions in a quiet room, you’ll answer them in a loud one, with an offer on the table, and you may not like your answer a year later.

The details are yours. Maybe your character can drink but you won’t sell beer in a commercial. Maybe a love scene is fine on paper and not fine for your marriage, and that says nothing wrong about you or your marriage; it’s just a fact to know about yourself before the audition. Decide early. The compromises get bigger as the offers get better, and the actors who never drew the line find that the line got drawn for them.

Will a production change a word or tame a scene to keep you? Occasionally, once you’ve made yourself indispensable to them. Don’t count on it before you are.

Your talent

Building a résumé on small projects is fine. Stopping your training because you’re busy with small projects is the compromise. The roles that change a life go to actors who kept getting better while they were paying dues, and the way you get better is to work opposite people whose training and experience exceed yours. Athletes don’t improve by beating weaker opponents. Neither do actors. Keep auditioning up. Keep rehearsing with people who scare you a little. Keep the class.

Your worth as an actor

Your résumé is not your worth. Training, life experience, personality, look, fitness, skills, what you know: all of it goes into what you bring to a set, and none of it shows up on a one page list of credits. Regardless of the résumé, you are an actor, and when someone asks what you do, that’s the answer.

And at some point, as with any business, you have to value the work in money. There’s a day when you’ve done enough for free that free has taught you everything it can, and continuing to work for nothing stops being dues and becomes a habit. Your coach, your agent and the actors ahead of you can help you see that day. Stay humble, always. But don’t discount yourself. You are the product you’re selling, and nobody buys inventory from the guy who keeps telling them it’s worthless.