Leeann on not being a natural: the singing coach who was good because she had to work at it, the nerves, wanting to be funny, and four habits that came out of doing improv badly for a long time. Get your hands dirty, play tennis, look for love, and do what you’d do.
A Tuesday at 3 PM, a catalogue, a rubber band, a toy fishing pole, and a three-year-old who believed every word. Leeann on the last time you believed a script that way, and how to work on your actor’s faith.
You walk into a commercial audition and your assigned partner is demanding chocolate milk. Leeann on how to make it go well: introduce yourself to the kid and the parent, run the sides together the right way, and build the relationship before anyone says a line.
Commercial copy is famously unnatural, and well-trained actors freeze on it. Leeann’s three questions for every script: who am I talking to, where am I, and what feeling am I imparting? With a Toyota minivan and one very good mother.
Sooner or later you’ll be paired in an audition with someone who’s nervous, new, not listening or trying to be funny. Leeann on agreement, vertical scene moves, and how to give a good audition next to a bad scene partner.
Leeann’s first television casting call: a trophy-wife role, a gray business suit, an entrance in character, and a mime. Why the bad audition became the best teacher she ever had, and five steps for the car ride home.
You don’t need a demo reel to get started. You need one to be considered for the best job there is, the direct booking. What a reel is, why it matters, and how to make one in three steps, even with no footage.
Never dress as the role; suggest it. How Leeann has been styled for mom roles for PetSmart, Safeguard and Target, what to wear and what to leave home, and the makeup that reads as a mom and not a magazine.
Train on camera, get a headshot that looks like you, get on the sites casting directors use, audition for everything. What a commercial pays, and how a theater actress who thought she lacked the look booked national spots from Arizona.
Strip the spaceships and the plot twists off any story and what’s left is people and how they treat each other. Why ‘Luke, I am your father’ is the line everyone remembers, and what that means for the way you prepare a role.
You will work on projects you don’t believe in, with people who didn’t know what they were doing. Stay quiet about it, forever. Why it’s bad business in a small industry, why it insults the people who loved the thing, and what to say instead.
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