Acting Kids – 9 Key Tasks for Parents

1. “Drive” Taxi Driver
Drop everything and DRIVE. It is the truth to almost every parent’s existence – drive to school, drive to auditions, drive to jobs, drive to sports, drive to acting class, drive-thru food, drive for your life. Until you can afford to pay a chauffer, be prepared to drive.

2. “Pay”
Pay for classes, pay for headshots, pay for dinner, pay for clothes, pay for gas, pay for more classes, pay for demoreel, pay for more headshots, pay, pay, pay.

3. “Organize to Be Flexible”
Review your schedule when you start your day and by noon, it has all changed. This can reek havoc on your nerves. The more organized your tools are, the easier it is to be flexible. Keep your headshots, resumes, work permit, key contact numbers, in a handy notebook, and keep it with your calender/datebook/PDA at all times. It’s also important to keep mapbook/GPS, healthy snacks, water, and a set of non-logo, age-appropriate change of clothes in the car or ready to go at all times.

4. “Train”
You wouldn’t drop your six year old into the deep end of a pool or put them in the cockpit of an aircraft or sit them at your receptionist’s desk without at least a lesson or two. Why would you send them into the professional world of acting with out a lesson or two? Showbiz is a Business. Most people train for years to get into any other profession, but somehow feel they can just give acting “a go”. (If lessons are out of your budget, consider starting with extra work to get some on-the-job training before paying for classes.)

5. “Prepare”
Like organizing, being prepared for auditions is key. If you get sides in advance, review and practice them with your actor. If the job is “big”, schedule a session with your favorite coach. If you don’t have sides, review the brief and show up with your actor prepared to “be” who the brief asks for – goth, emo, jock, nerd, surfer dude, uptight over-achiever, normal kid. It helps if the actor looks the part (within reason). Use common sense. If the brief calls for goth, wear black – not pink. If it calls for a sporty type, don’t wear a suit. If it calls for a nerd, don’t wear basketball shorts. You get the picture. So make sure your actor presents the correct picture for the Casting Director. And don’t under-estimate the value of mental preparation.

6. “Cheer”
Whether our children are actors, athletes, scholars or even all of the above, so often as parents our best role is Cheerleader. Knowing someone believes in you builds self-esteem. As a parent, the best reward (sometimes the only reward) is the furtive look to make sure you noticed.

7. “Love”
Showbiz is full of negative influences, rejection, slights, barbs, and outright nasty behavior (and that’s just from the other parents). If you and your child are determined to be in Entertainment long term, your child needs to know you love them no matter what anyone else says, does, looks at them or mistakes they make. Tensions run high, money low, tempers flair, sometimes the only thing that keeps us all going is knowing that somebody loves us.

8. “Be Patient”
I have never been involved in any activity where patience was more valuable than being the parent of actors. In this business you will race to auditions, photo shoots, to be on set on time just so you can wait. Hurry up and wait. While it is tempting to be “fashionably late”, if YOU are late it’s just plain bad. If everyone else is late, that’s just the way it is, so be patient.

9. “Invisibility”
As a parent of an actor, you are expected to do all of the things above, but you are expected to be invisible. You know the old adage “to be seen, but not heard.” Parents with kids who act need to be available to do everything without voicing your opinion about ANYTHING to those hiring your little angel. You have no creative input, no control over wardrobe, hair, make-up, no opinion about the script, sets, props or other actors. But be sure, if your little angel acts up, starts to cry (unless called for in the script), gets cranky, hungry, tired or anything that takes away from the scene being portrayed, you will be expected to jump in and DEAL with your child so the business of showbiz can continue uninterrupted.