http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/ / CC BY 2.0

Alright. I’m gonna start these articles off with a caveat. These are by no means the secrets to instant success for a flourishing acting career, especially within your first year of arriving in LA. And I am not a coach or an expert on the “necessities” for your individual success. However, these are the things that I wish I knew when I first came to this town. Things that I’ve slowly learned and developed over the handful of years that I’ve been here. Many of them are basic. Some of them are obvious. But a few of them are crucial. We’ll be talking practical, applicable, and motivational. But above all, for the newcomer as well as the seasoned pro who may need a reminder, hopefully we’ll be talking helpful. So here we go…

PART 1 – Get Yourself Together

Step 1: Get Comfortable

http://www.flickr.com/photos/respres/ / CC BY 2.0

The very first thing you need to do is to get comfortable with your living basics. If you don’t have one already, get yourself a reliable means of transportation. A car is going to be needed to get you from the Valley to that last minute audition on the Westside in the middle of rush hour with a massive SIG Alert holding up the entire 405. (If you aren’t quite yet familiar with what these terms mean, you will be soon enough.) I’ve been through four cars since moving here: ironically a Honda Hatchback, a Geo Hatchback, a 4-door Geo, and another 4-door Honda. I know what I like. A used car with good gas mileage and a great engine is best; you don’t want to be saddled with huge car payments your first year out here. Get on Craigslist.com, phone a friend, or ask your parents to help you find a car (my Grandpa sure does know a bargain when he sees one.)

Next, you need to secure yourself a (safe) place to live. If you haven’t been on WestsideRentals.com prior to your move, and you’re crashing on a friend’s couch, get online; your friend will appreciate it. Or find a place with that friend; maybe they secretly want more room or cheaper rent. Either way, you need a safe place to stay. When I first moved here, I found a cheap place to live in Highland Park. A married couple was renting the rooms of their huge three-story house to several single females. For my first year out here it was actually kinda fun, like a dorm situation. Cheap? Yes. Safe? Uh… I did have a problem with the owners not locking up the downstairs entrances amidst sounds of nighttime disturbances and violence in the neighborhood. I have and will now and forever lock my bedroom door while sleeping alone… Bottom line: find some friends to room with, try to bargain for a parking spot if you don’t have one (especially if you are female) and be thrifty but don’t sacrifice safety for money. Westside Rentals is your best bet if you don’t have friends to room with. Then perhaps Craigslist.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bunnyhero/ / CC BY 2.0

And now you’re gonna need a job to pay for your rent and that car. I know it’s not the most original profession but waiting tables and bartending have some really great advantages. Flexible hours are a perk, especially working nights and weekends when you most likely won’t be auditioning. You can trade shifts with other co-workers and get people to cover for you when you get that almighty callback to Producers. And the money can be fantastic. This is where your people skills and patience come into play. If you can interact with the public, charm them, befriend them, and still serve some hot corned beef hash and bring the overpriced check fairly quickly while biting your tongue at complaints, you will do well. I worked in several restaurants the first few years I was here. Mainly chain stores in touristy locations where the turnover was high and the pressure even higher. After 4 years, I went a bit crazy and quit because I found that it was sucking my soul. But you’re young, you’re fresh, you’re pretty, you can handle it. The best way to procure a job is to just go in and ask. I say stop off at every restaurant you like to eat at and charm your way into an interview. Or at least drop off your resume and a winning smile for the manager and follow up within a month. You never know what can happen…

But let’s say, you aren’t a people person and can’t stand running around pouring some thirsty tourist’s 5th Arnold Palmer. What about temp work? Register with AppleOne.com when you get here if you have any kind of office experience. The work, as they say, is temporary and there’s no need to commit unless you parlay the temp work to a full-time job. Also, I might register to do Background work, work standing in the background of TV shows and film. Central Casting is the place to get registered for Union and Non-Union background work. The pay isn’t the greatest for non-union actors but you can get a lot of experience on set watching the principle actors earn their living. It’s also a great way to get that script written or catch up on your book-club reading or personal correspondence; there’s a lot of waiting around in between set ups. You could get some work done on your laptop or your blackberry if you’re motivated. Plus, you never know what could happen on set, they may need one of those background folks to come to the foreground and utter a word or two. And you know what that means: SAG card, people. It’s happened…

Step 2: Get Familiar

You’re gonna want to get familiar with this place you’ve just decided to call “Home.” And first thing’s first: Get a Thomas Guide. Period. Or a GPS system. But if you have an old-school Honda that doesn’t have a connector for your iPod, let alone a GPS that you can’t afford, a $20 Thomas Guide will do. You can find them pretty much anywhere; I think I even got mine at Staples. Anyway, learn it. Figure out the areas you will mostly likely audition in: the Valley, the Westside, Hollywood, are pretty much it. You don’t want to be on your way to a Hannah Montana audition on Sunset and find yourself stuck in Compton somehow, not knowing how to get back on track. Take your TG, pick an area, and just drive around one day. Get to know your city. If you get lost, pull over, find the closest cross street, and look it up. You’ll get to know when to take Franklin to bypass Hollywood traffic or how to take Crescent or Laurel to get over “The Hill” in no time…

Next, get to know the industry in general. Hit the Sam French bookstore! There’s one on either side of the hill, Hollywood and the Valley. This is a fantastic place for new actors to start. Lots of books on acting and the biz, how to find an agent/manager/coach, screenwriting books, plays, screenplays, magazines and plenty of other helpful materials to get you started. A few I personally recommend: Acting is Everything by Judy Kerr and Self Management for Actors by Bonnie Gillespie for all you proactive actor types. Also Save The Cat! by Blake Snyder for all the budding screenwriters out there. Sit in the SF bookstore for an hour a day for a few weeks and do some research. They don’t let you make copies so either go in the back and furtively but secretively scribble some notes or invest some of that well-earned tip money and buy the book. Go ahead and bring it home, it’ll be good for your collection. And you can write it off come April 15th.