How to book auditions: This is who I am, would you like it? Paul Clayton on auditions & making money as an actor

This is who I am, would you like it? Paul Clayton on auditions & a life-long career in acting. Podcast interview with Marysia Trembecka [ 36:49 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I know Paul Clayton (imdb link) not just from his many many TV and film appearances (Ali G Indahouse, Peep Show, Him and Her and he is recently deceased in Hollyoaks) but also he is the Chair of the Actors Centre and in January this year he played my husband in Sunday Dinner With The Morgans

He has a lifetime of knowledge about the acting industry and at a time when he found his work was slacking of he set up his own company doing corporate work as an actor and wrote a great book about it.

Paul and myself in husband and wife character

Sunday Dinner

Here are some of the highlights  of my interview (this is not a full transcript)

The one thing I have picked up myself is that acting is a business. From Paul’s book

‘Actors often have little choice in their career,  they often have to wait at the will of others for decisions to be made that will affect their future.”

 

I asked Paul what the best way for actors to feel they have control of their career given we can get to the last two and then not book the role, or have long periods of not working.
Paul in his very first job was told by a lovely actress Dilys Hamlet, on the first day of the rehearsal and said ‘You read that beautifully, you know that when you’re forty you will never stop’. This was when he was 21.
The 19 years in between he did some good work but she was right he got into his own weight. At 40 and 50 he has seen big surges in his career. Paul  settling down in a relationship at the age of 40 and that coincided with knowing himself as a person.

As a young actor he would walk into a room feeling confident but giving it ‘what would you like me to be’ However he doesn’t think that works.

I think you have to go in saying ‘This is what I am, would you like it?’

He is the best Paul Clayton there is, some people may be breathing a sigh of relief that there is only one. Obviously there are some parts he would love to do but he is not right for, it is not that he isn’t good, just that he isn’t right for it.

He was pencilled for a very big voice-over last week and then his agent said ‘Oh they went the other way.’ They have gone the other way because of something they heard in that other person’s voice.

What wins people over is you the person, that is what we bring to acting. Some people confuse this with typecasting but what we bring is our own uniqueness and a lot of our life is about finding out who we are and when we settle into that we know what we are selling as it were.

I mention how now I know I play yummy mummies very well and crazy strong women. Occasionally they merge as with the film I did with Paul where I played a coke snorting yummy mummy. The work for me has improved since I  have fallen or rather grown into these categories.

A good friend said to his partner that ‘the thing about Paul is that he has made a career from being either stern or camp’. Paul  is sure he has done the two together. He always jokes he has made a career about being posh or Northern and on a really good day he plays a posh Northerner.

There is truth that the more you single it down the more people know what they are looking at. He knows that when he did Peep Show 7 years ago that that just opened up a whole new area as it was brilliant writing and the audience could identify a type and then to know what to send Paul up for in casting. From that he went up for lots of dads in sitcoms and grumpy dads. It gets you through the door and that was interesting.

I ask how much have you pro-actively opened doors?

He had a great tutor at drama school called John McGregor and he taught the best class ‘Presentation  Technique’ but he said

Every day do one thing that may result in work and then get on with being who you are, because who you are will result in you getting the work’

Paul directed a lot of rep in his 30s and thus did a lot of casting; you can see the desperation in some actors. You have the job until you open the door. and then when you step in the room, most of what you do is taking you away from the job unless you are careful. It is working about what you need to do, don’t think you need to shine.
When directors ask ‘What have you been doing recently?’ sometimes actors don’t plan that answer.
If this was a job in another field you would have thought about the answers, don’t rehearse them, plan them. You have to pick out something that enhances who you are, that tells them about you. Normally an actor is a bit ashamed as he hasn’t been working much.
Paul got a job in ‘The Queen’ playing Bernard Ingham,  he had just come back from holiday and the director asked ‘so what have you been up to’ and Paul gushed about how fabulous the Maldives were. The casting director, after Paul had rhapsodized about the Maldives for 3 minutes, said ‘I think he might have meant work’  and the director said ‘No, I think  I might book for the Maldives!”
Paul thinks he booked the job because he was passionate about something and not trying to ‘buff up’ something he had just done and tried to make it look good. So be honest and saying I haven’t done anything for 6 months but  I have been plumbing, I have met some real loonies….. At which point you can have a discussion about that!

(In meetings…) your personality needs to come through and be living and breathing rather than an apologetic faded version of yourself.

He emails, he now tweets, he always used to write lots of letters but the doing ‘one thing’ has worked He has had weeks of ’27 ways of doing something interesting with a baked potato’ and nowadays there is not the support that was there re the dole office.

One thing he is very keen at the Actors Centre, not to just develop but to provide a place to enable for people to sustain themselves til their time is right.  He was lucky as he can’t do anything else and there was enough to keep ticking over. Sometimes now people have to do other things and they wither away. Perhaps coming to the Actors Centre once a week for a cup of coffee reminds you you are an actor.

Paul doesn’t think you can learn acting but you can finesse it.

He teaches a 90 minute ability on comedy acting class with the Alan Bates bursuary as it has to be absolutely down the line and truthful; and having got the truth there are then techniques you can enhance it.
He saw Two Into One at the Menier Chocolate Factory and it is fantastic. They do some crazy things but always playing the truth whilst phenomenal pieces of business with doors and looks and timing that were a joy to watch. That beautiful contract in the theatre where the audience
gives you permission.

He mentors young actors as part of the Alan Bates bursary: Eliot Barnes-Whorral and Adam Buchanan and loves it.

Paul on resting

‘I hate the term resting, you are not resting. You are fighting to stay alive!’

He loves his first day of unemployment, he adores it. He gets his desk clear, lives in his pajamas and eat custard creams. The second day he will getting a bit itchy and will pop out for lunch, The third day he will be clawing the walls as he knows he will never work again. He becomes unbearable to live with.

Being a Corporate Actor
Paul started corporate acting although initially he didn’t know there was a corporate sector.

What is a corporate actor? One who earns money and doesn’t have to live on baked potatoes.
He directed a lot, had a three month gap and thus did some medical roleplay for a company called Role-call. He was a terrible actor on television then, theatre trained and had done four years at the RSC and he was big.  He thought you just did the same and they pointed a camera at you. However when you are having a conversation with a real doctor who is practicing in the role play how to tell someone they have a terminal illness it is all about having a conversation with who is in front of you.  The doctor is not acting and he got that you just have to focus on the person you are with. He became a much better screen actor after that.

He then found a corporate agent who also sold him with his directing hat on as well. Then he ended up recommending others. He likes it because its fast and the events are normally one off. As an actor you have to be very adaptable.
It gives you some lovely well paid opportunities, last night he read some beautifully written testimonials for the 48th richest man in the world’s 60th birthday in a club in Berkeley Square.

I myself have realized I am an actor, so I am a freelancer. (Shots below from our Sunday Dinner With The Morgans – yet to get full production stills yet of the family!)

Paul recognizes the life force and national treasure that is Anita Dobson who has just joined the Board of the Actors Centre and she always says that she never called herself an actress until the first year she earnt enough money that she didnt do any other jobs.

They had an event  at  The Actors Centre called ‘Moving On up’ for all the graduates where they had accountants and event companies as they will all have the day he calls, ‘The Day The Acting Stops’  as you have had acting for 3 years, yet unless they do something and get off their arses they will never act again. They have to create business relationships with people which may or may not include an agent but if they do have an agent that is not an excuse to turn off the other valves. They need a specific business plan: what does success look like to you in 6 months – a short film and one tv job?

Ask yourself ‘In one year how will I know if I have been successful?’
Is that one day on Doctors? 5 days on something else? Made a Hollywood movie or a Edinburgh Fringe show.

It would be nice to think that every graduate in their first year will play a lead in a Hollywood movie but its a dream. They should have that dream, Paul still has it but it is a dream, not an objective. That means at the end of your year after graduating that if your reasonable goal was two paid days in front of a camera, a project and to earn say £6000 from acting and associated activites that may include the corporate market.
That is the seeds of a business plan, so in three months time you can look and see how you are doing.

However if you set off into the void thinking you are the best thing ever, four months down the line you may be unemployed and depressed but you may not be doing badly, you may have met lots of people and be more known.

Increasingly actors must think on the business they are. The final season at the Actors Centre this year (each season they get sponsored) is called The Working Actor all about the business side.

Paul told me I was incredibly organised and I clearly spend time and focus in my career. (Glad he thinks so!!) He assumes all actors are talented so it is all about their focus and interaction with others,

It is sometimes not about can you act but how you interact.

Being true to yourself, Paul doesn’t set out to be liked but to do what he does to the best of his ability and hopefully along the way he has made some friends or gained some respect. He now likes to help people gain their footing so that when people are in their forties their acting career isn’t something they tell their children about, a distant memory but something they go out to do on a daily basis.

I learnt from Paul when I was working with him about taking my own space as an actor on set (full blog post on respecting your own instincts as an actor), he has done so much great screen work as an actor.

As actors we are in a position that we are feeling grateful that we have got the work, grateful we got the interview and we settle for things that we might not settle for in other areas of our lives.

Paul went for a commercial casting the other day which is rare for him as his agent rarely sends him up since the rates all changed. He had a business appointment  and of course a new script that was different from what he had been sent. He was there early to fill in the paperwork etc, the casting was running late and yet the person at the desk ignored the booked time slots and just decided to send people in in the order they had turned up at. He made a point that he needed to go in at his booked time as near as possible due to subsequent meetings and the receptionist got very ratty.  It was for a butler casting and he had heard that the collective noun for a group of butlers was a sneer of butlers, so the last thing this young man probably needed was a ‘sneer’ indeed of butlers. He mentioned this to the actual casting director as he went in the room and she were horrified as she had wanted the set appointment times to be kept.
While he is aware that things run late in castings to suddenly find the lateness was caused by the receptionist letting people in in some random order was extremely unprofessional. It is a business appointment.

The problem is that actors can get walked over and we don’t want to appear difficult or demanding.
When you have sat for two hours whilst the set has be dressed and lit so every other department has had their time and then to be asked to just do things very quickly, you have to sometimes say no, we have to think about what we are doing here. The audience don’t look at the screen and say oh look at that set dressing, how lovely, they think the acting is terrible because of no time.
It is a fine line, you don’t want to be difficult but you have to be aware of your own reputation. I try to be polite about it  and nice wherever I can. I don’t always succeed but I come from Yorkshire, I can’t even spell tact.

If you liked this interview you may also like the following

How to be a successful working actor: Ken Collard interview

Kevin Bisbangian, award winning film director ‘You have to work hard’

Timothy West tips: playing Lear 3 times & surviving bad directors

Acting business: 10 Tips from a casting director & an agent

15 practical tips on acting & getting rebooked on low budget & student films

Three mindset traps that creatives fall into & how to fix them

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marysia@loveyourcreativity.com

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About Marysia and Love Your Creativity
I blog at least three times a week on creativity and techniques to get your art on.
Whether you are a musician, an actor or a choreographer I endeavour to make http://loveyourcreativity.com is a place to come for inspiration and motivation.