A circus parade is traveling down Main Street in a small town. At the back is an old man whose job it is to shovel the manure from all the circus animals into a big bag slung over his shoulder. A passer-by asks him how long he's been doing the job and how much he gets paid, to which he replies 50 years and $250 a week.
"Well why on earth don't you stop doing it and find a better job instead?" asks the passer-by.
The old man replies, "What, and give up showbusiness?"
The great Gordon Hunt, a wonderful acting teacher and casting director, encouraged his students to think of every audition as a chance to act on a Tuesday. There are times when I am able to do that and times when it feels like an exercise in futility but his words have always stayed with me. And even though more often than not the audition doesn't turn into the job, when I looked at the alternative of another career - perhaps one with more emotional and financial stability - my answer would be, "What, and give up showbusiness?!"
So how do we actors do it? How do we leave the audition room feeling humiliated and get up the next day and do it again? Listen to famous actors like Molly Ringwald, Matthew Broderick, Bryan Greenberg, Aasif Mandvi, John Slattery, Roger Bart, Noah Emmerich, Dan Fogler, Constance Shulman, and Mary Stuart Masterson share hilarious and inspiring stories from the audition trenches.