to wonder why some peoples lives are so easy compared to others?

[Ageingtofast]

Ok I know everyone has hard times and that's just the way of the world but do you ever feel like some people are just lucky and happen to be in the right place at the right time? I'll give you my example.
I'm an "actor" or at least trying to be, I spent 2 years at drama school and the rest of my time waitressing or doing any other job just to bring in some money, I'm now 29 and have found myself back home caring for my parents (I don't begrudge this as they have always been there for me) but I work hard continuing to pay for acting classes, getting new headshots done, applying for any opportunity that is even remotely related to the field I'm in but just can't catch a break. What really gets me is you can't get anywhere without an agent but can't get an agent if you don't have enough experience but you can't get any jobs without either of these so it is a bit of a vicious circle. Then you get celebrities and models who have no acting training but get given parts as they are popular and people will go and see the movies just because they are in them!!! Just makes me want to scream.
Sorry for the rant but this just kills me, I think it may be time to give up my Hollywood dreams and try and find a new career that I enjoy. Makes me even angrier that I've wasted 10 years and haven made it, I feel like such loser and am no better off than when I left school!!

Acting is a pipe dream for most people because it's a hard industry to break. It's usually a case of who you know. If you are still trying to catch a break after 10 years I would find a new career.

No clue. My friend gave himself to 30 to make it as an actor, then retrained as a teacher.

Another friend who tried acting is now a chef. Can't remember when she switched.

If you have your health and keep plodding, it might come together. I think so much of it is luck.

Acting is one of the toughest industries in the world to break into it. Millions don’t get anywhere with it, and most people who do have worked hard to get there. It’s just the nature of the beast I’m afraid. I couldn’t do it, i enjoyed drama and theatre when i was in education but my skin is nowhere near thick enough.

Do a job that society needs like teacher or nurse or doctor

Acting is notoriously tough, I do feel for you it must be frustrating to see talentless reality tv stars being given roles based on their ‘celebrity’. I know two people who aspired to be actors, one now manages a business but the other has had an interesting career. When it became clear the acting wasn’t going to happen she moved into set dressing and costume design before eventually upping sticks to LA to try her luck. She’s been there over ten years now and is a very successful stylist.
Is there any other part of the industry you could possibly move into OP?

Too many people wanting to be famous these days.

Like, no one makes it as an actor pretty much. It’s jot about fallen or hard work (although you need those) but family connections and luck.

Life is unfair eh?

Why are some people born clever, intelligent, healthy. Why do some oarents nurture their children and others abuse. Why do some people get lucky in love and others not. Why can some people have children and others can’t. Etc

Acting is probably the most “luck” dependent field you could go into.

You haven’t failed, but it makes sense to take stock now. My life was a mess at 29 and a decade later I am happy and settled with a career I love. It did take some planning though!

not a career choice i would recommend, i think your experience is more the norm.
it's easy to see how a family that has an agent around all the time would have a leg up on a person who doesn't. also easy to see how a family with no financial concerns can support a person who takes longer to get their feet under them.
i think some people make choices that lead to more challenges.

You're still young, it may happen for you.

I thought this thread was going to be about bereavement, illness, or poverty.

Nope. Failed actor. Heart is bleeding.

Fin.

Surely the answer is simple? Become instafamous. But I do get where you are coming from. Some people just sort of float through life doing the care minimum of what is expected and get carried along by chance and people who have taken a dance to them. And then you have the people with low expectations who just want a job so they can get paid so they can get really drunk once a week. They manage to get themselves a job that pays well enough for their wine and their rent/food/anil all inclusive holiday and they seem perfectly content. I am envious and horrified in equal measure but sometimes I really wish I was like that just so that I could stop worrying for a bit.

That catch 22 of needing experience but no-one will give you the job to get it is common in a lot of industries.
I have almost a decades worth of experience in my area now and frequently am given the "tough" clinical work as I am seen as very knowledgeable in it. However I have applied to work in a clinical role 5 times now. Every time I ace the interview and clinical tests and am told "you were our second choice the other person just had more clinical experience than you". I have a baby, I can't give up my work and work for free to get work experience and they won't give me the chance to do the actual job.
I started studying to retrain in another industry and am sure I will have the exact same thing there. However in this industry I can improve and work on my skills at home and so can at least continue earning money at the same time.
(Sorry that was more of a rant than anything actually helpful...)

Knowing how to plug yourself to get yourself seen is key.

Get yourself on all the social media platforms. Search out the hashtags that apply to you and comment. Help people out.

This is why so many actors write their own work. Look at James Corden. Him and Ruth Jones wrote their own show and managed to get it made. Same as what Monty Python did. Mr Bean was the same. He wrote most of his own work.

Acting is a very tough field to be highly successful in. Two girls from school who wanted to be actors are now a SAHM and the other one owns her own PR firm. She learned how to build websites and worked at a local newspaper to learn how to write articles. Where she really excels is in 'putting on a show' to sell the service or product.

Finally please don't think that you are a failure at 30. You really aren't and you have so much time on your side. When I was 30 I was doing an internship making £18k a year. 8 years later I've got 3DC and I'm the CFO of a tech division of a small broker dealer here in NYC after working my arse off at a big4 accounting firm.

Want2bSupermum was your internship at the firm? I like hearing stories of people turning their lives around. Plus looking to help my brother who wants to retrain.

I know you haven’t achieved what you’d hoped but you’re certainly not a failure, you are working, as well as trying to crack a ridiculously hard industry in which everyone knows only a tiny percentage of people succeed, as well as caring for your parents. I admire you actually for sticking with it (though get why financially you can’t do it forever). No advice really sorry as I don’t know anything about acting, and I hope you get a break, or decide on another path that you’ll end up loving, but don’t feel the last years have been wasted- maybe if you’d done something else you’d have always regretted not trying?

Not sure if this helps but I know someone who does very well out of extras work and commercials. He's had a few regular gigs in lewis and casualty. He's been in most of the Harry potter films etc. He's a bit shit but I know some of his fellow extras have been offered bigger roles via that route..

dundee my internship was at a regional firm. I was offered a job after finishing which I accepted. I then became accidentally pregnant with DD1. Had her when I was 31. The accounting firm I was training with laid me off when DD1 was 10 months old. I applied to big4 because all the jobs I wanted said 'big4 experience preferred'. I was hired when I was 7 months pregnant with my 2nd DC because my client was purchased by a firm they were going to be auditing. I ended up not working on that client!

I worked so hard and was the go to person for cleaning things up. I earned my transfer to the new group I went to but hated it. The culture wasn't right for me. I had a fabulous client who loved me and I loved them. I've help DH a lot with building his business and I applied that to my new employer, building out a coordinated customer service and sales function. They liked my work and made me CFO of the division.

Showbusiness is one of the toughest fields to break into. My Dad tried his hand at it for almost 20 years before accepting it wasn’t going to happen. He had a degree in drama, went to multiple drama schools, had an agent for YEARS but aside from the odd advert or cameo role, nothing ever happened for him.

It’s a bit of a pipe dream tbh and those who make it to the very top are incredibly lucky, it doesn’t happen for most people. I think you only have to look at the X factor for evidence of showbusiness brutality. You can win that show and still come away with very little in the end.

I have to agree with Supermum, a lot of people successful in acting got there by creating their roles themselves - Spielberg, Lucas, Tarantino, Affleck, Damon usually levering a script they wrote to an acting role, a directing role, other or both. My daughter is going through this now. I think (gross over generalization here) that many in acting are insecure and find it an outlet, yet it is where self promotion and networking is absolutely vital. We have a character actor in the extended family who ends up on television about 1x/year (CSI NY very short time acting and then the dead body as most recent). She loves it even thought it doesn't pay the costs of auditioning or anything but she also doesn't put herself out there enough (by her own admission). Lastly, I met someone from California who told me their philosophy of maturity (that I loved!). (Another gross over generalization here) Everyone plays until 30, just begins a career as opposed to a job at that point, tries to meet someone by 33 and starts a family around 35-38 and settles into their career by 40-45. Good luck!

At 29 you are certainly not a failure. At that age I gave up acting for a while and retrained ... went travelling. I did return to acting after a few years and did all right for a time. Now retrained again and working as a teacher.

Simon Callow said luck is one part opportunity and one part readiness. Easy for him to say you might think but he was right in a way. You create opportunity by being out there, meeting people, taking unpaid acting work, writing letters, hanging out with other actors, creating your own work You create readiness by staying fit, taking classes, building skills ... musical, acrobatic, dancing, .... all of this is so much easier to do when you're young and just out of drama school when you can put some energy into launching yourself .... like any other business you need a USP.

All this is doubly hard if you're female... fewer parts available and stronger typecasting.

If you've lost the momentum (i.e. Haven't done any work either paid or "serious" for two years or more), then I'd consider retraining at this point.

OP sorry but I agree with the others.

Your life is hard because your "Hollywood Dreams" are unrealistic. Millions of people would love to become famous actors- most won't.

While having dreams is a good thing we sometimes need a reality check.
If while pursuing this dream your life is impacted in such a negative way then it is time to start asking big questions.

Better to realise this now than wasting another 10 years .

Why is this "hollywood dream" so important?
What would it mean to you?
Is it the acting? The approval of others? Money?

I would have liked to have been a world famous physicist at Cern but I am bad at maths, so I knew fairly early that was never going to be.

Time to be honest with yourself.

Liz Smith from The Royal Family comedy series didn't catch a break until she was 49. I'm not sure what she was working as up until then. Morgan Freeman was pretty late to his breakthrough too.

Could you do temping type jobs while pursuing acting or is that not workable?

Do you love acting or is it the idea of being famous that is appealing?