How to get ahead in acting

Theatre is a cripplingly competitive business. A new CD picks the brains of insiders to help actors get past that audition, writes Arminta Wallace

Have you ever wondered how actors get cast in particular roles? Take the TV series Rebus, going out on Friday nights on ITV. Any fan of Ian Rankin's books about the Edinburgh detective inspector - and there are many - will tell you that Ken Stott is perfect in the lead role, even though he's slightly rumpled and more than slightly overweight. A few years ago, a series of Rebus adaptations featured handsome John Hannah as Rebus. They were disastrous.

Why? To be fair, there were a lot of things wrong with that earlier series, from so-so scripts through uninspired camera work to the absence of the real star of the books - the city of Edinburgh. But the vastly improved new version has given us a rare glimpse into the insider world of stage and screen: which is exactly what a new series of CDs entitled Creative Edge (Audio) aims to do. It was set up by actor Paul Albertson and producer Abi Coyle, both of whom are passionate about helping their fellow actors to get started - and get ahead - in what has become a cripplingly competitive business.

"Lots of my friends are actors and we all talk about stuff," Albertson explains. "Everyone gets frustrated about the same things. If you're not working, you can feel out of the loop. If you are working, you don't always get a lot of feedback as to why you did or didn't get a particular job; and since the only way to really learn is through that feedback, I thought the best thing to do was to go and speak to some people who know the industry inside out - pick their brains, as it were."

The results are as entertaining as they are informative. Casting director John Hubbard talks with disarming frankness about the "hundreds and hundreds" of mistakes actors commonly make at auditions, and why the majority of CVs and headshots go straight into the bin. Richard Eyre, director at the National Theatre, has some sage advice for those who are preparing for stage auditions. The actor Richard Briers gives tips on comic timing; Guardian critic Michael Billington explains why critics are bad judges of performers; and voice coach Bernard Shaw reveals the truth about working on commercials.

"In my opinion," he begins, "there are more lies told about voice-over than about sex and fishing put together."

There is also a fascinating interview with Derek Jacobi in which he speaks at length about his own career, including a severe case of "acting vertigo" - also known as stage fright. It struck when he was in Sydney playing Hamlet at the end of a long tour. "I'd played Hamlet nearly 400 times," he recalls. "And it was so simple, such a silly thing. I was waiting in the wings to come on for the first scene of the second half - the nunnery scene - and I was thinking, 'This is the speech that they've all come to hear - but what would happen if an actor forgot the speech?'"

Jacobi not only forgot the speech, he lost the plot. The experience was so traumatic that he was too frightened to go on stage for two and a half years, returning only when he got a call from the Royal Shakespeare Company. "They offered me four sensational parts; it was the offer no sane actor could refuse."

Stories such as these suggest that even experienced actors can be caught on the hop at certain times in their professional lives. But Abi Coyle insists that the average beginner is woefully under-prepared for the slings and arrows which the real world of acting may throw at them.

"Deep down, actors still seem to think that if they just keep on keeping on, some day somebody is going to give them a break," she says. "But the business is so clogged now that you do have to promote yourself properly. There are two ways you can go about making a career as an actor. You can approach it as a lottery, and take your chances, or you can prepare carefully and try to give yourself an edge. That's what these CDs are about. If you listen to interviews with people like John Hubbard or Richard Eyre, they're far less scary when you meet them. And if you're going for a job with them, you know what sort of things drive them mad."

Coyle was bitten by the showbiz bug when her mum took her to see a production of 42nd Street as a kid. "I remember saying, 'I want to do that'. And my mum said, 'She wants to be an actress, bless her'. And I said, 'No, no - I want to make all those people do that. I want to put on shows, not act in them'."

Albertson, who has just finished filming "a small bit" in the new series of Extras, came up through the National Youth Theatre, trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and was - as he puts it - "taken under the wing of the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre".

Do actors not study basic promotional skills at drama school? "Well, no," says Albertson. "They teach you about Restoration drama and they teach you about Chekov, but they teach you very little about the nuts and bolts of the industry. How to get a job, how to get an agent, how to develop a relationship with a casting director - these aren't touched upon at all, or they certainly weren't when I was at college 12 years ago."

Such has been the response to the CDs that they're considering publishing the material in book form. Meanwhile they have developed a website, www.creativeedgeaudio.com, where previews of the CDs are available for download.

"We want to be realistic, yet optimistic," is how Albertson sums up the enterprise. "This is not a negative or cynical view of the business. The idea is to give actors advice from the people who make the decisions. To be honest with you, if people just listen to the previews on the website, I'll be quite happy. At least they'll have learned something."