Acting auditions
I once read a fascinating book about auditioning. The author told, among many other stories, the story of how Barbra Streisand won her first part. At age 18 she marched into the audition half an hour late, slapped a piece of gum on the bottom of a stool, told the story of why she was late instead of giving a monologue, and then belted a song with her incredible voice and walked out. She got the role. Someone in management went to pull the gum off the bottom of the stool...and there was none. She'd fabricated the whole thing - improvised a part, basically.
That's what they tell you over and over about auditions. Theatre auditions, film auditions, it doesn't matter which or where: what casting directors want to see is boldness. Something that sets you apart. There are countless "crazy" audition stories of actors who did "wild" things in auditions and got the part. That's because those things are what makes you stand out from the hundreds of other actors auditioning. A girl who regularly sings "Mister Cellophane" from Chicago, a song written originally for a middle-aged man, also regularly gets cast when she does so. They don't want to see the same guy doing the same monologue from I Hate Hamlet thirty times at each day of their movie auditions. That's okay for auditions for teens, but if you're in the professional acting world, you're not going to get a second look. If these casting agents wanted to be bored out of their minds for hours a day, they would go into casting for baby modeling.
Yet actors, who are supposed to be so personable and creative, can be some of the shyest, and even some of the most conventional, people out there. It can be really hard for them to be bold, to do something that is non-traditional. That story about Barbra Streisand shouldn't be such a wild one, but it is. She shouldn't be such an anomaly - for the sake of all those bored to tears casting directors out there - but...she is.