Here's a taster of a day in the life of an actress- luckily this kind of stuff doesn't happen too often but JEEEEZ!!!!After a super long day of work and a particularly stressful month I had an audition booked at a film school- it's freeeezing and I was reluctant to go considering a long list of short films I've worked on but my agent encouraged me to go and she's awesome- the rest is in this letter:

 

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing with regards to the treatment of actors by your film students. This evening I attended a casting session for a film - this wasn't clearly posted on arrival, and neither my agent nor I had been informed of the title but I managed to find it eventually, for even actors can be resourceful!

When I arrived at 6:30, my scheduled time, to my surprise I found another 15 actresses awaiting the very same audition slot! Now I had read the sides and concluded that one couldn't possibly have 15 actresses reading at the same time, this would be ludicrous. Instead I was informed by another actress that we had all been scheduled for the same time; if each actress was in for 10 minutes on average that would have been a two hour wait for some lucky person. This call was posted to agents-i.e for a call that would go out to professional actors- actors graft and work extremely hard in a difficult industry- this was an unpaid project and we were treated like X-Factor 'wannabees'. I had no choice but to walk out before the 'audition'.

I have worked with some fantastic film schools through the years- LFS and LFA but this is the second and last bad encounter I've had with your school- the last having been several years ago when your student refused to send any of the actors a copy of her film, or reply to any of us. So really I think maybe you need to have a little chat with your film students and teach them a little respect for actors- we're not guinea pigs, we are literate, we do have brains, we work hard- we're busy and we're not so desperate to be in a student film- there are plenty of independent film projects with professional crew attached and a good showreel piece guaranteed at the end.

I hate having to do this but I'm enraged at this level of disrespect and hope you'll be able to affect a change with a few words to your students- both now and in the future.

Sincerely,