If you would like to be an actor, be an actor! Look for opportunities to perform and enjoy it. Start off close to home. Make contacts, improve your skills. If you'd like to earn a living as an actor, be prepared to work out what you will do to make ends meet for the 85% of the time you are not acting. LEARN about how the business works. If you want to be famous, or rich - for goodness sake look for a different career.
If you would like to be in a film or in a TV programme please BELIEVE me and others when we say that your best route is to get an agent.
It is really rare to find open auditions - and even if there are open auditions, you'll be better off with an agent!
Here's my little parable - humour me:
1. I'd really like a designer dress like the one I saw at the Oscars. Apparently the designers just give them to the Oscar nominees. I wish they'd give one to me. Maybe if I wrote to the designer they'd give me one. I'm sure it would look good on me, I'm slim and quite tall and some people say I could easily get modelling jobs. Except no-one seems to know the designer's address. I'm sure if I wrote to them they would let me have one if I explained how much it would mean to me. I can't afford a designer dress. I've got a big credit card bill. It's really worrying me. If I could only win the lottery, I'd be able to pay it off. I saw something in the paper about someone winning the lottery, so obviously it's possible. They were just ordinary people like me. I think I'll ask the debt advice company about the best way to pay off my credit card bill and get enough money to get a designer dress.
2. Well, the debt advice company were no help at all! They said I had to reduce my spending and make a plan for paying it off in instalments! They suggested lots of places I could look for advice about reducing expenditure and offered to help me make a plan. I told them about the lottery winner and said I was going to buy a lottery ticket. They said I could do that if I wanted to, but they thought it was a waste of money and bearing in mind I was supposed to be trying to save money, they thought it would be better not to spend it on lottery tickets. They said that I certainly shouldn't do this INSTEAD of reducing my expenditure. They said I could perhaps consider looking in charity shops for dresses that looked a bit like the designer dress until I had cleared my debts and had plenty of money. They clearly don't understand fashion. They didn't know the designer's address and said that I probably wouldn't be able to get a dress just by asking the designer. They said that although some people did win the lottery, most people who bought lottery tickets didn't win and that these people never appeared in the newspaper but there were an awful lot of them (millions, they said - I don't know where they get that from). They pointed out a story about a businessman who had finally got someone interested in his new invention after years of no-one taking much notice of him and how he'd been plodding away quietly for years because he really believed in his invention. I thought it was a really boring story.
3. I think I'm going to find a different debt advice company. They were so boring. Actually, I've seen an advert for a company that says they can help you to win the lottery! In fact they say they've helped lots of people win the lottery! That sounds much more useful - and it doesn't cost all that much. Anyway, once I've won the lottery it won't matter.
4. I've seen another lottery winner in the paper today. See! That debt advice company is talking rubbish. That's the second one of I've seen in a week!
The moral of this story is: There may very occasionally be short cuts for the fortunate few, but if you base your career plan on finding a short cut, you are likely to spend your whole life looking for it, probably in vain. You may discover that you have spent so long looking for the short cut that you are no further down the path you want to travel than you were when you first started looking!
Much better to get a good pair of hiking boots and a map and start walking - you may get a lift on the way if you're lucky - if not, at least you are well equipped and you may find the views on the way quite breathtaking!
Here endeth granny's lecture.
](./images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
I mean a source of information - has shown me that some people only believe what they want to believe and will keep asking the same questions in the hope that they will get the answer they want, whilst ignoring the answers they don't like. I don't mean this site, particularly, I actually think there are lots of very sensible people on this site and only a very few star-struck ones! I'm even more sad for and worried by those who ignore scam warnings. 
