Acting; where is the Common Sense?

Imagine you are an actor or actress on a hit serial.    The show airs once a week on television and people tune in to watch.   You’ve gotten attention, maybe you have a fan base.

The show is going season after season.   Seems to be one of those real hits that passes the Seventh Season mark with ease.   Your character is firm, no plan to kill ‘you’ off, no plan to have any kind of change in your presentation.

Yet….

Yet, you decide to leave because of…..(and this is the usual joke) ‘you want more creative opportunities’.

The number of actors and actresses who left for this ‘goal’ fill the list of ‘oblivion’.    Stars or near stars who disappeared.    One after another, every year, another one leaves a hit series for ‘creative opportunities’ which don’t exist, and never will.

I recall one ‘almost was’ as he didn’t reach far enough to be a ‘has been’.    He thought he was so talented and important.   He left the show.   That was fifteen years ago.   If I posted his name you’d say; “Who?”

If one repeated his story to anyone on a television set, one would think they would hold firm to their role.

NOPE

Take a show like Grey’s Anatomy.  Hit show.   No question.

Wisely, they have a large cast.   They began with nine at the start  and now have moved to twelve regulars.   Every character, even Meredith Grey can be replaced because the other characters have fleshed out and catch the eye.

The original nine characters have dwindled to four.   The five others have left.   No one has heard of them since.  They don’t appear in anything anyone wants to see.

Some left nearly ten years ago and probably have jobs working in supermarkets.   Another left five years ago and disappeared into the void.

Why?

As a person who worked for a Boss From Hell, I knew enough to wait until I had a place to go before I went.  I wasn’t an actor/actress who was doing well and friendly with my ‘crew’.    I was just working in the office and could be in another.

If I had a decent, or indifference boss, I’d still be there, because the job was certain, the pay was certain.

Acting requires that someone cast you in some role.  One has to match the criterion for the character.  But one also must not have any kind of ‘hard to work with’ banner hanging over their heads.   Actors, especially those on television are two a penny.

It is not the ancient days of the 1950s where many actors/actresses would not do television because it was held ‘cheapening’.    Today, being a television star is almost on par with a motion picture star.  The difference is getting a steady pay cheque week after week, not a ‘one off’ as in a movie.    The difference is not having to go on castings when that movie is finished, but signing a contract to appear for another year.

There are a number of long running television shows, in most there are always a few fools who will want some ‘creative opportunities’,  or demand more money, or want more dialogue, whatever their problem, the fools are dropped, replaced, and forgotten.

There are those who have the sense to stick.

Everyone gets ‘type cast’  the point is what they do with it.

Patrick Stewart was Captain Jon-Luc Picard on Star Trek, (the Next Generation) on television.  He moved to movies and also took up a role in X-Men so that there are two roles he plays and is known for.

Harrison Ford was Han Solo, Bladerunner, Indiana Jones, he wasn’t ‘type cast’.

But then, the two men I mentioned are successes.  They never had a problem with ‘creativity’  or ‘being type cast’.   They never objected or had any kind of ego problem.  They took the job, and did the job for as long as the job existed.

Others are nobodies who somehow get a role on a hit series, and smugly decide to leave to pursue ‘creative opportunities’ and are never heard from again.  Their role, or the void they left is taken by another actor, playing another character.

And the public shrugs, and continues to watch the show.