Using The Mistakes Actors Make

Over half a century ago there was a popular television program called “National Velvet”.   It was an American take off on Elizabeth Taylor’s first British hit.   The star was a fourteen year old girl called Lori Martin.  She was very popular and was offered a movie role.

She decided to take two years off to have a childhood.   You never heard her.

She is an example you need to remember when you have a job and leave it for some fantasy without any ‘parachute’.

If you are working and have savings and a home and decide to leave the job to try something else, throw every thought about ‘coming back’ out of your head.   In most cases, you take a month’s leave from your job, you are unemployed.

Many actors, like Lori Martin, make an error, a very big one, not realising that they have a ‘shelf life’.

Denise Crosby, for example; she was Tasha Yar on Star Trek, the Next Generation and thought she should go far but people were more interested in Worf.  She could have stuck it out, been really nice to everyone, and she’d get a bit more air time, instead she left the series.

If you have a job and think you should be promoted and aren’t, unless there’s a job awaiting you somewhere else, don’t leave.  Not unless you have money to survive.  For leaving often ends your ‘career’.

David Caruso first made his mark in NYPD Blue in 1993.   He didn’t get the raise he wanted, and left the series. The series continued without him for many years.

From 1994 he was a has been, finally getting the role of Horatio Caine on CSI Miami in which he appeared from 2002 to 2012.   That was lucky.  After bouncing for eight years, he got a role and held to it.

Had he not left NYPD Blue he could have insured a pay cheque until moving to CSI Miami.  But he didn’t.

He could have completed eight seasons, then made the move.  Why not?   But, as many foolish people he must have assumed there was a line by the front door.  There wasn’t.

Very often, unless we work for a Boss From Hell and we don’t quit as much as escape, it is better to wait until there is a real opportunity, then run off thinking something will turn up.  Very often, nothing does.