I'm Not My Type: Actors Changing Type by / Velina Brown

Goldie Hawn once said, “There are three ages for women in Hollywood: Babe, District Attorney and Driving Miss Daisy.” Funny, but also kinda true. Fortunately for us stage actors, it’s not as extreme a situation as Hawn’s three ages. But I’ve had several actors mention to me that they get the feeling they’ve changed type but aren’t quite sure what to do about it. I’ve asked some actors, teachers, a casting director and an agent about the issue in hopes of gathering some useful thoughts and ideas for all of us—because at some point, we all have to navigate the rarely talked about but very real challenge of changing type. How do you stay calm when you discover you’ve left Babe Island and it’s a long swim to District Attorney Land? Or figure out how not to parch to death in the desert between D.A. and Driving Miss Daisy? There are, in fact, ways to do it gracefully. But first, I’ll define what “type” is and how one figures it out in the first place before discussing what to do when it changes.

What Is Type?
Type is the combination of your internal personality qualities as well as the external physical impression that you tend to make when you walk into a room. Some classic examples would be: square-jawed hero, oily villain, curvy femme fatale, willowy damsel in distress, boy or girl next door, wisecracking best friend, captain of the football team, head cheerleader, captain of industry, rich socialite, etc.

Why Does Type Matter?
Many actors are concerned about being “typecast” and fear being confined to playing the same sort of role over and over. In the effort to avoid this “tragedy,” some will actively try to blur their type. If they succeed, rather than increasing their opportunities to show the depth and breadth of their true acting ability, they just confuse the casting directors and end up not working as much. Here’s why: When a casting director is casting a project, she sorts the headshots into piles of different types that correspond with the roles she’s trying to fill. If she comes across a shot that doesn’t fit into the piles she’s making, that person won’t get called to audition for that project. That’s fine. Nobody gets called to audition for everything. But if, project after project, your picture ends up in the “Don’t know what to do with them” pile, that means you aren’t working. And not only aren’t you working, you aren’t even getting to try out for anything. So one of your first tasks as an actor is to grasp the value of communicating a clear type and figuring out what yours is.

How Do I Figure Out My Type?
It’s often a challenge to figure this out on our own, because who we actually are inside isn’t necessarily how we appear on the outside. For example, a popular Bay Area actor often gets cast as a New York Italian, even though he’s not Italian and was born and raised in L.A. He’s a surfer dude but is unlikely to be cast that way. So it really can be confusing to sort out.

Here are some ways to zero in on your type:
1. Start looking for the people who look similar to you when you watch plays, films or television. What sorts of roles are they playing? Stay with me on this. I know you don’t want to be confined by these things, but it helps enormously to know where you can most easily start getting work and then build your career from there.
2. Notice if there are any similarities, any patterns to how you’ve been cast so far. This was very helpful for me because, frankly, when I was starting out I really didn’t see people on film or television who looked like me. If this is your situation as well, then know you are a trailblazer and look to what you’ve done so far for clues about your type.
3. Do a type survey. Talk with acquaintances, teachers, classmates, coworkers (you could ask friends, but they may know you too well to be objective). Ask them to guess your age, race/ethnicity, education. Where would they guess you are from? Another country? Where? From the U.S.? What region? Do you seem more East Coast, West Coast, Northern, Southern, Midwestern? Ask them what they would guess you did for a living if they didn’t know you were an actor? Do you appear more blue collar? White collar?

The responses to these questions help you form a picture. Don’t focus on what one person says. Focus on what most people say. It’s also interesting to notice who said what. What do most women say compared to most men? Are younger people saying different things than older people? This can be a challenging exercise if you hear things you don’t expect. Maybe you thought you were more grown-up looking but people are saying you look about 12. Maybe you thought your age range was 28 to 34 but most people surveyed guessed you were about 38. Try not to shut down. You need this information to help you find what Richard Seyd of Seydways Studios calls “your strike zone.” You want to be going out for roles that are right for you.

How Does One Change Types?
If you continue to live and continue to act, you are going to change type. It’s inevitable. We may change type by choice—big changes in hair length, style or color; cosmetic surgery; gaining or losing weight—or by the passage of time.

Type Change by Choice
For health reasons, my friend Mike McShane chose to lose about a hundred pounds. We first worked together just shy of a million years ago at ACT in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He, of course, was amazing as Pseudolus. However, all the bouncing around required for the role took its toll, especially when we toured the show to Connecticut in August and the theatre’s air conditioning broke down. Mike had to be rushed to the hospital for heat exhaustion. After close calls like that, McShane chose life and health over his popular “jolly fat guy” type and made some changes. How did he manage the changes as they affected his career? McShane explains, “I've had to let go of what I did before, which was [using] weight as an asset.” In Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves you will see a very heavy McShane as Friar Tuck, and for years he was a mainstay on the British version of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" where he was known as “the Big Yank”; but New York audiences recently have seen a trimmer McShane in La Cage aux Folles. So rather than being classified by his weight, McShane says, “I now am classified by my age, race and gender. This is Hollywood I speak of, and those requirements come about in the beginning stages of casting. I leave that behind when I go in [to an audition] and play the person with the goal, problem or information. If I concentrate on the outside, I'm distracted by something which is not new. What may get me the job is what is inside me, unknown to them—that's new information, and that comes from the artist who is an actor.”

Beyond the obvious need to get new pictures, McShane says, “The conundrum for me was that my reel was me as a large, large man. Casting directors, as much as they like to see themselves as thinking outside the box, well, they just don't. So it's up to you to find a venue or show that will display the new you to them. That's where a good digital camera and social media sites are your friend. This is a no-risk, low-cost way for them to see you as you are now.” This is a great tip.

Type Change by Age
One doesn’t just age out of a type; one ages into a new type as well. When this starts to happen, get curious and figure out what your new type is. The type survey will come in handy again. Also, your agent can share how she’s seeing you now and share advice on casting trends.

Type Change in Different Media
As mentioned earlier, actors experience more flexibility on stage than on camera. On stage, in general, we get to stretch more. It’s understood that we will be altering our look with costumes, wigs, makeup and acting. If a stage actor is balding, with a well-made wig he can still be the young leading man more easily than on camera.

One 50-something stage actor says she started out as an ingénue. But she morphed into an expert quirky comedienne. She said if she didn’t dye her hair it would be completely white, which would throw her out of all the fun, wacky (younger than 50s) roles she is still able to play. I think she’s right to hold off on the white hair for a while. She has a few more years before she needs to be the next Betty White. But stage is a very different world.

Dee Dee Shaughnessy of JE Talent Agency says, “We have found that the actors who make the smoothest transition in changing the way in which folks perceive them really embrace the experience as an opportunity to give full recognition to who they are now, as opposed to how they have typically booked, and really relish putting the work into how they resonate with the larger commercial market.”

For commercial actors, Ed Hooks—actor, teacher and author of several acting books—has this advice: “In general, it is better to be on the younger end of an age category, because that way you age into it. Women in particular—and I do not at all fault them for this—want to go as young as possible, on the grounds that there is more work for younger women. Even if that has been true, the landscape is changing rapidly. Currents that cause casting to shift and turn are always changing. Advertisers are taking notice of the boomers.” In other words, if you are late 20s, go ahead and move to competing for roles that are for 30-somethings. Late 30s, move up to 40s, and so on. Stay ahead of the curve.

In some ways, Nancy Berwid of First Take Acting Studio has the best news for the mature actor: “Aging is not a bad thing, so don’t be afraid of it. Sometimes getting older can actually help, because there’s less competition for those roles. We’ve had many of our actors break into film and TV later in life. The other main change in type relates to weight. Not everyone has to be skinny and fit. Many actors who are regular-looking people are concerned about weight and fitness when they don’t need to be.”

Berwid’s comment is so interesting because almost everyone I know who moved to L.A. lost weight as soon as they got there. A year later most of them were back to their original size or heavier, but the pressure to try to be really thin seems to be felt by everyone when they first move. It’s nice to hear that finding and maintaining a healthy weight is more valuable than trying to be as thin as possible.

It all comes back to embracing and owning who you are and what is true for you now. Comic Margaret Cho spoke very movingly about the trials and health risks she went through trying to “be skinny like the Friends!” She finally realized, “For me being 10 pounds thinner is a full-time job, and I’ve got better things to do.”

As Berwid explains, “The idea is to represent yourself accurately at all times in your headshot. If you get older or change your hair or weight, it’s crucial you have headshots that reflect what you look like now. If your headshots are outdated you will be wasting the casting directors’ time. They called you in based on your headshot, and if you look different you won’t fit the role they’re casting.” If this happens, they may not call you again. Not because you changed type, but because they learned the hard way your picture doesn’t look like you.

But what if things have slowed down even with the updated marketing materials? Seyd suggests, “Be honest with where you are. If you are falling into an area where there are not a lot of roles being written right now, the job becomes continuing to build and solidify your relationships with people in the business. It’s also a good time to go back into training and further develop your craft. Don’t get disheartened. Use this time to look for new avenues to express yourself.”

Friend and colleague Lorraine Olsen did as Seyd advises. She found herself in a casting gap and in response wrote herself a show, Lorraine Olsen Is Figuratively Speaking, that she performed to sold-out audiences at the SF Fringe Festival and that will be her calling card when she moves to New York. Her supposed downtime became a rich period of creative expression and newfound creative control.

Changing types is often something resisted and denied. But if you can accept it as a natural part of an actor’s life and address it with the same professionalism and creativity that you would any artistic challenge, it can be wonderful chance to grow and show even more of what you’ve got.

Velina Brown is a Bay Area actor and writes “The Business of Show Biz” column for Theatre Bay Area magazine.