Flanagan Says Get Better, Not Bitter
|
As a high-school student in Levittown, Pa., Markus Flanagan was an uninspired truant who certainly didn’t seemed destined for the career of his dreams. In fact, he hadn’t even dreamed of a career.
“I missed 87 days in my freshman year. I wasn’t stupid, but just uninterested,” Flanagan recalled. “I was just a mediocre student who, one day, stepped on a stage because a teacher said, ‘We need you’ for the school’s production of West Side Story.”
Flanagan’s untrained-but-honest first reading clearly had an effect on the drama teacher, and triggered an unexpected emotional response in the young Flanagan. “I knew I had just experienced something I’d never felt before.”
Yet, Flanagan says, somewhere between that first emotional connection and eventual acting stardom, performers acquire a legendary bitterness that is the earmark of actors everywhere. And while that bitterness is perfectly normal and even understandable, he says it is the most daunting roadblock between aspiring actors and successful ones.
A veteran television and film actor, Flanagan spoke to Theater, Musical Theater and Westminster Choir College students on Thursday, October 22, in the Yvonne Theater. Flanagan, whose book, One Less Bitter Actor: The Actor’s Survival Guide, has been called required reading by members of the Screen Actors Guild, had his appearance sponsored by the Office of Career Services and the School of Fine and Performing Arts.
Flanagan, who made his big-screen debut in the 1988 Neil Simon comedy Biloxi Blues, has since appeared in numerous popular television programs, including Northern Exposure, Melrose Place, Seinfeld, That ‘70s Show, Numb3rs and Heroes. In all, the Los Angeles resident has starred in three prime-time series, made 50 guest appearances and TV shows and acted in 10 feature films. He has also had roles in five stage plays and five movies of the week.
“I’ve never worked a single day at a ‘real job’ in my life,” he quipped.
In One Less Bitter Actor: The Actor’s Survival Guide, Flanagan sought to clarify the often confusing path performers face in carving out a career. He recalled that connection he made that first time on stage as a high-school student, and said it is the thing that drives him to keep pushing through the jealousies, rejections, backstabbing and disrespect so common to his art.
“The only formula for success is that if you can give yourself over to your audience 100 percent, you will go to work,” Flanagan said. The trick, though, according to him, is the constant interference actors encounter in reaching that depth of emotion. He recalled his first major role, as “Selridge” in Biloxi Blues, when he suddenly found himself working beside established stars like Matthew Broderick and Christopher Walken.
“They sent a limousine to pick me up for the big premiere, and we rolled up to the theater, where it was just like you imagine: the red carpet, paparazzi pushing up to the door of the limo to photograph whoever gets out,” he recalled. “I was really feeling good, like I had made it. And then, as soon as I step out onto the red carpet, one of them sees me and shouts, ‘It’s no one!’ And that’s when I realized I had a long way to go.”
Flanagan said that in retrospect, it was a good experience, one he could learn from. “It wiped away any illusion I had of a ‘finish line,’” he said. “I thought, ‘I’m here,’ and then I wasn’t.”
Experiences like this, along with seeing accomplished actors competing with you for roles, and the often dismissive attitude of casting directors and staff, all conspire to instill serious doubts and insecurities within the minds of actors, according to Flanagan. And these hang-ups become the barriers to channeling all of your emotions into a role – a performance-inhibiting burden for actors, and a contributing factor toward the bitterness so often spoken about.
Flanagan says that the idea for One Less Bitter Actor arose from his desire to share the things he has learned over 20 years as a successful actor – lessons he had to learn the hard way.
“Actors don’t help actors. They don’t share secrets because if I give you my secret, you might get a job I wanted,” he said. “If you all had a mentor, you wouldn’t be bitter. You’d be frustrated, but not bitter.”
