How to Become an Actor in Orlando

After an eight-year stint in the Army, Bryan Bachman found himself in the position that so many who have returned from service do: looking for purpose. And though he’d done some recreational acting—and found that he loved it—he didn’t entertain the idea of acting professionally. “Too tough to feel things,” he recalls, poking fun at his former self. However, it was around that time he went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens and was completely taken with the actor playing Kylo Ren. That actor, of course, is Adam Driver, and upon a Google search, Bachman learned that he’d served in the Marine Corps. “It took my excuse away from me,” he says.

Now, several years later, Bachman is a working actor in Orlando, Florida, and hopped on the phone with Casting Networks to share all his advice for getting started in the market: From finding an agent in Orlando, to where to train, to the best Orlando-specific survival jobs, here is everything you need to know about how to become an actor in Orlando.

Photo courtesy of Bryan Bachman.

First things first in Orlando: Find your acting class.

It’s a little risky to drop everything when you have two kids and a mortgage. So I found an acting class in Orlando, and wandered in opposite Disney princesses and live performers from Harry Potter World. It was the thing I was looking for, but it took years for the craft to work its “magic” on me. I had to get therapy and find acting teachers who care, who could take a look at you and see what’s really happening to you under the surface. But I’m glad we ended up coming here to Orlando—my wife is from Florida, and we came here in 2015. My career isn’t at the point where I hope to get it to someday yet, but I’ve done some work now, all out of Orlando the entire time.

Orlando breeds a completely unique acting community.

There are two common groups of actors here: Either they’re just starting out and getting experience working at the theme parks, or they’ve been working at the theme parks for 20, 30 years, and they’re some of the greatest actors I’ve ever seen, and this is the path they’ve chosen. It’s a fantastic place to start a career. I’ve been out to Los Angeles and New York and Atlanta, but here, I have been able to plug in so fast with the community. You need a tribe to make this happen, not just an agent and a manager and a headshot. You need a group of people so you can lean on each other. The first acting class I wandered into nearly 10 years ago, I still talk to almost all the actors in that class.

In Orlando, your survival job is an acting job.

It’s the beauty of being here in Orlando: If you’re an aspiring actor, you don’t have to get a waiter job or a bartender job or any one of the other actor trope jobs. You can get a job at the theme parks doing live performance, and it’s a form of live performing that’s completely thrilling because it’s interactive. Here, people are able to hold down a day job and the day job is being a character in Harry Potter World. Your “survival job” is an acting job, and that’s very rare. There’s a plethora of live performing jobs, too; it’s not just Disney and Universal. There are pirate shows, there’s Medieval Times. There are so many day jobs that also feed your artistic soul.

This is the first place to go and get started as an actor in Orlando:

We have something special here in Orlando called Full Sail University, which is an entertainment-driven college, it’s a two-year program. Every Saturday they have open auditions for actors to be in their student films in the film department. It’s a place actors who are just starting out can go and run the gauntlet and be in a bunch of short films—they may or may not be good and you may or may not be able to use the footage in your reel, but you are getting real interaction with high quality equipment and being on a set. You can keep going there every Saturday and you do it until—and “until” is the end of that sentence. You’ll know when it’s your own personal “until.” You go there, you collect footage, and you meet people: the actors, the director, the sound guy. And you do work together for free and you learn and you are working in a low-pressure environment.

Competition is exceptionally cutthroat for film and TV gigs.

Because of the politics of film tax incentives, all the things that were filming here 10, 15 years ago do not film here anymore. So when a production does pop up here, it’s a mad dash for local hires, who are all trying to get your spot on that television show. When The Right Stuff on Disney+ was here, I auditioned for that show 23 times and I never booked it. That’s my golden unicorn, and that’s the grind of being an actor. But then David Makes Man filmed here and I auditioned for that show twice and I booked it. There is no method to the madness, so you just have to show up and keep doing the work and remember that every audition is an opportunity to express yourself and to learn.

In Orlando, it’s especially important to control what you can.

Because there is a limited number of things being filmed here, you have to control the controllable. Become a self taping pro. There are tons of self tape services around here, but $25 for every audition you get, it’s manageable at first because you’re not getting that many auditions, but once you start getting more and more auditions, that number starts to add up really fast. It made sense for me to invest in my self tape setup. You have no control over whether you get a job, so what I can control is making sure I do not give them a reason to turn the tape off. Everything down here is self tape.

If you want to get started in Orlando that’s all you have to do: Start.

To find an agent in Orlando, you should comb through every local agency and target the one that’s missing a “you,” and that’s the one you try and get in with. But really, you just have to leap and start. The biggest danger is “analysis paralysis.” I got stuck just trying to get all the pieces in the right place before I made my first move, but if I could give myself that extra year that I spent sitting around thinking about the idea of being an actor rather than being an actor, I’d go back and I would just Google “how to become an actor in Orlando.” Full circle!

You can—and should—get additional agents and work outside of Orlando.

There will come a point in your career where you will need to look to other markets for more frequent work. Attaining an agent in Atlanta would be the next step. But use the same process of combing through agencies for rosters that are missing your secret sauce, and making a targeted cover letter or following that specific agency’s guidelines. I eventually got my L.A. agent in a similar way, after only having an Atlanta and Florida agent for nearly eight years. If you have anyone who could put in a good word for you before submitting to that agency, that couldn’t hurt!

The can’t-miss Orlando experience is…

It has to be the theme parks. We went years and years ago when the kids were babies before I was ever an actor, but now, going to Universal and seeing those performers doing those shows in rain or shine, in 90 degree heat, it’s so impressive from an acting standpoint. Also, there’s a fantastic ramen place I think everyone on earth should try: It’s called Jin Ya Ramen Bar, best ramen I have ever had.

Sources: BestPlaces.net, Salary.com, Zillow, AAA, Rent.com

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