What Skills Are Helpful When You Become a Child Actor?

Learn to Play Guitar When You Become a Child Actor, Image via Wikipedia

When you become a child actor, it is important to work on your acting skills.  Being a good actor is certainly important when you pursue an acting career.

But when you become a child actor, it is also a good idea to work on other skills. Learning to do a variety of things helps you to become a better-rounded individual, with many different life experiences to draw from in your acting.

Possessing a variety of skills can also help make you more employable in the entertainment industry. Casting directors are sometimes looking for individuals with particular skills for a role in a television show, movie, play or other performance. If you have the required skills, you may be called in for auditions you might not otherwise be invited to attend.

We know a young and very talented piano player. After someone heard him accompanying a singer at a competition, he was invited to audition for a television show.  He wasn’t even trying to get into tv or film.

But this young man is great on the piano, and guess what! When he went in for that audition, he booked the job. So now he is appearing on the tv show Glee.

So when you become a child actor, what skills (besides acting, which is very important) are useful to you for a showbiz career?

Casting directors are often looking for singers, dancers, and musicians of all types. It is not a bad idea to study voice and dance and an instrument such as piano or guitar. There are a lot of good singers out there, but since there are many roles where singing is required, it is still a good skill to have. Good instrumentalists are less common, so it can be quite useful to learn to play an instrument or even two, especially if you might be interested in a music career.

Obviously, you don’t have time to learn to do everything, but it is good to pick a couple of things and work hard at them.  This could very well be what makes you stand out from the crowd when it comes to showbiz. This could be what helps you land that career-launching audition and job.

What is it you enjoy doing the most?  Is it sports or music or dance or cheer leading?  Whatever it is that you enjoy the most is what you should work on learning to do well. You really never know what skills will be needed. There are tv shows and movies where they need gymnasts or soccer players or horseback riders or people trained in martial arts, or they want someone who can play the violin, the cello, or the tuba, and so on.

And since you just can’t learn to do everything, you just need to pick some things and go for it. Even fun skills such as hula-hooping, double-dutch jump rope, juggling, or yodeling can sometimes be what gets you called in for an audition.

So the more things you know how to do, the more chances you have of being called in to audition. Just make sure you put the skills on your resume so casting (and your agent and/or manager) will see what you can do.

Even if a tv show or movie is not looking for a particular skill, it might catch a casting director’s attention and make you a more interesting person. The casting director might just ask to see you juggle or yodel during your audition if it is listed on your resume, and it might help you book an unrelated role. Just make sure you never list things that you can’t really do on your resume!

If you want to learn to do some things, and money is tight, it can be discouraging. Taking classes is expensive and if you are already paying for acting classes, there might not be any money left over for other lessons. Just realize that, even though it might be best, you don’t really have to have private lessons to learn a skill.  You can teach yourself to juggle or do tricks with a yo-yo as well as many other special skills.

There are many very inexpensive courses on the internet to teach you skills such as piano and guitar. If you are willing to put in a little time and effort on your own, these courses can really get you moving quickly at very little cost!

To learn to play guitar online, check out this great, inexpensive program.  When you get the guitar course, you also get a number of free bonuses such as a tuning tool, chord charts, and games, plus so much other free advice and information.  The video lessons are amazingly thorough and easy to follow.  And you get all of that for about the cost of one private lesson.

If you don’t already have a guitar, you can get a decent one (new) for under $100. You can often get a decent used one for $10 – $20.  Or just borrow one from a friend or relative!

To your success,

Debbie Sikkema