Is it better to tell the truth or should you sweeten it ?

Food for thought at the time of your when we are all making new resolutions about our lives. 

From 1999 - 2009 I created and ran an event at the Edinburgh International Film Festival called MEET THE EXPERTS which gave help and advice to emerging filmmaker, all for free and in confidence. I now run this at the London Screenwriters Festival.

One year a young woman who had worked with me, on behalf of another company, part time over a three-year period, found this out and asked me if I would see her up there as we would both be attending at the same time. Her real job was as an actress and the well-paid job she was doing, for some film financiers, was to pay the bills but acting was her passion, her life. 

As we had worked closely together she knew I was occasionally brutally honest.

The EIFF used to be in August when all the other Festivals took place - theatre, book, comedy, fringe etc. HUGE mistake in my view moving it. She was appearing in small theatre production on the fringe and asked me if I would watch it and be honest, not the insincere flannel honest most people in the entertainment industry come out with "darling you were wonderful" but honest honest, real honest, about her acting. 

I went to watch it. 

Afterwards I took her to a party across the city. 

As we walked we talked. She was I recall 29, but I could be wrong and thinking of starting a relationship with a man she liked but was wary of doing it for fear it would hinder her career.

Before I started I asked if she was sure she wanted the truth. She said she did and I must not hold back.

I didn't.

The good news is that she wasn't bad. 

However, I went on to tell her that she wasn't great either. She was alright. She was pretty but in a girl, next door way and on stage the warm outgoing charming personality she had as a person just did not come through.  In real life everyone liked her. I know its superficial to talk about looks but. Good looking actresses can work a great deal in their 20's and early 30's but seem to have a shelf life that expires early on and those with "interesting" faces do seem to work a lot more but only after 30. By and large actors do not get judged on their looks so much, unlike actresses who do. 

I informed her that there was nothing in her acting that would make me want to give her a job in a world full of far too many actresses, many of them much better than she, and all chasing so few jobs. 

I recall that she had a good agent (she was working for an important group of film financiers which can open doors. Money talks) and despite going for a auditions and interviews I don't think secured one job via them. In the seven years or so since she had left drama school she had only worked professionally a few times and none of the jobs were ones that would impress employers. However in the job she was doing where we worked together she was outstanding and a pleasure to work with. 

I said that it my opinion, for what it was worth, I could not see her making a career acting. 

I was not being cruel, although I could see it hurt, I was just giving her my honest assessment as requested. 

I know she did not like what I had said. I saw her at the party from time to time and could see she was not happy.

I wished in some ways I had not said what I said. Maybe I should have lied. 

I only saw her once in the following few months, she avoided me at the film financiers, but then I stopped consulting for them.  It got back to me from others who felt I that I had been harsh with her, to being an absolute bastard, depending who I was talking to.

Then a couple of years ago I was at the Guardian offices in King's Cross and she came rushing over to me and gave me a big kiss for telling her what I did. She said that for years her family and friends had told her what she wanted to hear but she thought about what I said, really thought about it,  she said that she knew I was right. 

Phew !

She then stopped acting.

Since then she has married, had a child and is now a very well paid literary agent and was so glad that I had talked to her the way I did. She said had I not done that she feared she would have carried on for another ten years getting nowhere before facing up to the truth and not getting on with life.  

So, all well that ends well......but it was really horrid shattering someone’s dreams. Our dreams are what keep most of us going, and for most of us they either don't come true, or else they sort of do but in a very, very different way to what with thought in the days of our youth. However the hope of our dreams is a good thing. 

When I started professionally on this road, forty seven years ago, as an actor, I would never ever have thought I would now be a documentary filmmaker and a director as well. 

It was one of the most difficult conversations I have ever had with any creative artist. 

The thing is, it might just have happened for her. Maybe my judgement was wrong. I have been wrong about so many things. You just never know in this business and we all of us  know someone who has suddenly had that lucky chance in their 30's or 40's or 50's and even 60's........the trouble is the that vast majority don't ever have that break, and maybe its because that sometimes they just don't have what it takes and I don't necessarily mean talent. 

In my view to succeed as an actor you must really want to do it above everything else. I gave up a successful acting career because I knew that I just didn't want it badly enough. 

  

©  David Nicholas Wilkinson. 2017. All Rights Reserved.