Hello readers!

I was thinking about how hard it is to get started as an actor in New York. The money you spend when you can’t afford to spend it, the time you put into taking classes or going to auditions with no guarantee of success, the relentless fist-shaking we do – knowing how impossible it is to get our foot in any door. More specifically, I was thinking about the "Catch-22" nature of resumes. People don’t want to hire you if you don’t have any experience, but how in the world can you get experience if you can’t get hired? “Frustrating” is too mild a term for such a predicament.

Most of us starting out have the shows we did in high school and in college on our resumes. If we’re really lucky, we might have a few summer stock credits as well. Many of us have a training program cited, along with something like an internship or apprenticeship. Most of us are non-Equity when we start out, which is another strike against us.

So, is there anything we can do to make our resume look better? To be honest, I’m not sure. But I want to share a small cautionary tale about what NOT to do: Lie.

I was fortunate enough to sign with a manager within a few weeks of my graduation from the two-year training program at Circle in the Square. While I felt enormous relief at having secured representation so quickly, my uphill battle had only just begun. To his credit, my manager was extremely enthusiastic about how to “get me out there.” Blonder highlights, new headshots, and as many auditions as he could arrange. There was one suggestion that immediately felt wrong, and that was to embellish the theater credits on my resume.

Suddenly, instead of doing only one show at a particular summer theater, I had done three. I was told by my manger that the chances of being caught in this lie were slim. Even though my gut told me this wasn’t a good idea, my inexperience and my eagerness to book work overpowered my conscience.

Well, you can guess what happened. One day, my manager called to alert me that the artistic director from the theater where I had magically done three shows had called. She had somehow acquired my less-than-accurate resume – Boom – lie exposed. And quickly! Now I had to do some serious damage control, for I had done potentially irreparable harm to my relationship with this theater. Needless to say, I was humiliated and I took the fake credits off my resume immediately. It’s worth noting that my padded resume brought me no more success than an honest resume would have. It was ultimately a good audition that got me my first Equity job.

Here’s the thing: yours is not the first “light” resume to grace the table of a casting director. Every year, New York is inundated with new headshots and resumes detailing leading roles in college productions from coast to coast. It’s part of the process. If you are talented, committed and brave – your work will shine through. No need to paint a dishonest portrait of yourself.