Know the business. If you want to work in the entertainment industry, you have to understand how it works. This knowledge comes not only from books, but also from talking to agents, production personnel, and other actors in the industry. Know what’s expected of you and what procedures you need to follow to get work.
When creating a character’s backstory, determine:
■ How was the home life? What was the character’s relationship with parents, siblings, and extended family? What confl icts were there?
■ How was the character in school? What was the best memory of school? The worst memory? Was the character teased? Was he or she popular? An outcast? How did this affect the character later in life?
■ What is the character’s job history? Is he or she frustrated at work? Ambitious? Lazy? Always waiting for the big break?
■ Who are the character’s friends and enemies?
■ How did the character get to the point at which the story begins?
Although much of this backstory doesn’t appear in the script and will not appear on screen, it is critical to helping an actor determine how to play a role or how to react in a given situation if he fully knows and understands his character’s past.
Write out the backstory for every character in the story. Create a detailed character profi le as if you were writing the character’s biography. In addition to broad points, create a variety of specifi c moments (scariest moment, happiest moment, a moment when the character experienced death) for the actor to refer to when on set.
