ACUTV proudly presents on campus
with your host, ACU vice president
and dean of campus life, Dr. Gary
McCaleb.
Here's Gary. On campus today, visiting
with Sharon Phillips from New York
City, who is an actress,
as well as a number of other things.
We'll be visiting about several of those
things. But I think, Sharon, by the way,
thanks for coming and being with me here.
Thank you. Uh, I think
the thing that to begin with I'd like to
visit a few minutes is just New York City
itself, because there seems to be a
certain kind of fascination about.
New York City and like no
other city in the world, I think that's
the way people feel all over the United
States. And do you find, for example,
that if you're in Texas or
out of the state of New York, that when
you say you're from New York City,
there's a certain amount of interest
just to know that you're from there.
And in fact,
if people ask, do you really live in
New York City itself?
Because a lot of times people say they're
from New York City, but they really live
on Long Island or.
Well, you have a lot of options when you
say you live in New York.
It's made up of five different boroughs.
And so.
Fortunately for me, I live right in the
main borough, which is Manhattan,
and a lot of times people are surprised
to find out that that's an island
so that you can only go a certain
amount this way,
that way before you run into water.
So and it's really a very small space
just a few miles in each direction.
But people are always interested
in what it's like to live with millions
of other people.
And they always want to know where
did the children play?
Well, let's answer some of those
questions, because most people think of
New York City as a place to visit
rather than a place to actually live.
And yet you live on the 17th,
17th, 17th floor, 17th
floor of a large apartment or
housing complex there in
the middle of New York City.
Describe a little bit what it's like
because you have not always been a native
New Yorker.
No, I'm from New Mexico.
What about the transition?
I think one of the the major differences
between your lifestyle and mine is
is the having of a car.
I haven't had a car in eight years,
which is the length of time that I've
lived in New York.
And that changes the way you do business
quite a bit. We don't think anything of
hopping in the store and going, I mean,
in the car to go to the store and buy
groceries and bringing them back in the
trunk, you know, and there's always that
big trek from the car to the kitchen,
unloading the grass, all the bags of
groceries. But if you think of doing
the same thing without
the car, it makes a big difference.
You buy less things when
you're buying your groceries.
You say a gallon of milk.
Do I really need a gallon of milk?
Because a gallon is heavy, you know,
and the big two liter bottles of soda and
all the things that you would buy is a
convenience to take home.
I have to consider do I want to carry
that home? You know, and most New Yorkers
go to the grocery store probably
every other day in order
to keep their kitchen supplied because
you can't carry home one hundred dollars
worth of groceries.
So that that's one of the major things
in almost anything that you buy that
you're used to throwing in the car to
take home.
You have to consider do I want to pay a
delivery fee for that or will I
be able to carry it physically, carry it
home and you're
taking it on the train or in
the busses or something that's crowded.
And it's not the same thing as is being
able to just zip around in your car.
So I think that's one of the major
differences of living.
And then I knew when you moved to New
York City, you already had one baby,
right?
Yes, I had a six month old daughter then.
And since that time now there are two
children and.
Yes. And what's it been like raising
two children in New York?
Well, one of the
biggest things that I notice is when I
come to visit here and I have friends who
have children and they say go outside and
play.
And that seems like such a luxury to
me, to have a fenced in yard where you
can just say to the children, you're
driving me crazy, you've got to go out,
you know, because my
children may play in their room
without my supervision.
But when it comes time to go outside or
to be in any outdoor activities
stretching their muscles and all that
sort of thing, they always have their
mother sitting nearby watching them.
Because I have to be concerned about what
kind of other people are there in the
vicinity. Are they safe people or the
people that you want to keep your
children away from?
Is there broken glasses or anything like
that would be physically dangerous to
them and that sort of thing.
And so my daughter, who is eight,
has, with the exception of times
that we go out of town, is always under
supervision and there
are benefits to that.
One would be that none of my children
have ever been cut.
They don't have stitches.
They don't get bruises because I'm
standing there watching them all the
time. And I say, don't do that.
You're going to get hurt.
Whereas here you send your children out
to play and periodically they come in
with bumps and scrapes and bruises, you
know, and you doctor them up.
But the real question
is, in five or ten years,
will there be any problems with that?
I don't know for people living
in a completely different setting than
New York City, that I think one of the
impressions that we have is
all that we hear about it's unsafe.
New York City's unsafe, how do you feel
about living in New York City and
having a family in New York?
Do you feel safe and secure
as well?
I have to say, of course I feel safe or
I wouldn't live there.
I've moved around a lot in my life.
And my opinion is, if you're not safe,
you should go someplace else, even though
I'm not very sacrificing in that area.
So, uh.
Living in New York, like living anywhere,
there are things that you do and things
that you don't do to maintain your
safety. When I when I was a little girl
in New Mexico, if you
heard a rattle when you were out
walking around, you knew that you were in
danger and that you should check to see
if there was a rattlesnake.
OK, the difference is
I'm not listening for rattles in New York
City, but I do know that if I go out past
midnight, I'm courting danger
or if I try if I sit in a subway car
where no one else is.
The last train of the car something, and
I'm sitting there by myself and some
people come in that look
dangerous, if I stay there, I'm courting
disaster.
And so there are a lot of things that I
do or don't do to
protect my family and
ensure their safety and everything that
you probably wouldn't think of here.
And then, just like you fasten
your seatbelt when you get in the car
here, I don't have a car and I don't
fasten my seatbelt, but I do other
things, so I feel really
very safe. In New York, the people of New
York are very nice and that's something
that I think there's a big misconception
about.
I think there is. And that's the reason I
want to ask you that question, because I
think I think the people that
I talk to who live in New York City feel
very safe in New York City.
It's their home.
And I think they sometimes resent
a little bit everybody saying, oh, it's
so unsafe. I don't know how you could
bear to live there and raise a family.
And, you know, if somebody told me that
about me, how can you live there with
all the tornadoes and the rattlesnakes
and everything that you have in Texas?
Right. It's not something.
And so you just have different kinds of
things.
I think that's something that we all have
to realize, is that wherever you live,
you have certain things that you have to
be careful for and you have
certain benefits to living in that area.
And you wouldn't you wouldn't choose to
live there if there weren't benefits,
whether it's extended family or big wide
open spaces or whatever.
So not many children
that I know that live here in Abilene,
Texas, regularly ride camels and
elephants, which my children do at the
Bronx Zoo all the time, you see.
So they they are getting other
things in lieu
of wide open spaces.
And there's all the beautiful museums
and Broadway shows and
a lot of cultural things that they are
experiencing now at a very young age.
So you have to decide,
do the good things outweigh the bad
things? And for me, they do.
And there are going to be trade offs
wherever we live.
Exactly.
Cost benefit programs and so forth.
And you touched on another thing that I
want to talk about, and I didn't want us
to skim over it that quickly because
you talked about the people being
friendly. And that's another, I think,
sometimes bad rap that New York City
gets.
Well, everybody's the first time I
noticed it. I'll tell you, it was when we
first lived there and I had a six month
old baby and I would come up out of the
subway. And I have a very good sense of
direction. And I usually know which is
east and west and north and south and all
that. But when you go in the subway and
the train goes this way and then down and
around you come out, you really have no
idea which way to go and usually
have to walk a block or two to see
whether the numbers are getting higher or
lower to to know.
And so I would always come up out of the
subway holding this baby and looking
around, going now, which way do I need to
go?
And the number of times that
complete strangers would stop
rushing along and come right up to me and
say, can I give you directions?
Or You lost.
I was astounded because I was ready for
these cold hearted Northeasterners,
which never materialized.
That's not to say there's not people who
are bruskin cold and rude
there, because there are, but
that's a percentage of a very large
population.
So I've found people to be very
nice there.
The difference is in the South,
I think a lot of people are very open
right from the beginning.
Hi, good to see you.
And you might not know them very well,
but it's a nice casual greeting.
Whereas in New York, we have a tendency
to be just a little bit aloof until
there's a need.
And then you see people are just as good
hearted there as they are here.
Talking about identifying yourself with
New York City.
Do you now feel like New York City
is your hometown or.
You know, I've heard people say that
everybody's visiting New York City.
Even the people that live there, they're
just there temporarily and then they're
moving on to somewhere else.
But, well, I think that's true.
I I'm finding that most of the people
that I know who come from
other parts of the country to New York
City and sometimes even in other parts of
the world, will stay there about three
years.
And then after that, they're returning
to from whence they came, you
know, but my husband's
work is there.
And he is a native New York
State person and not New
York City, but New York State.
And he's very happy with his
work. And I occasionally
get acting jobs, which makes me very
happy. And so
as long as we were able to settle the
issue of the children and their schooling
and things like that, we have come
to feel that New York is really our home
because we have no real intention of
leaving.
So unless lightning strikes or
who knows what happens.
But so I really feel that
New Yorkers are
the people who have lived in your for a
long time are very, very
firm in their faith in New York.
I mean, there isn't any other city like
New York and the ones who
don't like it come and go.
And there's always that even
in Abilene, you have people who come and
go, you know, so it's just that
the percentages are higher in New York.
And that's one of the interesting
serendipity is in your life, I
think that you just mentioned that you
are an actress and that, uh,
after leaving ICU and,
uh, in which you
while you were here, you majored in drama
theater, um,
you didn't go to New York City for
this specific purpose of pursuing
an acting career.
And yet with your husband pursuing
a business opportunity, there you
are in New York City and it's giving you
an opportunity.
And I'd like for us to spend a major part
of our remaining time talking about
that transition, because
the acting profession, whether it's in
motion pictures or television or
the theater, is a major,
uh, part of our entertainment
in America today.
And, uh,
let's start with with the transition
that has to be made from
from the stage, the live drama
situation into
what is mostly the opportunities
that would come your way, I guess, which
would be, uh, television or
film film in one way or the other.
Well, there is a major difference.
Um, I remember
going to my first audition after having
nothing but stage experience, and it was
for a film and I was completely
terrible.
I was it was one of those
situations that you get yourself into
that you're sitting there doing
something. In this case, I was
auditioning and all the while in the back
of my head, I'm saying you're really
terrible.
And I was really terrible because I
had spent several years
working on stage in and
I understood that you have to project
and you have to speak and your face has
to be bigger than life and all this sort
of thing. And and here I was trying
to do something for film work, and I
just really hadn't made the switch to
realize that you have to be very natural
and very casual and, you
know, realistic.
And, um, so that was a terrible
audition. But I learned a whole lot from
that. And I found
that if I can
practice being natural,
that I have a lot better chance in
my auditions for film work.
So, um, the difference
also is in the feeling that you get when
you finish doing a film project, everyone
says, well, that's it.
OK, thanks. Go home.
Whereas in the theater, people stand
up and clap and cheer and they say how
wonderful you've done know.
So there is a completely different
feeling for the actor to do the two
different kinds of work.
What does that require of you?
Is that does it require a different
approach for you to take
mentally or psychologically
in some way to to think there are
no people out here, there
is no audience for me to
play to or that's going to respond
to me either to laugh or to
applaud or anything like that?
Well, I find that
the film actors, or at least the
way I feel, is that I'm acting for the
director.
I'm acting for an audience of one, and
he's going to tell me if it's what he
wants or not.
And of course, when you have
two hundred people in the audience, you
might be able to appeal to, you know,
one hundred and twenty of them.
To the director, it's all or nothing.
So you really do have to give
him what he wants and not
hope to the scattergun approach
to, you know, please several of the
people.
So it is a different feeling.
We need to take a break.
And when we come back, I'd like for us to
pick up by talking about
what's required to break in
to those first opportunities and
have the opportunity, because we know
there are probably not hundreds,
but thousands of people that are would
like to get into show
business in one way or the other.
We're visiting today with Sharon
Phillips.
I'm Bob Edwards.
I'm Barbara Houghton.
This is NPR's Morning Edition.
This is Noah Adams. And I'm Susan
Stamberg. Every day on All Things
Considered, we bring you the human
stories behind the headlines and we take
you into the minds of thoughtful people.
Well, look who's coming
through that door.
I think we met somewhere before.
This is American Public
Radio.
We're back on campus and continuing to
visit with Sharon Phillips, actress from
New York City.
We were just talking about what
how could somebody break in?
OK, now you're in New York City.
You've got the opportunity that a lot of
people dream about all their life.
We want to get into show business.
So you're there.
What do you do?
Well, the very first thing you have to do
is to get a picture and a resume,
because the chances of
you being able to get in to see any
agent or casting people
is nonexistent.
So the only way you have a chance to
make contact with him is if you send them
your picture with the resume on the back.
And then if they like the
picture or if it sparks something in
their mind of something that they're
doing now or they will be needing
soon, they might keep it.
Usually they throw it away.
But the first thing you do
is, is make sure that you have a very
good picture to send to them, because
it's the only contact you have with the
people who are doing the cast.
So you're really relying on a photograph.
Exactly. To get your foot in the door.
Right. So that if you
if you don't even if you went to an
audition, if you heard that there was an
audition that you were eligible for
and you went to it and did a
wonderful audition, if you didn't have
the photograph to leave with them, they
wouldn't remember you after they'd seen
two hundred more people.
So it's extremely important that you have
a very good photograph.
The resume is even secondary
because if you don't have the right look,
then they don't even turn it over to look
at the resume.
OK, now you said the right look.
What is the right look?
Well, the right look for what they are
doing at the time.
For instance, if they're making a movie
and they need a certain
motherly type and that's
your type, then when they're
looking through the photographs, they'll
say, hey, this is a this is the type that
I need for this project.
And they might call you in and
give you an audition if they like the way
you look for what they're doing.
However, if they don't want a motherly
type and your picture comes through, it
just passes through and most likely into
the trash can.
So really, it's like
being at the right place at the right
time because they don't always keep your
photograph and go back through their
files and look to see if they have what
they want.
So then are you suggesting that at least
in most cases when they're looking at
these photographs, they're looking with a
particular, um,
a particular part in mind that they're
trying to cast? They're not just looking
through saying this might be somebody
there is no they're looking for.
Who do we want for this particular part?
Very seldom do they do they have
a file that they even keep.
Not too long ago, I was in a seminar
that one of the union acting unions
put on and the director
of the casting director of
I believe it was one know
the guiding light was there.
And he was talking to us and he told us
that he gets three hundred photographs
a day of people who are
interested in being on The Guiding Light.
And how does it affect you and you?
Is that discouraging to know that there
are 300 photographs a day coming into
the studio?
Well, in the beginning, it was very
discouraging to me because
like a lot of people, I thought that
if you have the talent, you could
make it.
But a lot of people that are not very,
very talented, as you
might have noticed on television in the
evening, are still working.
And it was because they looked right for
the for the part.
They were the right place at the right
time. They knew somebody who
could give them a good word or something
like that. And once I realized that
talent alone is not going
to make it, then you start hoping for
good luck, because
I think the major portion
of it is good luck and even
excuse me, even some of the roles that
I've gotten have come through
luck or are knowing somebody.
And that's amazing, but true.
So does that mean then that you just have
to continually be sending photographs out
over and over? Because if you're they're
going to be going right in the
wastebasket in the next time something's
going, you've got to have a photograph
out again.
That's right. You do have to send your
photograph out periodically.
It's it's like it's a marketing strategy.
And you
they also have something other than the
send out eight by 10 pictures with the
resume either printed or stapled to
the back.
The second thing that you have is
a postcard with your photograph on it
and it costs less and you don't have to
put it in an envelope and all the sort of
thing so that it cuts down on the
expense. And you usually send
out that picture postcard once
a week to the casting agents
that you have targeted to, you know,
see, there's so many of
them, you couldn't possibly send out your
postcards to every one of them every
week. So usually you choose the ones
that are casting the kinds of shows that
you are interested in and then you
periodically send them a picture saying,
I wish you hire me, you know,
and just something that that
helps to begin to imprint your.
Face on their mind and then
perhaps if you've done that enough times,
they're familiar enough with your face
that when the job opportunity
comes in, they go, wait a minute, who's
that girl that's been sending me her
picture? You know, that that
red hair, that's that's what I need.
Find that girl's picture, you know, and
that's the purpose of the postcard.
Yeah, but those are two of the things
that you really have to have.
It be fair to assume that in some ways
you are not typical in the sense
that being married and having
two children and having a husband who
is is producing an
income and working, you are not
up there desperately having
to find a job or find
a means of an income.
And so, in other words, in a sense,
you're really not full time into this.
Yes, I'm pretty atypical of
actors and actresses in New York because
most of them do have to put up with some
fairly depressing jobs
to be able to get away and do
the auditioning that they need to do.
And there is an awful lot of pressure on
the actors in New York because there
are they say that they're twenty
thousand actors and fifteen thousand of
them are out of work at any given
time. So you only have about five
thousand actors who are getting all the
work. And the was like one of the best
jobs might be to go into the photography
business to provide all of these
photographs of the actors, because
any time you cut your hair
or make any kind of drastic change,
you need to have a new photograph,
because if they receive your photograph
and call you in and you don't look like
what they saw that they wanted, well,
then you've wasted your time and their
time. So you have to get your photograph
made periodically.
And and it's a big business.
In fact, there's a whole segment
of New York that lives off the
aspiring actor for teaching
classes and and
taking pictures and doing makeup and hair
and all the things that you have to
keep, you know, going the right
way. It's it's amazing.
OK, so at least just
mention a few of the things that have
happened in your career.
You have been in Woody Allen's movie
Purple Rose of Cairo.
You've been in the movie Garbo Talks.
You've been in Barbra Streisand's
video for her new
Broadway album.
And then you've been in some industry
what are called industrials or industrial
type films.
Picking up on any one of those you want
to, how would you describe
what happened in order for you to get
those opportunities or those punkish?
Well, one of the most
interesting I told you, you needed to
know somebody that really helps.
And I had a friend who
was doing the artwork for a video project
on how to take good pictures,
was going to be a photography video.
And they needed someone
to be what they called the color girl.
And you've probably seen this on your
television. Hello, my name is Sharon
Phillips. I have red hair and green eyes,
and that's so that you can adjust
your color. And in this photography
video, that was very important so
that you could have the true colors.
So he thought, well, I'll
see. I'll tell them that you might be
good for that and you can go over and
audition for them.
So I went over and they didn't want me,
so I went home and that was the last I
heard of that.
About three months later,
I got a call from somebody else
that was not with the same film company
or anything. And they said we were
looking for someone to play a mother.
And I had taken my two children with me
to the audition because they were going
to be background and they and that was
fun for them. They went to the zoo and
had little colored balloons and they took
photographs and everything.
So they knew that I had the two children.
So from my friend recommending
me to this one company who had
a person that changed jobs and was
working at another one and said, I know a
woman with two children.
They called me in for an audition
and I auditioned and they liked
my work and gave me a job.
So one of my very first good paying jobs
came from the original recommendation
of my friend.
So you can see how it's it's not
something you can plan for.
A lot of the jobs come that way from
in the back door, you know,
then does it does it help at all?
You're talking about having a resume to
go with the photograph. Does it help at
all to start being having have
some of those things to list that you
have been in it? Or do they care for the
resume?
I think is really secondary.
I know from talking to enough
casting directors that.
If they don't see what they like or what
they're looking for, they might not even
turn over the picture to read the resume.
And sometimes the resume doesn't make
any difference if that's what they want.
But I also know that
I sent out my picture several times
in the very beginning and got no response
because all my work was in Texas
and not all of it was professional.
A lot of Abilene Christian University
dinner theaters and things like that.
And so I really was not
getting any response from my picture at
that point.
So I did take a nonpaying
extra job for a movie,
which is something I don't normally do.
I feel like it once you get a
degree you ought to be paid to do
so. I, I
did take this one job and
the put it on my resume and
the next batch of pictures that I sent
out with one credit from New York City,
I started getting responses and
people calling saying, you know, when
you come in for an audition.
So I think the resume does
have something to do with it.
But I don't know that it's so much what
you've done. But where you've done it,
it's like if you are if
someone else will pay you to do what you
do, well, then maybe I might, too.
So that's kind of the the thought behind
that.
Seems to me you've got to develop a
rather thick
resistance to to rejection
because it sounds like you've got
the possibility of you said two or
three times I went in, they didn't want
me. Yeah. You know, and you've
got to be able to be resilient enough to
bounce back from that.
And I think that's part
of it. You do have to kind of get thick
skinned about it. But then again, you
have to realize that once you've been
doing this for a while, you could be
sending your picture out to 20 different
people. You could be going to 15
different auditions in a week.
And there's no way for you to have
the time to care that
much for each one of them.
You know, everyone's while you have
one that touches you because you want
that part, you know, not just you need
some money to pay the bills, but
periodically there will be one that you
really, really care because it might be a
stepping stone in a different direction
or up or something like that.
But for the people who are very
serious about acting, they're so
involved with the constant going
to auditions that they just can't have
the time to care for every one of them.
So eventually you
you just get kind of numb to the
rejection. And sometimes you even forget
that you sent out pictures to those 30
people.
You know, you mentioned open
auditions, which apparently
is a different approach than sending a
photograph in when you when
you have an opportunity for an open
audition, what's the what's the
the method for getting attention?
That's really less
of an opportunity than having someone
see your picture and call you.
Oh, that's even more remote, right.
You see, if you if you send your picture
in and they like it well enough to call
you in, you have stepped up in
the category enough to be of interest.
An open audition is something that you
will read about a notice in the
trade paper or in an acting
school or something. They might tack up a
notice saying we want this
style person to come
at this time to this location.
And I worked on the Barbra
Streisand video,
the last one that she just did.
And that was an open audition.
And we didn't even know for whom it was.
You know, it just went this is
that, you know, Barbara, we knew it was a
music video. That's all we knew.
So I went
and when I got there, there were five
hundred people in line ahead of me.
And how they chose
who they chose, I don't know.
They probably had about one hundred and
fifty people that they chose
eventually to
be there in the audience
while Barbra sang her song.
And they called us in
fifty at a time.
And we sat in the audience, in
the audience chairs and
the director.
No, it was not the director.
An assistant director looked us
over and said, OK, you may go.
And we left our picture in our resume
with him and out of
probably eight or nine hundred
people who came, they chose one hundred
fifty people.
And, you know, so that getting
a job like that is practically sheer
luck.
Yeah, sure. And we're already out of
time. But thank you for being with us
and best wishes and for some more good
luck. And I look forward to seeing you on
some films and videos in the future.
OK, thank you.
And thank you for being with us on campus
with Sharon Phillips.