50 Secrets Nobody Tells You in Hollywood
The Working Actor’s Guide to Avoiding Pitfalls and Supercharging Your Career
In the experience-based career guide 50 Secrets Nobody Tells You in Hollywood, stories about professional actors’ successes and flubs make the industry feel approachable.
Acting coach and professional actor Mike Kimmel’s knowledgeable career guide 50 Secrets Nobody Tells You in Hollywood is for people looking to work in show business.
Encouraging but realistic about the difficulty of breaking into the Hollywood scene, this practical guidebook includes fifty chapters with distinct and actionable advice. There are thoughts on expanding the chances of advancing an acting career by being willing to travel for work; there are tips for avoiding becoming a “hanger-on” of a bigger star in an attempt to get ahead too. Emerging actors are counseled to be savvy about those who might look to take advantage and to always be on their own best behavior. Elsewhere, Kimmel advises against commingling one’s personal and professional contacts and warns against being chatty at auditions, when it’s easy to misspeak.
The prose is clear and succinct, and the tone is straightforward, as where the book reminds aspiring actors not to take it personally when passed over for a role. “Nobody cares how the actor feels,” Kimmel says. “Get back to work. Knock it out of the park again—and even stronger—on your next audition. Do even better next time.” The recommendations are supported by personal and industry anecdotes throughout. For example, Kimmel recalls how a girlfriend embarrassed him in front of his agent, teaching him not to mix business with pleasure.
Other actors in Kimmel’s orbit are also held up as examples, with stories about their successes and flubs helping make the acting world feel approachable and serving as reminders that it’s not necessary to achieve stardom to make a living in Hollywood. Household names are represented among the book’s examples too, as where the book notes that Sharon Stone started out by taking a small role in a Woody Allen movie, just what she needed to feel she was going somewhere. In addition, each chapter begins and ends with a quote from someone famous for inspiration.
Still, some of the book’s tips are quite familiar, such as “There are no small parts, only small actors.” Idiosyncratic advice also appears: The book is adamant, for instance, that actors should avoid swearing in public. Further, some of the declarative tips strike a rigid note, as with the assertion that new actors should never show skin in a role, without room made for nuance or counterarguments.
50 Secrets Nobody Tells You in Hollywood is a valuable career guide filled with experience-based recommendations for improving one’s odds of succeeding in Hollywood.
Reviewed by
Carolyn Wilson-Scott
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
