No matter how long you’ve been in the hustle, you’ve probably heard all sorts of stuff about the inner-workings of Hollywood and the actors life. “It’s all based on who you know” and “you have to stay on one path and not sell out for commercials” – all sorts of stuff. We’re here to remind you to push all that noise OUT. Here is an article containing some myths about the acting world that we want you to avoid believing and to generally get out of your head, courtesy of our friends at Backstage.

Here are a few of our favorites:

 

Real artists don’t do commercials.
I remember having lunch with a friend of mine from grad school who told me he didn’t think he could bring himself to do what I had done. My sin? Taking money for doing commercials. The funny thing is, I actually felt kind of bad about it in that moment. “Why had I sold out like that?” I agonized. Later, I made peace with the fact that actors act. Sometimes that means playing Viola in “Twelfth Night” and sometimes that means playing the “casual mom” cleaning her house with a “high-performance cleaning cloth.” Happily, the second one can pay off the student loans you took out to learn how to do the first—and buy your sanctimonious grad-school buddy lunch.

You need to be a triple threat.
Working on Broadway today seems to require a huge skill set. That’s because most of the shows are either musicals or peopled by stars, or both. No matter what your teacher says, you don’t need to be able to sing and dance to be a great actor. Not everyone can do “A Chorus Line” or star on “Glee.” Though we need to keep our instruments—our bodies and our voices—in shape, being a multiple threat is not required for a successful career.

Any agent is better than no agent.
The biggest problem with having a bad agent isn’t that he or she doesn’t submit or sell you; it’s that because you’re represented, you stop working as hard for yourself, without anyone else picking up the slack. Actors without agents know they need to hustle. Actors with agents—especially lousy ones—need to do so as well, and if your agent has a bad reputation, you’ll have to work twice as hard. If you’re with a rep whom casting directors actively dislike, they won’t bother calling you in—after all, that would mean having to talk to your agent. What’s more, all that time your lousy agent spends pitching you on certain photographers or workshops, or even just ignoring you—which will undoubtedly take up a portion of your mental space—is time better spent on something else. Don’t be afraid of a small, hard-working agent no one’s ever heard of, but stay away from an agent everyone’s heard of but no one likes.