055 The Difference Between OK and Exceptionally Good

What separates the actors that consistently create vivid, organic, interesting human behavior at the highest level, and those that don't? What is the difference between just being OK at something, and operating with artistry? This week Charlie talks to his friend, and fellow teacher Victor Villar-Hauser, one of LA's most sought after coaches. Victor talks about coaching Kingsley Ben-Adir through his stunning breakout performance as Malcom X in One Night in Miami, and what the actor's life can be when approached with passion. Two dedicated teachers talking about their love of acting, craft, and work-ethic. You can follow CBP on Instagram @creatingbehavior, and Charlie's NYC acting conservatory, the Maggie Flanigan Studio @maggieflaniganstudio. For written transcripts, Charlie's blog, or to contact him for private coaching, check out https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com

Transcript

Charlie Sandlan (00:03):

Today, we are going to talk about the difference between being just okay, and being really, really fucking good at what you do. The question that I think you should ask yourself, "Is being okay good enough?" Let me tell you, there's a big gap between doing just enough to be competent and being a real serious artist. Those of you that have been listening to this show, you understand what I'm talking about, and we're going to get into a really, really good discussion today with my friend, my fellow collaborator, fellow teacher, Victor Villar-Hauser. He's one of the hottest coaches working in the business today. He's been coaching actors, we're talking one, two, three, four, five on the call sheet, he is working with some of the best. We're going to talk about our love of acting, two teachers sitting around, shooting the shit about artistry, about the importance of curiosity, empathy, hard work, and training. So put the phone back in your pocket, Creating Behavior starts now.

Charlie Sandlan (01:42):

Well, hello, my fellow daydreamers. Let's talk about that question, shall we, about being okay, just okay? If you're an actor, if you're living an artistic life, at some point you are going to be posed with this, I don't know, dilemma, "Am I just going to do what I need to do to be competent? Do I even care enough to go beyond that, or do I really, really want to be exceptionally good?" There's a huge gap between the two and the amount of work required to go from okay to really, really, really good, exceptionally good, extraordinarily good, it'll cost you everything. I've said this before, how hard it is. Now, listen, you can be okay and carve out work for yourself. You can book jobs, under-five/day players, book commercials, probably do some theater, but do you just want to be okay?

Charlie Sandlan (03:02):

Victor has worked with some of the best actors in Los Angeles. He is one of the hottest coaches in the business, and we're going to talk about what it's like to actually work with actors who want to be exceptionally good. What separates them? We're going to talk about his collaboration with Kingsley Ben-Adir, who he helped coach through One Night in Miami, an extraordinary performance. If you have not seen One Night in Miami, you need to do it. Everybody in that film was really crushing it, but Kingsley, to play someone like Malcolm X, to play an iconic figure like that and to catch his essence, you can't do that kind of work. You cannot take that kind of part on if you are not obsessed, if you don't have artistry, a way of working with yourself. It's not possible, and then that's why I love Victor so much is because he feels the same way.

Charlie Sandlan (04:12):

I first met Victor at the Maggie Flanigan Studio where I had been there a couple of years at this point, and this is probably about 10 years ago now. Victor wanted to teach. He was trained by Maggie and Bill Esper as an actor and he wanted to teach. He poured himself into it with the same passion that I did, and that's why I think why we hit it off so well. He loves actors. He loves to teach and he wants to be really fucking great at it, and we spent many years together working at the studio, teaching together and it was really special. But then, life changes and he moved out to LA. He is married to the very successful television director, Zetna Fuentes, three-time Daytime Emmy-nominated director. At this point, she's also one of the hottest directors in television, but at the time, she had this one opportunity to shoot one episode of a television show.

Charlie Sandlan (05:19):

And if any of you that are in a relationship or married to a fellow artist, a fellow actor, you're going to, and you probably know this, have to make decisions every once in a while because the other person has an opportunity. That was the case with Victor and Zetna and they just had a baby, so talk about rolling the dice on yourselves. They pack up, take themselves and their young son, Joaquin, and they go to Los Angeles. Victor, it's not like he had anything going on out there. He was entrenched in New York. He was carving out a life for himself, professionally, personally; thriving at a job that he really loved, but goes out to LA with his wife and his family and had to start over, so to speak.

Charlie Sandlan (06:12):

What he's done in his time in LA is just turn himself into one of the most sought-after coaches in the business. His scene study class is off the hook, certainly for anybody who is interested in breaking down scripts, approaching complicated material, creating behavior for a living. We're going to talk today about all of this. It's a great conversation. We started it off, I asked him what that felt like to know that you were going to pack up and move to LA and start from scratch, to sacrifice something here for your wife and for your family? What did that feel like? We took our conversation from there. So here is my good friend, and just a hell of a teacher, Victor Villar-Hauser.

Victor Villar-Hauser (07:10):

Terrifying. That was Zetna's first gig.

Charlie Sandlan (07:15):

Right.

Victor Villar-Hauser (07:16):

We moved our family, because Joaquin was a year-and-a-half old, we moved our family out there based on Zetna's directorial debut on a TV show on Freeform. There was no second episode, but her agent at that time recommended that she move out and we did, and because they were like, "You've got to be in LA to take the meetings, to be here, to check all the boxes. You've got to be here." So we did that hoping, well, they say there's a lot of first-time directors that's like-

Charlie Sandlan (07:49):

Yeah, because there's no guarantee that she was going to continue to work or that she would have worked lined up.

Victor Villar-Hauser (07:53):

Exactly right-

Charlie Sandlan (07:53):

... more work lined up.

Victor Villar-Hauser (07:54):

Exactly right. So then, she booked that job and then she did well at that job, of course and then got a second episode and then moved on the network to a different show on The Fosters, from Pretty Little Liars to The Fosters, and then realized, "Oh, I need to expand the pool away from these kinds of tween, soapy shows and stuff and go to other networks." Then slowly, she's just strategically been building her career. So, it's been an incredible journey for her.

Charlie Sandlan (08:30):

Well, what was it like for you, because you're uplifting your life, your creative life to-

Victor Villar-Hauser (08:35):

I had my dream job at that time, being at Maggie's, working there and being allowed to work there, having sat behind Maggie's chair, as you did, to become a teacher and having studied with her and then just being there. Then slowly, she started to throw a little bit of work my way and stuff and then it was like, "Oh my God, this is awesome," and I discovered that I loved it, really loved it. Moving to LA was terrifying, and then it became especially terrifying because I started to look for a gig, a teaching gig. I started to sit in the studios that purportedly taught Meisner and-

Charlie Sandlan (09:20):

Give me the state of actor training in LA. What is your overall assessment of how actors are trained out there?

Victor Villar-Hauser (09:29):

It is true, and as Maggie said this, I think, which is, actors come to New York to train and go to LA to be famous," right?

Charlie Sandlan (09:39):

Yep.

Victor Villar-Hauser (09:40):

I think that there is such a tsunami of young people flooding into Los Angeles because-

Charlie Sandlan (09:50):

Everybody wants to fucking be an actor when they're in their 20s, everybody.

Victor Villar-Hauser (09:53):

That's right, but LA is the beach on which they land. So there are places that pretty much tell you that they can teach you to act in six weeks-

Charlie Sandlan (10:05):

What a crock of shit. What a crock of shit.

Victor Villar-Hauser (10:09):

My thing is that universally, I feel like the whole Gestalt of the business is you are enough. When you say that, and it is after all of the work and after it's engaging in a level of trust that you have something that's a really high-end, high-level note that is there to release the actor into what they have earned, right?

Charlie Sandlan (10:39):

You're saying, I'm actually going to-

Victor Villar-Hauser (10:40):

Yeah, please, please.

Charlie Sandlan (10:41):

... interrupt you and see if this-

Victor Villar-Hauser (10:41):

Yeah, yeah.

Charlie Sandlan (10:42):

... is true. You're saying, "You are enough," does not mean your pedestrian fucking bullshit, who you are. No one's interested in that. Is that what you mean?

Victor Villar-Hauser (10:50):

Look, yeah. I would argue, we have a series of narratives about who we think we are. If it wasn't for having met Maggie and trained with Maggie and had my awakening as to what is the creative art form of acting and struggle to understand it further than I even did when I graduated, which I would argue is 20% of what I needed to know, and endeavored and kept going. Really, I was changed as a human being by not just meeting who I was, because who I was, I would argue, wasn't that fucking interesting. It's meeting the humanity in the work that the playwrights or the writers or engaging in this curiosity and what is the human condition that taught me about people and life and humanity.

Victor Villar-Hauser (11:47):

I have no idea who the fuck I am until I really sit down and look at and study behavior, I'll go, "Wow, I didn't even know that existed in me, but it does." Now, had I not trained, had I not studied, had I not engaged in a craft that was a channel for that creative curiosity, I would've never known. I would have been ignorant, quite frankly, just ignorant. So I go, "The whole Gestalt of you are enough is because there are so many actors." What they want more than anything in the business is for people to be authentic, right?

Charlie Sandlan (12:30):

Yep.

Victor Villar-Hauser (12:31):

So then, to do character work, which is to move away from your natural settings is something that you have to work really hard at to get good at, to get comfortable at, to confront things that you are uncomfortable confronting. Why would that just come naturally?

Charlie Sandlan (12:50):

Well, character acting calls on you to, I think, call upon parts of yourself that you spend most of your life repressing, right?

Victor Villar-Hauser (12:59):

For sure. Yeah.

Charlie Sandlan (13:00):

It can rock you, certainly. Even, you know this, when they start training and they start doing the Meisner work, just confronting who they are, their defenses, their relationship to their anger, their relationship to conflict, it's earth-shattering.

Victor Villar-Hauser (13:17):

Yeah. I describe it as it's really akin to a birthing. Do you know what I mean? It is as traumatic to your instrument, to who you think you are as a child being wrenched from you. It's that profound of an experience, I think. Look, my wish is in teaching is to give the actor the gift of autonomy and the autonomous creative thinking. I want them to get the gift I received.

Charlie Sandlan (13:53):

You did something that I don't think, listen, a lot of teachers don't do. You actually learned how to teach. Most people that teach acting are just pulling out notes from classes they took 10 years ago and just bullshitting their way through it-

Victor Villar-Hauser (14:07):

Right.

Charlie Sandlan (14:07):

But you actually, we're talking hours and hours upon hours, thousands of hours of just watching. So when you're going out there and you start looking at teachers at these studios, what was your experience? What was your impression of just how things are done out there?

Victor Villar-Hauser (14:24):

The thing that offends me the most about the level and the fucking bullshit that it is, is that, look, one thing is taking kids money.

Charlie Sandlan (14:36):

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Victor Villar-Hauser (14:38):

The thing that you're fucking with is time that they can never get back.

Charlie Sandlan (14:44):

That's right.

Victor Villar-Hauser (14:46):

The thing that fucking pisses me off is that in that actor is a child that is wishing to dance, to break free, to be expressive, to fucking stir shit up, to make a difference, and you are fucking that child. That, to me, is taking someone's dream and placating it, or putting it to sleep or not really demanding that they become somebody that they don't even know who that they are. Do you know?

Charlie Sandlan (15:21):

How many actors out there really want to be trained? I think everyone goes to LA because they want fame and they want it quick and, "Oh my God, I'm 26. If I actually committed two years to training, I'll be almost 30 and life will pass me by." You're out there now you're coaching one, two, three, four, five on the call sheet now. You've built yourself up as a really, really first-rate coach and teacher. You have a really great scene study class out there that you've developed. How would you describe the LA actor and how do you find people that you're even willing to work with or want to work with?

Victor Villar-Hauser (15:57):

It's been very much a recommendation only.

Charlie Sandlan (16:00):

Yeah.

Victor Villar-Hauser (16:00):

So I've ended up with actors that have come to me and they've been desperate for some kind of New York training or some kind of standard. Now it's what I call New York, but it's really, they haven't come across it since New York. They have not been pushed in that way since New York. So a lot of my classes, even well-trained actors who've come to Los Angeles and have been just auditioning, what just auditioning will do to your musculature. It's pretty, pretty horrific because you're sending work into a vacuum, you're fighting a business that's telling you, "Don't do anything radical or anything too different. Don't do anything that's not uncomfortable to watch. Don't caught failing. Don't do that."

Charlie Sandlan (16:56):

Yeah, which, what happens as a result of it, in your opinion?

Victor Villar-Hauser (17:01):

It's an acid bath for creativity, right?

Charlie Sandlan (17:03):

Yeah. Right.

Victor Villar-Hauser (17:06):

It's like, and so people forget why they love acting, why they act, how to think about a set of sides in terms of story. They lose their passion and so a lot of actors I come across have been in that experience of a weakening of that muscle. So I get to do like some hold a space that is reviving for them, hold a space that has a community of actors that are like-minded, and to surround yourself by actors that are thinking at a high level. I've seen a few in LA, but there are very few classes that hold that level or hold that kind of space.

Charlie Sandlan (17:50):

Yeah. It seems like they want artistry back in their life, and especially if they've trained in New York or they know what that means, then you go out there and it's right, your muscles atrophy and it's-

Victor Villar-Hauser (18:02):

That's right.

Charlie Sandlan (18:03):

You're like, "What the fuck? What am I doing? I don't feel like an actor. I don't feel like an artist."

Victor Villar-Hauser (18:08):

Right.

Charlie Sandlan (18:08):

Which brings me to, I think every teacher, everybody wants a shout out in the New York Times from a client.

Victor Villar-Hauser (18:17):

Yeah, right?

Charlie Sandlan (18:18):

Listen, Kingsley Ben-Adir, well, first off, he's a first-rate actor. I didn't really know who he was until I watched High Fidelity and I was so pissed off that that show got canceled. He was so good in that, and then you see One Night in Miami, and then that piece in the Times where he does a shout out to you-

Victor Villar-Hauser (18:37):

Oh.

Charlie Sandlan (18:37):

He worked with you and he credited you with exactly what you're talking about, breathing just creativity and artistry back into his life. So what was it like to work with him? What did you learn from him?

Victor Villar-Hauser (18:54):

That's a great question. When I first met him, he was not in a great space. He was, I think-

Charlie Sandlan (19:03):

He talked about that in the Times piece.

Victor Villar-Hauser (19:05):

Yeah, not in a great space and understandably, and was a little lost at sea. What happened was that there was a massive time crunch and he was working on a project and I worked with him and I think he was in a bit of a state of shock after working with me, which is not an uncommon experience with an actor who's just like, "Okay," and I thought, "Wow, I don't think I'm ever going to see him again," right?

Charlie Sandlan (19:36):

What's the shock? What do you think it is? What is that?

Victor Villar-Hauser (19:40):

It is opening the actor's eyes to the very specific demand of the story and how you are in service to that story from the theme, and how you have then choices, but a lot less choices than you might think as regards of how to play that role. Do you know what I mean? the creative gauntlet right there is based on that investigatory work, you're now going into the piece and everything must have meaning, everything-

Charlie Sandlan (20:17):

You're talking about-

Victor Villar-Hauser (20:17):

... must have meaning.

Charlie Sandlan (20:19):

... every moment? Everything-

Victor Villar-Hauser (20:22):

Every moment. My relationship to my coffee cup, my coffee. It's an endless series of questions, milk? No milk? Half-and-half? Sugar? No sugar? Sweetened? What does that say about my character? How does my character feel about that? How do I feel about that as a character, based on my X,Y,Z issues? So this really diving into story and then realizing that there is nothing that the character won't have a very strong reaction to, or a feeling about, and-

Charlie Sandlan (20:55):

Well, what do you say to actors that go, "Oh, that's fucking crazy, man. I'm having a cup of coffee. I don't have to think too much about that. I just got to grab a cup, pour my coffee, put some milk in it and say my lines-

Victor Villar-Hauser (21:07):

Yeah.

Charlie Sandlan (21:08):

... and that's too much."

Victor Villar-Hauser (21:09):

Dude, that's it, right?

Charlie Sandlan (21:10):

"You're you're cramping style. You're cramping my style. I like to just be free with what I'm doing."

Victor Villar-Hauser (21:16):

Well, there is that comfort, or there is the ignorance of not knowing, right?

Charlie Sandlan (21:24):

Yeah. Absolutely.

Victor Villar-Hauser (21:25):

Then-

Charlie Sandlan (21:25):

It's unconscious incompetence.

Victor Villar-Hauser (21:27):

That's right, and exactly right. So I've come across actors and I don't enjoy working with actors, and thankfully, I work with very few actors because we just don't mesh. There are actors who when they meet me and that are drawn to an awareness of how much more they can create the world 360 for themselves, they're turned off by it and are really terrified. So to Kingsley's motherfucking credit, and the guy's a rock star, he didn't have the experience that he wanted to have, and he started to email me and started to ask questions about those hours that we spent together and started to ask the questions. So I really started to do introduce, philosophically speaking, what you and I teach, in terms of how to craft and how to think and how to reframe what had become stagnant for him. His own curiosity drove him to keep coming back, keep wanting to know more, and to the point where doesn't really, still now, we have a weekly appointment, because he's very fortunate in that he gets a lot of scripts.

Victor Villar-Hauser (23:00):

Even if he has no interest in working on the script, perhaps, do you know what I mean? Or he's at a point of considering it, or he's gotten hold of some scripts, he sends them to me and he's like, "Hey Victor, can you read this, and let's talk about it?" We're literally breaking down scripts and going, "Oh, this works," or, "These would be great ideas," or, "This would be a fun thing to do. This is how you would elevate or solve this problem and what is the theme? How are you in service to the same, and what are the solutions? What are the acting ideas that you could incorporate into the work? What is inspiring you? What movies are you thinking about, plays books? Are you thinking about when you read this, how would you pursue doing something with this character?" He's invested. He's invested in being the best he can be, and he is invested in doing good work. He, I think, doesn't give a fuck about anything else.

Charlie Sandlan (24:01):

I think that it shows. I'll tell you what I loved about One Night in Miami, and I thought they were all excellent. They weren't doing an imitation or a caricature. He found Malcolm X's essence from him and it was authentic to Kingsley and he certainly made some adjustments to catch his physical life, but it was authentic to Kingsley, and I just thought it was excellent work.

Victor Villar-Hauser (24:32):

It was really working on that movie, he turned around to me afterwards and he said, "I'm never, ever not working on a project like this. This is the standard. That is the minimum I have to reach. This is now," because he would go to set and his level of preparation. His hotel room, the walls were blanketed with Malcolm X quotes in our coaching sessions. What would resonate for him, he would put up on the wall and then he'd keep moving it so he could keep seeing it in different places and be reminded of why he was there. Look, you're doing a movie on Malcolm X who was a revolutionary in terms of his thinking and how he was challenging the Whites supremacy in this country, right? You go, "What would he have thought of a movie, a Hollywood film?" You go, "He'd fucking hate it."

Charlie Sandlan (25:40):

Right.

Victor Villar-Hauser (25:40):

His point of view on capitalism and the capitalist machine, he believed that people were disenfranchised, there's this whole thing. You cannot play a guy like that, and not hit upon the hypocrisy of engaging in a production that's on an Oscar run.

Charlie Sandlan (25:58):

But how do you catch that in the choices you make or in the behavior of the theme to take it on?

Victor Villar-Hauser (26:07):

Because you understand that none of that is anything but distracting. All of it, that is ego-based is completely distracting, and that if you were to play the man, you have to understand how he felt about these things, how he felt he was fighting for a community that was being murdered. So you have to stay in that zone of that appreciation and awareness. The man knew he was putting his life on the line-

Charlie Sandlan (26:42):

Right.

Victor Villar-Hauser (26:42):

... so you've got to meet that and you can't fuck around with that shit.

Charlie Sandlan (26:47):

Well, it's so interesting because you've got Ali's there and Jim Brown and the who was Leslie Odom playing?

Victor Villar-Hauser (26:53):

Sam Cooke.

Charlie Sandlan (26:53):

Thank you, Sam Cooke, right?

Victor Villar-Hauser (26:54):

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Charlie Sandlan (26:55):

They're having fun. They're eating ice cream, but it was always Malcolm that just drove straight through all the bullshit and had the serious conversation. It was like what you're just saying there, just he was relentless like, "Let's stop talking about crap and let's just get real," especially that huge argument with Sam Cooke, which was just such a great, great conversation. The whole thing was fucking great, but he was relentless.

Victor Villar-Hauser (27:21):

He was, at that point, leaving the nation of Islam, right?-

Charlie Sandlan (27:27):

Yeah, breaking off with Elijah.

Victor Villar-Hauser (27:29):

Yep, was fully aware of how he was taking his life into his own hands,`. And the stakes were high

Charlie Sandlan (27:39):

When someone comes to you like that, and we're talking high-level stuff here-

Victor Villar-Hauser (27:43):

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Charlie Sandlan (27:44):

Do you ever go, "Fuck. I don't know if I'm going to be able to help him?" Maybe I'm completely fucking off here or just do you get self-conscious as a teacher?

Victor Villar-Hauser (27:55):

Yeah. I get nervous before I teach every class. It's like going on stage.

Charlie Sandlan (28:03):

Yeah.

Victor Villar-Hauser (28:03):

I never was like, "Hey, this is fun." I need to be focused, and I need to have my attention off myself and my attention fully on what I'm doing and my acting object, which is my client, and all my class. The more I'm able to do that, the more likely I am to be able to catch my own bullshit or my trying to work too hard or pretend I'm something that I'm not, or that I know something that I don't. I try to really stay as available to my own limitations. Do you know what I mean? So that I can be like, "Oh, shit. I don't know."

Victor Villar-Hauser (28:47):

I'll say that happily in a coaching session or in a class, working on a character, I'm like, "Oh, shit. I've never thought of that." In the times where I feel like where I can't help a person, is whether obsessing about result where they're so caught up in their anxiety around delivering the result that they are incapable of hearing and engaging in process, the conditions under which creativity can thrive. It's an interesting thing of where I've worked with actors who have careers and they feel so under pressure to deliver that the coaching sessions are very painful, or have been painful.

Charlie Sandlan (29:37):

When you say working, it's difficult to work with actors that are so obsessed with the results. What do you mean by that? What are they working for exactly? They show up with a script or they have an audition, how are they working in a way that's just like, "This is just not good?"

Victor Villar-Hauser (29:52):

If you're caught up in trying to be right, of course, it's just really painful versus balls out, caught in failure, looking like a complete nipple. You've got to. You've just got to be okay with fucking up. If you're going to be any good, you're going to fuck up 99 times for every gem that you find or if 999 times.

Charlie Sandlan (30:21):

I'd love to see what looking like a nipple actually looks like. I've never seen that before.

Victor Villar-Hauser (30:27):

Yeah. It's like you're going to turn around and just go, "Oh, that was shit," and everyone's going to go, "Yeah, that was. That was terrible."

Charlie Sandlan (30:36):

Yeah, but the fear of failure is what just stifles everything, everything-

Victor Villar-Hauser (30:40):

Everything-

Charlie Sandlan (30:41):

... creativity, your authenticity, your originality, forget it.

Victor Villar-Hauser (30:45):

Then too, on top of that, as you're doing this creative exploration of how you might feel about any given thing, to then go, and now it must feel organic. You earn organic, right?

Charlie Sandlan (31:03):

What do you mean by that? I like how that sounds, "You earn organic," but-

Victor Villar-Hauser (31:08):

Look, is it true? It was certainly was true for me as the actor, when I'd go to the table read of a play that I would be in, that first table read with the actors. If you're with a good group of actors and great material, and you are bouncing moments off each other, and yo were just really working and it's just like stuff is happening for the first time, because guess what? It's happening for the first time? Then you go into rehearsal, you're fighting three weeks to get back to that table read to make organic what was just this pure impulse, to make that feel like it's coming through you and it's coming off the listening. You've got to work to get that back because you already did it. To drop into this what feels wedded to you that feels like it's being drawn out of you through the listening, that feels like it's happening to you, it has to be earned. You have to sit and struggle with, "How does my character feel about everything?" And build those meanings so that we're going-

Charlie Sandlan (32:21):

Yeah. You got to plant all those mouse traps and all those triggers.

Victor Villar-Hauser (32:23):

That's right. It's like laying those mines, covering them with earth, and then forgetting where you buried them and you got to run out into the field, and then it's going to feel organic.

Charlie Sandlan (32:33):

Especially if you've got that foundation of, "I know how to get the attention off myself, put it on the other person or under what I'm doing and just listen, and let myself be done too."

Victor Villar-Hauser (32:47):

Then it's an interesting thing of I'll be working with an actor and I'll be like, "Yeah, that's from the point of view of the character that you're now doing, what the character would do in this circumstance. That feels true to the character." The actor will turn around and say, "Yeah, but it doesn't feel-

Charlie Sandlan (33:11):

It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel authentic.

Victor Villar-Hauser (33:12):

It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel authentic." I go, "I don't give a fuck. Now you can do you, and then we're not doing the story, or you can do what the character does and you can do the story."

Charlie Sandlan (33:24):

Well, it's interesting, because you said this a couple of times about doing the story, can you just talk about what that means and how an actor needs to consider that, because I think it's important? I don't think it really is something that actors consider.

Victor Villar-Hauser (33:39):

No, because the asshole tightening that happens when they get an email from their agent saying that they have an audition and I see it in my scenes or my character study scene study class. Oh, I fucking hate those words, but my class. I see that and I suggest material to actors, is that they dive into it, putting themselves into the character that they've been assigned, versus letting the story wash over them. Their anxiety, that they know that they're going to be sharing themselves in the work causes them to not be able to take a step back. The secret is, if there is one, which it's not a secret, is that you've got to deliver on story.

Victor Villar-Hauser (34:33):

As much as the Gestalt of the world right now is that you are enough, well, no one was fucking thinking of you when they were writing the fucking story, and guess what? The story is about something. It's out of a writer's mind and he or she are arguing a theme and you better know what the fuck that is, even if it's SWAT or whatever. Do you know what I mean? It's about something and at its best, all of the characters are speaking to that theme. You better know what that is and lend yourself to that, and if you don't, you might be what a lovely actor, what a lovely actor. Now remember you, why should I, because you didn't interpret the script in a satisfactory way that causes me to think that you're a good actor.

Charlie Sandlan (35:29):

There's a big difference. There's a big difference.

Victor Villar-Hauser (35:31):

Big difference, and you can do lovely, conversational reality of back and forth in your audition and you can be, "Wow, that kid's really cool, but why the fuck are they auditioning for this role, because that's not what I want? I don't want that kid, I want something else."

Charlie Sandlan (35:50):

Right.

Victor Villar-Hauser (35:50):

So they just dismiss you and go, "I hope I think of you, maybe, when a role that seems to suit your essence comes around."

Charlie Sandlan (36:01):

Yeah. Really, what I think you're talking about is actors that just bring everything down to their pedestrian life and think that all they need is conversational reality, like that's acting.

Victor Villar-Hauser (36:12):

That's right. That's acting.

Charlie Sandlan (36:15):

That's under-five. That's your two lines on Law&Order, maybe.

Victor Villar-Hauser (36:20):

Oh, yeah.

Charlie Sandlan (36:21):

But you'll never, ever, ever climb into better parts, meatier roles if that's all you do.

Victor Villar-Hauser (36:29):

No, you will. No, you'll get a series regular role if you happen to be good looking enough, or your personality or your essence-

Charlie Sandlan (36:37):

If you walk into a room and everybody wants to fuck you then, okay, well you probably have a shot.

Victor Villar-Hauser (36:40):

Yes, and also that there's something unique enough going on inside of you, and your perspective is unique enough that it's interesting that people want to lean in to know more about you. I go, "That's fine," and those people who have booked those roles and are miserable, that it is by definition, extraordinarily painful because you're on set, you're working, you're getting paid stupid amounts of money and you don't know why, because you're not doing anything. The reason you're there is, is nothing that you contributed to, you would just happen to be that way. So it becomes about, "Oh, fuck. I've got to learn my lines," and, "Oh, fuck this-

Charlie Sandlan (37:34):

"I've got a 4:30 AM call time and ... "

Victor Villar-Hauser (37:38):

Invariably, a lot of those actors behave badly because they're like, "My trailer is parked next to the honeypots. I'm like, what the fuck?" Because their attention is everywhere but their script, everywhere but how they could be better actors.

Charlie Sandlan (37:56):

Plus, they don't know how, because they don't have a technique.

Victor Villar-Hauser (37:57):

They don't know how.

Charlie Sandlan (37:58):

They don't know how.

Victor Villar-Hauser (37:59):

They don't, of course not. I wouldn't wish success on a person who isn't ready to really enjoy the gift of work. As bad as we might think the business is, there are a lot of people who are incredibly talented, who are writing incredible things, who are incredible directors, who are professional crews, who are visionaries in this business. The truth is, if you wish to work amongst those people, you better have the same values they do. Look, I do feel the responsibility of when I feel like I have a person across from me that is challenged in certain ways is to the best of my ability, and I guess this is your job too, we're in the business of awakening people-

Charlie Sandlan (39:02):

Yes, waking you up to the art form.

Victor Villar-Hauser (39:04):

That's right. So, fuck. That, to me, I love this job also, it's because I like people, man. I love people, endlessly curious about an actor's block, what the fuck they're scared about? Do you know what I mean? Look, in my life, I'm a shit show. But as a teacher, when my attention is on them, I like, I'm really into, "Wow, what is that?" Because underneath it, often in those blocks, is the gold, is the thing that is that if they were to attack it, if they were to sit with that, if they were to look at that, if they were to peel that back, there is this extraordinary wealth of, I don't know. I just I'm so into that. I'm into the art form and I'm into the actor. They grant themselves permission.

Charlie Sandlan (39:54):

Permission to do what?

Victor Villar-Hauser (39:55):

Engage in the imaginary world to make it true for themselves, to buy into the circumstance, to buy into that, "This person is that person that I've said it is in front of me." Do you know what I mean, and to believe it, hook, line and sinker, to believe it, and to be operating from the concerns and the issues of the character. To do that is a permissive state, and each actor is a little different and to go, "Okay, just because you accessed your feelings doesn't mean how are we going to get the access into your imagination, or even access to permissive states in the body," how some actors have really opening their bodies or vocally, very rare is it that somebody comes to this work open.

Charlie Sandlan (40:50):

No, no. Listen, you got to train. You've got to work on that, and most people that want to be actors or young actors starting out, I don't think they really realize that the vast majority of people that are working at a high level, the series regulars, the guest spots, the recurring roles, the major leads in theater across this country, have trained. They're coming out of MFA programs. They're coming out of top BFA programs. They're coming out of conservatories, like mine. They don't really understand how important training is; they just don't.

Victor Villar-Hauser (41:25):

No. That's who you're competing against.

Charlie Sandlan (41:27):

That's right.

Victor Villar-Hauser (41:28):

For the young actors, they've got to understand that.

Charlie Sandlan (41:31):

Right.

Victor Villar-Hauser (41:31):

They have to understand that, because otherwise, even if you do get a break, even if you do a little bit of work, do you know how much you have to work as an actor to sustain a life?

Charlie Sandlan (41:46):

Oh fuck, man.

Victor Villar-Hauser (41:48):

And for how many years, because you're hoping to take this into your whole adulthood, into retirement, right?-

Charlie Sandlan (41:54):

Into your 50s, into your 60s, into your 70s.

Victor Villar-Hauser (41:56):

That's right. You having five credits isn't going to feed you your whole life. You're going to be the actor who did five things and so you're competing against actors who are in it for their lives, who have trained with a level of seriousness because that's what they want. They will go from show to theater to film, and so you better take it seriously, I think.

Charlie Sandlan (42:26):

I agree. Well, you're working with a lot of successful actors. You're working with a lot of actors that are one, two, three on the call sheet. Is there anything that binds them all together? Because when you reach that level, and that's what everybody hopes for "God, I just want to be a regular on something." Is there something to bind them all together, a quality?

Victor Villar-Hauser (42:49):

Curiosity. How curious are you about your object, the person that you love? Everyone understands that love is curiosity. I'm endlessly curious about what are you thinking? How do you feel? What do you do when I'm not here? That expression of love is that curiosity, and actors that I work with, who are consistently just going incredibly, just like, "Well, wow. You got another movie. You've got another TV show." It's that they're completely engaged in this curiosity. Even actors who are auditioning their asses off and not booking, they're treating their auditions like a booking.

Victor Villar-Hauser (43:34):

I've just worked with an actor right now and it's his fourth callback for a movie. This guy keeps showing up with these fun ideas and stuff and it just won't leave the conversation. We're just going like, "Well, what movie? This movie?" Well, he's getting notes and I think the director is trying to lose him and he's refusing to go down and because we just go, "Oh, that note. Well, let's look at this movie and let's look at that movie and we'll come back with this ... " and it's this curiosity, curiosity. "Hey, how do I feel about when I walk in through this door?"

Charlie Sandlan (44:09):

This is what adds color. It adds context. It adds vividness. These are the things that separate the really good actors from the ones that are just okay. I guess my question is why, why do you want a career that's just okay? Why don't you just want to be okay?

Victor Villar-Hauser (44:28):

Yes, and yes. That's a very good question.

Charlie Sandlan (44:34):

This is what I pose to my students, "Really, you're okay with that, just phoning shit in?" I tell them all the time, "Be curious, be fascinated, like a healthy child. You need a sense of wonder about everything. You got to be a cannibal when you're looking at that script and just devour it, and these ideas have to go off. Just your imagination has got to be on fire."

Victor Villar-Hauser (44:59):

Look, other than your friends and family and your life away from the work know we have this incredible opportunity as actors, to be in service, alleviating people's pain or aloneness. We get to forget ourselves and our shitty, mundane fucking bullshit. We get to engage in this creative life. What a privilege. You have to be turned on, and people want to be around people who are turned on, not people who want to be right, but people that are turned on. So you've got to be turned on, and if you're not turned on, this is not the right business for you, man. It's not. It's so difficult. If you throw yourself out there and you work like a motherfucker, you can work, but the dirty secret is you got to fucking work-

Charlie Sandlan (45:55):

You got to work and you got to know how to work.

Victor Villar-Hauser (45:58):

Don't fucking stop training, motherfuckers.

Charlie Sandlan (45:59):

Yeah. Fuck, man.

Victor Villar-Hauser (46:01):

Do not stop training. Coming out of a two-year program, it's the beginning.

Charlie Sandlan (46:07):

That's right.

Victor Villar-Hauser (46:07):

You've got to put all of that work together. You've got to-

Charlie Sandlan (46:10):

I tell my students that, "You know what I do for you? I build a house. It's not furnished, so I'm going to give you the frame of the house, and then you got to go out there and you've got to furnish that motherfucker." You've got to hang the drapes. You got to put in the couch. You got to hang the flat screen. That's what you got to do for the next 50 years of your life."

Victor Villar-Hauser (46:31):

That's right.

Charlie Sandlan (46:32):

Furnish the house.

Victor Villar-Hauser (46:33):

That's it. Yep. Stay in shape.

Charlie Sandlan (46:37):

Yeah.

Victor Villar-Hauser (46:37):

Don't let that stuff atrophy, man.

Charlie Sandlan (46:40):

Right. Right. What's the trick to auditioning well, do you think? It is a separate beast as opposed to just approaching an actual part. I think the audition is its own thing because you can be a good actor, and not audition well.

Victor Villar-Hauser (46:57):

You can be. Yeah, that is absolutely true. How open are you to being in a state of rehearsal? Meaning that when you're in rehearsal, for me, at least as the actor, I was like, "Wow." The fact that I could get through an opening night was due to just the dogged work that I'd done. I was barely present. Auditioning is like that. It's like when you're in a room or if you're in a producer session, or even if you're on Zoom and doing producer sessions, sometimes your availability to yourself is just limited and you're not dropped into the rehearsal, the play, playing-

Charlie Sandlan (47:47):

So you're saying in the room is to approach it like a rehearsal? Throw me anything, give me a note, I can do it any way you want. I've got five different ways of doing this.

Victor Villar-Hauser (47:55):

Also, Michael Shannon talks about always leaving something for the camera. I think that and always wanting to be in a state of discovery, meaning that when we're working on an audition and we're in the state of rehearsal, which is so actor friendly, rehearsal is where you can fail. Rehearsal is where you can discover things. Necessarily, you have to discover things. You're open. If you can bring that to every time you act, the communication of your excitement is the thing that books you the job.

Charlie Sandlan (48:35):

Listen, you just worked with what, 11 of my students who went through two years and they're heading out into the business, now starting a career.

Victor Villar-Hauser (48:43):

Yeah.

Charlie Sandlan (48:44):

There are a lot of people listening to this that are on their own path and they're entering the business. What would you want them to think about and consider as they try to carve something out for themselves?

Victor Villar-Hauser (48:55):

Surround yourself with people who think more clearly, are better artists than you. Be hungry to be in good company. That will mean that you will have to go meet that, be around people who are striving to be the best that they can be, and that will bring you up. Don't think about the work as homework. Think about it as opportunity to engage in the thing that you have worked so hard to be, which is a storyteller. If you accept the mantle of storyteller and don't forget, you're a fucking actor.

Victor Villar-Hauser (49:39):

I tell my students sometimes, I'm like, "I wish I could put monks' habits on you and you could sit in an itchy fucking robe all day, every day and that's all you wore because that is what you are. You can't be in a cafe or in a fucking bar, in a restaurant or walking on the street, or on a bus or fucking anywhere without being engaged and looking at human behavior and turning it into information that you will use as the actor. You cannot put the robe aside. That is it. That's what you are, and the second you start to forget that you are an artist and an actor is the second that you are unconsciously or consciously walking away from business.

Victor Villar-Hauser (50:23):

(singing).

Charlie Sandlan (50:26):

Well, my fellow daydreamers thank you for sticking around and keeping that phone in your pocket. Please go to https://www.victorvillarhauser.com If you are interested in getting into Victor's classroom or working with him privately, you can subscribe and follow this show wherever you get your podcasts. Spread the word, tell your friends about this great fucking podcast. You can leave a review on iTunes, if you've got a few seconds, I'd really appreciate that. You can go to https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com Go to the contact page, hit that red button and just leave me a voicemail. Ask me a question. Leave me a comment. If you want to get into my New York City classroom, go to https://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com Follow me on Instagram @creatingbehavior, @maggieflaniganstudio. Lawrence Trailer, thank you for the music, my man. You guys, stay curious, play full out with yourself and don't ever settle your second best. My name is Charlie Sandlan. Peace.