10,000 Auditions
An homage to Malcolm Gladwell, this recurring blog segment highlights some of my best (read: most horrific) audition experiences. Because, hey, if you wanna get good at auditioning, you have to spend 10,000 hours doing it. That’s science.
Today’s installment: Gia v. Angelina
Growing up as a very geeky, coke bottle glasses wearing, nail biting, acne prone child, I never saw myself as pretty. Even today I look back at photos of me as a teenager and think, “Jesus, my legs were awesome” while covering up my face and hair with my thumb. My mom is the inverse of a girly girl and pleaded with her sisters to help me be more “stylish,” as she put it. What that amounted to was a lot of Mary Kay lipstick and badly feathered hair.
That’s all changed (or so I’m told… I still prefer to live in the world of smarty pants girl whose only friends exist in the novels she reads). Now in order to make my living, I have to look good–not just stylish–and occasionally I see photos of myself and think, “Wow! I may actually be pretty!”
My audition today, however, confirmed that no matter how much benzoyl peroxide I put on my face, and no matter how much money I spend on my hair every six weeks, and no matter if I do still have the legs of a 15-year-old, I will never be as beautiful as Angelia Jolie.
It’s right there in the character description: “ATTRACTIVE, like Angelina Jolie, but not that gorgeous.” Because her beauty might actually hurt someone.
I imagined a team of creatives, sitting in their overlit casting room filled with carts of catered food. Small men, wearing hipster glasses and patchy beards, and butch women in sensible sneakers. I imagined them one-upping each other with aphorisms degrading the scores of women who would soon pass through their doorway…
You’re so much less gorgeous than Angelina Jolie, you only make money modeling for St. John’s Wort ads in natural health magazines.
You’re so much less gorgeous than Angelina Jolie, kids from third world countries pay you not to come there for community service work.
You’re so much less gorgeous than Angelia Jolie, you named your pit bull Brad and snuggle him at night because you know you will always be alone.
You’re so much less gorgeous than Angelia Jolie, you’re the before picture in an ad for lower lip enhancement.
You’re so much less gorgeous than Angelina Jolie, you can only afford to wear Channel No. 5–a knockoff you bought at Big Lots.
You’re so much less gorgeous than Angelina Jolie, your Girl, Interrupted moment came when your health insurance refused to pay for your dental cleaning and you threatened to stab yourself in the neck with a pen.
You’re so much less gorgeous than Angelina Jolie, your latest “movie” is called SUGAR and you play a CIA agent on the run after a defector accuses you of being a Russian spy… then fucks you in various locations around the Pentagon.
You’re so much less gorgeous than Angelina Jolie, your dad still won’t talk to you and says you have “mental problems”… and that you owe him $2000.
