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Acting's easy! What's everyone's problem?

Sun., Jan. 28, 2007 8:29 PM PST by Leslie Gornstein

I'm not an actor, and in 11 years of living in Los Angeles, I have appeared in three films without trying AT ALL. Why are people always whining about how hard it is to get into movies?
—Ned, West Hollywood, California

The B!tch Replies: Hey, that's great. Good for you, sweetheart. I look forward to your third film. I hear it's an exciting dramatic turn in Sexy Urban Legends II: Dude, Watch Out, That Stripper Has a Hook on Her Hand.

Many, many actors love to spread stories about their effortless forays onto the big screen: that Cameron Diaz got the first movie role for which she ever auditioned, that Shannyn Sossamon was discovered deejaying at a birthday party for Gwyneth Paltrow, that Edward Furlong got his part in Terminator 2 after James Cameron spotted the youth standing around in a ruffianlike way.

But the truth is, anyone who says they just slid onto the big screen has probably slid into B movies—straight-to-video gashfests that have nothing to do with Spielberg or Scorsese. Either that or their career is on borrowed time. When was the last time you heard something interesting from Sossamon?

Exactly.

Remember: Hilary Swank lived in a car with her mom during her early days in Hollywood. Charlize Theron was so poor for a while she was living in a cheap hotel called the Farmer's Daughter and getting into shouting matches with bankers over what she had in her account. Renée Zellweger's glamorous route to filmdom included commercials for the American Beef Export Industry. When she finally got her audition to play admiring secretary to Tom Cruise's superagent in Jerry Maguire, Zellweger was so poor she didn't have the quarters to dry her clothes at the laundromat.

"I hauled the wet clothes home and had to hang them in my living room," she once recalled to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Even Diaz, who did, in fact, get the first role for which she auditioned—the female lead in Jim Carrey's The Mask—had to first jump through quite a few hoops. Guess how many callbacks she had to attend. All right, I'll tell you...12.

And if Jennifer Lopez had a callous for every rejection she suffered before landing her seminal role as the late Selena Perez, she'd look like Edward James Olmos. Even her first significant TV gig, as a Fly Girl on In Living Color, came after two failed auditions.

"You run into a lot of rejection in this business," she once said.

But not you, Ned. And watch out! That stripper has a hook on her hand!