Most of this Career is "No" (Recap: July)

Most of this career is no.

You will submit for more roles than you audition for.

You will audition for more roles than you book.

You will send your film to more festivals than will program it.

That is not negativity. That is the reality.

Yeses happen. Sometimes they are enormous and change the direction of a career. Sometimes they are smaller: a callback, a good meeting, positive feedback, an invitation to submit again, somebody remembering your work several months later.

Those Yeses matter.

But they will never outnumber the Noes. Sorry.

And if every rejection gets treated as new information about your talent, value or right to be here, this career will become quite impossible to enjoy.

There are only so many spots.

When the Venice Film Festival announced its 2026 lineup in July, organizers said they had received a record 4,500 entries. 20 were selected for the main competition.

That does not mean thousands of filmmakers made bad movies. It means the programmers were constructing one particular festival lineup. They were considering the work, but also premiere requirements, running times, countries, subject matter, distributors, scheduling and how every film fit beside the others.

Casting works much the same way.

It is tempting to imagine that everyone auditions, the best actor wins and everyone else receives a clear indication that they need to improve.

That would definitely make the process easier to understand.

Instead, you may be excellent and not look believable as the already-cast actor’s sibling.

You may be exactly what casting requested before a director changes direction.

You may be the casting director’s choice and not the network’s choice.

The role may be rewritten, shortened, offered to someone with a larger name or quietly removed from the project.

Or you may also give an audition that is not very good.

That happens.

But one bad audition is one bad audition. It is not an official review of your entire career.

After twenty years of working in casting, I can tell you one thing: it is 99.99% not personal! Cast your own project (a short, a play, anything) and you'll see for yourself. Talented actors will walk into the room and some may even WOW you. At the end of the day, you can only cast one person per role. You will have to be the one to give another actor that dreaded No. And it won't be personal.

Sometimes there is less work to get.

July also brought another production report confirming what many actors and filmmakers have been feeling.

Greater Los Angeles recorded 4,711 on-location shoot days during the second quarter of 2026, down 12.7% from the same period last year. Television production was down 27.7%, features were down 19.9% and commercials were down 21.5%. (MyNewsLA.com)

Los Angeles is not the entire entertainment industry, and shoot days do not directly equal auditions. But when fewer projects are filming, there are fewer jobs to distribute among a lot of people.

Actors tend to turn that into something personal very quickly:

Auditions are slow, so the agent must have given up.

There was no callback, so casting must have hated the tape.

Nothing has booked recently, so it must be time for new headshots, a new reel, a new manager, another class and possibly a different face.

Maybe something does need attention.

But sometimes work is slow because work is slow.

Most rejection in this business arrives without useful feedback.

A healthy mindset does not require pretending that everything is fine. It means taking a moment to check whether the explanation in your head is based on actual information or just the fact that rejection feels bad.

Patience is a virtue...Perspective is more powerful

Lisa Kudrow was fired from Frasier. David Harewood only had £80 in the bank. Jenna Ortega was considering quitting. And before Obsession, Curry Barker and Cooper Tomlinson spent more than a year trying to find distribution for their $800 film Milk & Serial before releasing it free on YouTube. By the end of July, Obsession had become the highest-grossing film with a budget under $1 million.

These stories can make persistence look like a coin slot machine: put in enough rejection, wait long enough, and eventually the universe drops out a massive success.

That is not how this works.

Plenty of talented actors nearly give up and later become famous.

Plenty of talented actors keep going and never become famous.

There are only so many roles on a globally successful sitcom. Only so many studio leads. Only so many films that become cultural phenomena.

Not everyone who works hard will become Curry Barker, Lisa Kudrow, Colman Domingo or Jenna Ortega.

That does not mean persistence is pointless.

It means persistence cannot only be justified by the possibility that enormous success is waiting right around the corner.

Because what happens if it isn’t?

Does a twenty-year acting career only become worthwhile if year twenty-one brings a series regular?

Does a film only matter if a big distributor buys it?

Does a performance only count when a large enough audience sees it?

Does the entire experience become a failure if fame never arrives?

That definition of success puts nearly every meaningful part of a creative career in the hands of other people.

So what counts as success?

Success may mean supporting yourself entirely through acting.

It may mean creating a mixed-income life that allows you to keep performing without needing every audition to pay the rent.

It may mean working regularly without becoming widely known.

It may mean making a film with people you trust and completing something you are proud to put your name on.

It may mean becoming a better actor than you were last year.

It may mean building a creative community, getting stronger at handling rejection or no longer losing an entire week every time a job goes to somebody else.

It may mean deciding that acting is an important part of your life without demanding that it become the only important part.

Money, recognition and larger opportunities still matter.

This is not about pretending that a scene performed in the living room is exactly the same as booking a major film. It is not about acting as though artists should be grateful for exposure while everyone else gets paid.

External success can provide income, access, better collaborators, larger audiences and the freedom to keep creating.

It simply cannot be the only measure of success.

Give yourself more yeses.

The industry will continue handing out noes.

You do not have to see a breakdown and decide they probably want someone more established.

You do not have to assume the representative will not respond before sending the email.

You do not have to remove the interesting choice from your audition because someone might think it is too much.

You do not have to wait for a festival acceptance before treating yourself like a filmmaker.

Giving yourself a yes does not guarantee that anyone else will agree.

It means allowing yourself to participate before the outcome is known.

Yes, submit.

Yes, ask.

Yes, try the choice.

Yes, make the scene.

Yes, take the class because the work interests you.

Yes, rest without turning the break into a secret retirement.

Yes, let the goal change.

Yes, build a life that feels good between auditions instead of treating everything outside acting as an interruption.

These yeses do not replace the search for the booking...they empower it.

They work side by side.

They make it possible to find some happiness before the success arrives...even if it never arrives in the form you once imagined.

Use the no.

Rejection can also be fuel.

Sometimes it identifies a weakness worth addressing.

Sometimes it reveals that a project was being submitted to the wrong places.

Sometimes it makes the next step clearer.

Sometimes it offers no useful information whatsoever.

Sometimes it pushes you to try, try, try again.

Using rejection as fuel does not require building an entire career around proving somebody wrong. That still leaves the person who rejected you in charge.

The fuel is not revenge.

It is refusing to let the last no automatically make the next decision.

Focus of the Month: One no. One yes.

The focus this month, as you can imagine, is about rejection.

At the end of each week, write down:

One no: What happened, stated only as a fact.

The story: What did you make that no mean about you?

One yes: Choose one next step that does not require anyone else’s permission.

Submit. Ask. Practice. Rest. Adjust. Create.

The goal is not to force a result.

It is about shifting your mindset around that rejection and focusing on empowering yourself despite external factors.

#stayfocused