As a voice actor, you may sometimes find yourself carrying the weight of rejection as a necessary price of admission. This burden results from unreturned phone calls, auditions you didn’t book, agents who’ve said no or a teacher who says, “You’re really improving but there’s still work to do.” It’s exacerbated by observing other actors booking gigs while you’re waiting to catch a break, or watching a great TV spot whiz by, only to recall that you auditioned for it?! It can be a difficult pill to swallow. After all, you too have bills to pay, family obligations, and a host of unexpected “stuff” coming at you at the speed of life. At a certain point, without the encouragement or affirmation of an actual booking, all this crap gets lumped into one bad feeling we tend to call rejection. Marilyn Monroe summed it up this way: “Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.”
The bizarre aspect of the rejection phenomenon is that no one is actually being rejected in the process of auditioning. Casting is a process of selection, not rejection. To illuminate the point, imagine that you are attending the Oscars and are given the opportunity to choose an
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