I just saw an interesting interview with Greta Gerwig,the Oscar nominated director for the movie Lady Bird. She said she was rejected from all acting and writing programs both as an undergrad and grad school. She actually got certified as an aerobics instructor as part of her back up plan. Yet now she has been nominated for an Oscar. Goes to show, don’t ever give up on your dreams.
There are plenty of examples of other famous failures. For example, Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. And Walt Disney was told he had no imagination. Ha! What famous failures do you know from the theater world? Hearing how they overcame those rejections and seeing their eventual success stories is great inspiration for our up and coming actors.
Kyle Dean Massey who went on to great success including the lead in Pippin was rejected from all his college MT auditions ironically with “Corner of the Sky” as his audition song. Guess he got the last laugh!
I know Christian Borle said even though he did go to Carnegie Mellon, he feels they would never take him now, like in terms of I guess saying its so much more competitive then when he was applying to schools, etc. and if a younger him was auditioning today he wouldn’t get in. Plus his first gig was nothing great, after he moved to NYC he worked as an elf in Macy’s Christmas shop lol.
David Sedaris wrote a very famous essay that was turned into a one-man play by Joe Montello about being an elf at Macy’s: The Santaland Diaries. It’s done every year at the Alley in Houston, and it’s side-splittingly funny.