"Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor's art infinite." – Ellen Terry

Non-actors might be sur­prised to learn that even estab­lished “name” actors need to audition.

Below is Hugh Lau­rie audi­tion­ing for the lead on “House MD.” He’s doing what’s called a “read­ing,” i.e., read­ing a short scene, i.e., “sides” (that last under two min­utes, if that), prob­a­bly taken from a script that’s either been writ­ten by the writ­ers or is under development.

Two Min­utes

Because the read is so short, this may be Laurie’s first time audi­tion­ing for the role. This is how always is when you’re first called into an audi­tion, and this is lit­er­ally all the time you get.

The goal of any audi­tion is not really to book the role. The goal is to audi­tion well enough to get a call­back that can lead to book­ing a job — and two min­utes, at most, is all you get to do that.

Because cast­ing direc­tors have so many actors to see and a such a short time to see every­one, first time audi­tions tend to be fast and furi­ous: you’re in and out in under two min­utes, and those two min­utes, you will either open the door to an even­tual pos­si­ble book­ing or that door will be slammed for­ever in your face. Two minutes.

No pres­sure.

Watch how Hugh Lau­rie han­dles the pres­sure — by being exquis­itely prepared:

When I first saw this, I thought “Holy cow!!! This is great!!!”

I’m almost obsessed now with audi­tion tech­nique, and to see how a pro­fes­sional does it is, for me at least, extremely help­ful: this not only sets the bar but forms the basis for visu­al­iz­ing myself doing that well.

If I can see myself doing some­thing, I’m almost always OK. If I can’t quite see myself doing some­thing (not out of lack of moti­va­tion but out of just not being able to find the best path), then I flail about, using a lot of energy to move side­ways rather than forward.

Being a bit lost, at times, is nor­mal and even good for you, but sooner or later, you gotta find your foot­ing and get on the path. See­ing some­one do what I want to do makes it seem, to me, more pos­si­ble, and then I can start to find my way.

A cou­ple of things to notice about Lau­rie. He dressed and appeared like the char­ac­ter (Dr. Gre­gory House). He wasn’t in full cos­tume, but he indi­cated Dr. House by being unshaven, the dark, win­kled shirt — in fact, the scene starts with Dr. House apol­o­giz­ing for his appear­ance. That’s one crit­i­cal way Hugh Lau­rie prepared.

Sec­ond, while he didn’t have the lines mem­o­rized, you can see that he’s hold­ing the script in his hand, and he’s def­i­nitely very famil­iar with it. You can see the actor’s art and craft play­ing out right before your eyes: every­thing he says his writ­ten down for me; he knows what the reader is going to say and what he’s going say in response. Yet — it all looks nat­ural and spontaneous.

He demon­strates great sight read­ing skills, i.e., when the reader talks to him, most of Laurie’s atten­tion is on the reader. When he talks, 90% of the time, he’s look­ing at the reader, not at the script that in his lap. He looks down more to remind him­self of the upcom­ing exact words so he doesn’t have to fum­ble for them — usu­ally in an audi­tion, espe­cially for com­edy, the actor has to be word per­fect or the com­edy will not work.

Lau­rie obvi­ously knows the “sides” and most likely had them a few days before the audi­tion given that Dr. House is the lead role. With smaller roles, some­times you don’t get the sides until you arrive at the audition.

In short, this is what a pro­fes­sional work­ing actor will do in a pro­fes­sional audi­tion. For most work­ing actors, audi­tion­ing well (and often) is the job …

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