As an actor, I’m so fucked up when it comes to guessing someone’s age. Some teens look old, some adults look like children (when I found out how old the cast members from Grease were, well, it made sense). I’m so confused and more confused when I turn this question back to myself: “How old do I look?” I truly have no idea but with my adult acne that just emerged I probably can play teens for a few more years.
I audition a lot to play 16-17 year olds so of course I think back to what I was like at those ages. In short, I was annoying as hell by my need to be sooo visibly different than everyone: I would get up at 5:30am every day so I had enough time to straighten my hair, applying a thick black line of cat eye style eyeliner, spray Viva La Juicy, wear my knee socks to school, check my Tumblr, and go hang out in my drama teacher’s room before school. At the expense of wanting to be so different I only had a few friends and we all mainly knew each other from choir and theatre. My favorite thing would be to drive with my friend Roby or Emily to this coffee shop 45 minutes away in another town that did an open mic night on Fridays and meet other “artsy” teens who maybe knew who the Arctic Monkeys are.
These teen roles I’m playing are for mostly “edgy teens who hang out at the skatepark” or “moody teens who convince the protagonist to do something crazy”, which was definitely not me. I dressed “edgy and indie” but I was a big rule follower in high school and was doing anything to get into college but I definitely didn’t skate (what if I broke a bone and couldn’t be in the spring musical?) or do anything toooo out of line (needed those letters of recommendation). My senior year I was president of our chapter of International Thespian Society and Young Democrats, then I also did an Independent Study course for French 3, AND interned for a US Senate Campaign. No type casting here.
Playing as the kids these days is a nice stretch for my imagination. I know that broadly they love TikTok and sipping vape juice out of their USB drives. Do they even know how to smoke weed out of an apple or reseal a water bottle full of Vodka? The New York teenagers I’ve seen are way out of norm for most of American teens so the fodder is much more specific to the palate here. NYC teenagers are way cooler than me: most of them already have the freedom I craved when I was their age.
I remember before graduating college a casting director told us that if we got headshots then, we should wait a year post-grad to update them. He said our innocent eyes to the industry and post-graduate life in New York would be turned away and we would all look a bit more jaded and calloused. Not totally wrong, but I think about that a lot when auditioning specifically to play younger: you must have the hope to keep going that you had back then that led you here (for my Chekhov girlies: Y’all better BELIEVE you’re going to Moscow!).
When I was 17 I wanted so bad to be my age now. And now I get to be 17 again sometimes. That’s showbiz!