We hear it all the time: Don’t do your best audition in the car. Do your best in the room and leave it on the floor. Leave. Forget about it. Move on. In Self-Management for Actors I call it “rebagging groceries,” because the image of a grocery bagger imagining all the different ways he could’ve bagged those items for each customer that came through the line that day at work is just ridiculous, and I hoped that having a ridiculous image could help actors snap out of that habit of reworking an audition after it happened.

But we know actors do this. They can’t help it. (Well, those of you who have found really great ways to keep from reworking auditions after you leave the room, I’d love to hear your specific tactics for this, to share with others who may need other methods to try. More on that below.) The audition is over, the chance to show what you can do has passed, and you’re driving away. You keep running the lines. You try a different inflection. You change up your pacing. You may even re-do the chitchat so — in this version — you get the joke sooner and have a clever comeback that leaves everyone talking about how charming you are.

Stop that.

I know. Easier said than done.

And here’s how I was recently reminded of exactly how much easier said than done that whole “leave it on the floor” thing is.

I had an audition.

Well, that’s not the right word for it, but I guess technically that is what I had: an audition.

Let me back up.

Way back in 1986, I became a hand model. I had always been told that I had lovely hands, great skin, healthy nails, yada yada yada. So in 1986, when my mother saw a notice in the paper for “Revlon’s Award-Winning Hands,” she took some photos of my hands and we sent ’em off for the contest. And I placed. Small cash prize and some really cool Revlon products were my reward for very amateur-level photographs of my hands. I was hooked. The next time I went in for new headshots, I asked the photographer to take a few shots of my hands. He obliged. When I dropped off the proofs at my agent’s office, she was intrigued and said — while she didn’t get a ton of casting notices for hands, she had seen a few, so — she’d pitch me for any hand jobs that came across her desk.

I spent the next decade or so busily working as a hand model in Atlanta. It was a ton of fun. Tedious but quick work of sitting still, resisting cramps and twitches, posing in strange positions to get the product featured best, and getting paid very, very well for it. Bonus: If I had a job scheduled the next day, well I simply couldn’t be bothered to do the dishes! I had to paint my nails and put my hands in gloves after coating my skin in Vaseline. Such bizarre rituals, but I engaged in ’em all. And I have great, bizarre stories of auditions that included five of us, lined up, each holding a chicken leg, as execs walked by and scrutinized our hands and the way they “worked” with the product. Or the time when I was paid overtime for an audition because after an hour of opening and re-opening a rigged Diet Coke can in front of a conference table full of suits, they still hadn’t seen enough. “Open it sexier. More seductively. Slower. Now with a little kick.” Huh? Yeah. This was a part of my life ’til I pretty much gave up all actor, voiceover, and hand modeling-related work a decade ago.

Until last week.

But even before that: One of my agent friends and I were out for cocktails a few months back and she got on me about how awesome my hands are and how she’d seen a breakdown for hands in a huge commercial campaign and how that could be me and she and I could make money together on something super easy for me to do, yada yada yada. I laughed. We ordered another round. That was the end of it.

Then she started forwarding me casting notices for hands, saying things like, “This could’ve been our booking, Bonnie!” I have to admit, even though I haven’t been an actor for a decade, it sure did feel nice having an agent taking an interest in me and my bookability! I do remember how rare and awesome that can be, in an agent relationship.

Finally — and more recently — we were out together for another happy hour and she had made me promise to bring my old book. Problem is, I had disassembled my old hand modeling book, cut up all of the comp cards and used the blank side for scrap paper (this shows you how long ago I was in the game, as my comp cards were one-sided black-and-white, printed up in 1997 and still working just fine for me up through 2000), and had a very crudely put together book of some of my best work (certainly not all of it) and it was really, at this point, just a part of a scrapbook of photos from “my former life.”

Didn’t matter. She picked her favorite photos, told me to get ’em scanned and emailed over to her office, and she’d have my profiles up on Actors Access and LA Casting within a day or two.

“Well, hell,” I figured. “Let’s try it.”

And try it we did. Within days of my profiles going live, I had my first audition. I got the call, switched up a meeting I had scheduled for the same time as the audition window, pulled my sad old book together, and drove down to meet the ad reps and clients.

Noise is screaming through my head as I drive east from the beach: “Who do you think you are, showing up for this casting with an outdated book, old photos, no recent bookings, and a scratch on your forearm from your damn cat? Everyone’s going to know one another. Who are you? You don’t even remember your glove size! Non-pro! Wannabe! Go home!”

I start laughing at myself and say, “Wow, I don’t miss this!” And then I find the location, get parked, feed the meter, and head on in. I sign in, turn around, and there’s a friend from long ago — a guy I helped get into hand modeling around the time I stopped pursuing it. We have a lot of catching up to do!

After I fill out my info sheet, I’m called in and told to take my rings off. “Duh. Idiot. You know better than to show up wearing jewelry.” I laugh nervously and tell them I’m back at it after a hiatus. “Stupid! Don’t lead off with an apology! Augh!”

“Okay, shake it off. Shake the hands out (to reduce appearance of veins). Do your job. Audition.”

I hold the product as they instruct. They take several photos. I don’t change up my pose between each shot. I’ve forgotten that they probably would like that. Oops. I put the product down when instructed, let them take a few more photos of my hands, and then I notice that the cat scratch is showing, because my sleeve is pushed up higher than I had intended to have it pushed.

“Oh well,” I think. “Whatever. First audition back. Just say thanks and go.”

So I do, but they’re still looking at my book. “This is really great work,” one says to the other. “Yes! Excellent.” “Do you have a photo we can keep?” Of course I don’t. My hand cards are scrap paper. These are my originals. “I have each of those shots on my iPhone, though, if you want me to email any of them to you,” I say, hoping the “I’m so green about doing business it’s cool” thing will be what they remember (not the “I’m coming off as green, and not in the environmental way” thing). No, they don’t need an email, but one does ask my glove size, which of course, I don’t remember. Gotta go get fitted for gloves or find my old specs and get that info burned back into my brain. Eesh.

Okay, so the point of this big-ass long story about something as strange and potentially boring as hand modeling is this: As I drove to my next meeting, I caught myself — while stopped at a redlight — actually changing the shape of my right hand, slightly, as if I were choosing new poses with the product.

I laughed so hard I nearly cried. This image was so ridiculous. Here I am, on my way to a meeting I’ve been excited about for weeks, and instead of thinking about what’s going on in that part of my world, I’m physically re-doing my “audition” in the car. I’m reshaping my hand and choosing different angles for my fingers, wondering if one of these poses could’ve made a difference. See, I had already taught myself to shut my brain up when it worried about things like the chitchat or the tools or other things I could’ve certainly controlled but didn’t, so let ’em go, rather than stewing in how I sooo should’ve known better about some of the “newbie mistakes” I made at the audition. But my own hand was still working on the audition.

My own hand was having a do-over.

Fair enough. It’s easier said than done, to put this stuff aside and move on. I’ll grant y’all that and never make it seem like it’s easy, especially not when you’re back at it after a break. And it may even be wired into a place other than your brain!

So, those of you who have found your own coping mechanisms, your own brilliant ways of shaking off the desire (or the compulsion) to rework your auditions after leaving the room, let’s hear from you! What tips might you have to share with fellow actors (er, or hand models) about what it takes to really leave that grocery bagging to the baggers?

And meanwhile, for those who ever need a handy (Get it? Hand-y?) reminder about how very silly it is to engage in a do-over once you’ve left the room, visualize my hand redoing positions in the car, like I’m practicing chords on a guitar I never owned. It’s silly. So, let’s minimize the amount of time we spend engaged in the silly, where our careers are concerned. Learn better strategies for next time, sure. And then move on from the do-over!

Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!

Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/001207.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.