So You Want To Be An Actor is a guide for young readers that explores the real craft behind acting, showing how performers build characters, handle auditions, survive rejection, and turn imagination into truthful performance. Why did you feel it was important not to romanticize the profession?

Because children know when a book is performing for them instead of speaking to them, and the moment they sense it, they stop trusting you. My whole approach to this series is to meet a child eye to eye, and you cannot do that while hiding the hard parts of a calling behind a curtain of sparkle.

Acting in particular is romanticized to the point of distortion. Kids see red carpets and assume that is the job. The job is auditioning, hearing no, preparing fully again, hearing no again, and walking into the next room anyway. If a young reader is drawn to this work, they deserve to know that rejection is a permanent feature of the profession — not a phase to push through.

I want to be clear that this honesty is not meant to discourage. Quite the opposite. Telling a child the unvarnished truth about a calling is the highest form of respect I can offer them. It says: I think you can handle this, and I think you deserve to choose with your eyes open. The children this book is for are not fragile. They are exploring ideas that at some point will become important decisions. And a decision made on the basis of the real thing is sturdier than a decision made on the basis of the polished version. When a child learns about the auditions, the rejections, the years of training, the financial uncertainty — and still leans forward, still wants in — that is one of the most important pieces of information a young person can have about themselves. It tells them the pull is coming from somewhere real. That is the seed of a vocation, not a daydream.

I also believe the wonder of acting becomes more powerful, not less, when you set it next to the work. The standing ovation matters more when you understand what it costs.

You introduce major acting ideas, such as Stanislavski and Method acting, in a very accessible way. What challenges did simplifying those concepts pose without losing their meaning?

The hardest part of simplifying was deciding what must survive the compression. A children’s book has no room for a full tour of Stanislavski, Strasberg, Meisner, Adler, and the century of debate among their inheritors. So the question I kept asking was: if I can only carry a few things across the bridge, which ones cannot be left behind?

Three felt non-negotiable. First, that acting is a craft with technique, not a mysterious gift bestowed on the chosen few, which means it can be studied, practiced, and improved like any other skill. Second, that the great teachers were after truthful behavior, not the performance of big emotion; the kid who tries to summon real tears at 12 and feels broken when it doesn’t work needs to know that manufactured feeling was never the point, and their acting potential is not measurable by whether they can cry on command. And third, that there is more than one legitimate path into the work, and a young actor gets to find the approach that fits them rather than forcing themselves into the one the movies made famous.

Everything else — the lineages, the disputes, the technical vocabulary — I let go. The way through was to keep language plain and anchor every abstract idea in something a child can already feel. What does my character want? What are they afraid of? Those questions open the door to serious craft without requiring a 10-year-old to learn Russian, pick a specific school of thought, or cry on demand to prove they belong.

The book covers stage, screen, voice work, and physical theater. How did you decide how much depth to give each path, and which surprised you most when you researched its specific demands?

I gave stage and screen the most room because that is often where young readers first imagine themselves. But I wanted voice acting and physical performance to feel equally serious, because they are — and because a kid whose strengths lie there shouldn’t finish the book thinking they’ve only seen the side door.

The biggest surprise to me was Frank Welker. He is the highest-grossing actor in film history, but most readers have never heard his name. He’s earned around $8 billion at the box office, spent an entire career built inside a sound booth, and yet enjoys total anonymity at the grocery store. That single fact reframes what an acting career can be.

The other surprise was just how different stage and screen acting really are. They look like the same craft from the outside, but working actors will tell you they aren’t. The camera reads micro-expressions that the back row of a theater will never see. The stage demands a voice that fills a room the camera would find embarrassing.

You write that acting builds confidence, empathy, observation, imagination, and the courage to try something new. Which of those benefits do you think is most underrated and most useful outside the theater?

Really, all of the above, but if I had to narrow it down, I think listening is most underrated and underemphasized. Real listening — the kind actors mean when they say it. Most of us aren’t listening to the people in front of us; we’re waiting for our turn to speak, rehearsing our next line while theirs is still being said. Actors are trained to truly receive what the other person gives them and let it change what happens next. That is a skill very few professions teach directly, and almost every relationship needs.

Empathy gets the headlines, and rightly so. But empathy without listening is just imagination running in a private room. A child who learns to actually take in another person’s words, body, and silence — and respond to what is really there instead of what they expected — has been given a tool that will serve them in every friendship, every classroom, every argument with someone they love.

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