April 18 2024

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Your Face Looks Familiar

By Jacqueline Bundy
Posted at March 26, 2006 - 6:42 PM GMT

Title: Your Face Looks Familiar...
Author: Michael Bofshever
Release Date: December 2005
Format: Trade Paperback
ISBN: 0-325-00763-2


There are men and women who are steadily working actors despite the overwhelming odds against them making a living as a performer. You may not always know their names, but you often know their faces. One of the reasons for their success is that each of them knows, from personal experience, that it takes a lot more than just talent and a good agent to have a successful acting career.

The new book Your Face Looks Familiar... offers practical advice to anyone who is interested in, or currently pursuing, an acting career - advice that is based on the cumulative experience of a broad range of professional working actors. Among those sharing their knowledge are Star Trek alumni Ethan Phillips (Neelix), Robert Picardo (The Doctor), Armin Shimerman (Quark) and Gregory Itzin (Admiral Black, Dr. Dysek).

Author Michael Bofshever has drawn on his 30 years of experience as a working actor, acting teacher and director on stage, television, and in film to write Your Face Looks Familiar..., but what really makes this excellent informational title stand out are the excerpts from dozens of interviews with a wide range of working actors, each of whom share their personal experiences of learning to navigate "the business".

The book is organized into ten chapters that cover the subject matter in a very thorough and matter-of-fact way. Bofshever's text is straight forward and extremely readable. His own text opens each chapter and then he lets the actors he has interviewed take it from there. The actors themselves tell you how they made their journeys.

Bofshever obviously took great care in the selection of excerpts and the stories that are shared provide great insight into all aspects of successfully pursuing a career as an actor. I certainly have more respect for those individuals who choice this path after reading this book.

Anyone who is interested in acting, or actors, whether or not you have any inclination to act themselves will find Your Face Looks Familiar... to be an interesting and informative reading experience.

An excerpt from Your Face Looks Familiar... is available on the publisher's web site here as a PDF file. Interviews with Bofshever are available on his web site. The book can be ordered at Amazon.com.


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Jacqueline Bundy reviews Star Trek books for the Trek Nation, writes monthly columns for the TrekWeb newsletter and the Star Trek Galactic News, and hosts the Yahoo Star Trek Books Group weekly chat.

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