Surviving as a Child Actor

Having taught acting school in Los Angeles for young people over twenty years, it has been one of my main focuses to try and prevent them from following the same path I took as a young actor . On the face of it this may sound a bit odd, coming from someone who had his own series on Tevision at the young age of 9 and spent a very successful period of life through the age of 16. I appeared on commercials, performing radio voice-overs, advertisements, and generally acted with a degree of success designed to make any parents proud. However my main problem would not become obvious until it was almost too late, when I realized I had to hang on to my earlier success. The problem was that being attractive and photogenic will only take a person so far and more specifically to a certain age. Beyond that no career could expect any sustained success without a solid foundation of acting skills and training. On of the more important thing that a parent of any young aspiring actor, is to remind the young actor not to get hurt along the way from either becoming an adult actor, or along the way to discovering that this isn’t really what they want to do. The firsts steps we take is to lead the child to understand that their value as an artist is in no way linked to thefame and fortune of an acting career. There are of-course, several people in the entertainment industry who’s business it is to market and sell your talent, to sell profitable actors and not to focus on what they see as unprofitable. An aspareing young actor will need to understand that their worth as an artist and as an individual is absolutely unrelated to what may be interpreted as ‘worth’ to any agent. rnJeff Alan-Lee wanted to be an actor his entire life and began bugging his mother at the age of 7. At the age of nine he auditioned for a role in a local Detroit TV series in entitled JERRY IN THE CIRCUS. He got the role. He continued to act in a television special called THE MAGIC BALLOON, and soon after booked an agent in New York City. As a child actor he flew back and forth from New York and Detroit to audition and to appear in commercials, acted in theater, film and on television. After his career as a young actor, he began teaching acting to kids and teens at various schools in New York City. Jeff-Alan Lee produced tv shows on Manhattan Cable and was invited to teach at The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York City. One of the more notable sudented he trained was young Scarlett Johanson among many others. Jeff’s Los Angeles acting school, CLASS ACT...THE YOUNG ACTOR’S STUDIO, is one of the foremost schools for acting in Los Angeles, that teaches method acting to kids and teens. The studio teaches young people to use their traits, personalities and mannerisms in the scripted role and therefore to stand out.