Charity Wakefield is an actress and Old Vic New Voices member. She has appeared on stage and screen in the UK and recently spent time in Los Angeles filming a television pilot. She tells us what it’s like to be an actor in Hollywood.

 I studied at the Oxford School of Drama and after graduating I did various pieces of work including the television version of Sense and Sensibility. The series aired in the States and got a good reception so that seemed like a good moment for me to go and meet with some people in Los Angeles and see what was out there for me.

I met some agents and signed with a manager and then came back to work in England. I started to get scripts from LA and was invited for some auditions so I sent over a few tapes and ended up getting to the final two for a television pilot.

At that point I was flown to LA for a test, which is a final audition in front of all the executives of the various production companies and distributors. In my case I auditioned in front of about 25 people, including executives from NBC and Warner Brothers. A few weeks later I found out that I’d got the part. I spent five weeks in LA filming the pilot, but ultimately it didn’t go to series.

The American market is extremely competitive. A studio might make ten pilots a year and spend loads of money on them, but it doesn’t expect them all to go to series. As an actor you’re asked to sign contracts that will bind you for several years if the pilot goes on to be successful. Seven years is the average. That’s hard because you have to like a project enough to promise them seven years of your life, but be ambivalent enough to understand that it might not work out.

In LA the television industries are run as a business. It can be hard and fast and you have to be quite upfront and willing to sell yourself. There’s also a strong work ethic. If a project gets the green light then everyone involved works really hard and gives everything they have to it.

If you want to go out to LA and have a shot at getting noticed it’s more important to make sure you’ve got something solid to support yourself. You’ve got a much better chance of success if you have either a really strong show-reel or a piece of work that the casting agents will be familiar with so they know your face.

There’s a Facebook group called Brits in LA which is useful. They’re really practical and useful and can give you loads of friendly advice. Through that you’ll also get introduced to lots of other social events. The Hollywood idea is a bit of a myth really. They don’t do much filming there any more and most of the actual work happens in the studios over in Burbank.

I was lucky with accommodation because I had friends to stay with. It’s always worth asking around to see if you can find someone out there who can help you. There’s a community of people out there who understand how difficult it is and are willing to help. Failing that there’s a website called Craigslist. A lot of actors, writers and film makers will get short term contracts away from LA and will sublet their place through that website. Like with any city you have to be careful because there are some terrible areas right next to really nice areas. Make sure you ask someone’s advice before you commit to a contract.

Between January and March there’s a thing called pilot season. New shows tend to appear on American television in September so casting often happens at the beginning of the year. A lot of actors go to LA for pilot season and try to get seen. I’ve never done that traditional audition process but from what I can gather the studios see a lot more people for each part than they do in England, which is great because it means you’re more likely to get seen, but also bad because it means statistically you’re less likely to get the role.

 Charity Wakefield was talking to Katie Jackson