Book Review: ‘Act As If’ This Book Is a Great Read
Full disclosure: I received this book for free when I interviewed author Petrea Burchard for my podcast.
Act As If: Stumbling Through Hollywood With Headshot in Hand, by Petrea Burchard. Published 2014 by Boz Books. 194 pages. ISBN # 0985883758.
When this blog started, it was a theatre blog. Covering various topics for KC Stage, I would also occasionally review books that were about the world of acting.
I’ve always been interested in theatre, as I’ve written about before. Adjacent to that, of course, is the world of film and television that is Hollywood. While yes, I’m fascinated by the glamour and celebrity, the behind-the-scenes of how the sausage is made has always intrigued me as well.
So it was inevitable that I would want to review Act As If when I received the book from Burchard. A series of essays that were published in NowCasting’s ActorsInk column, the book covers her trials and tribulations of making it in Hollywood. Each essay is a learning point for Burchard, and as such a great insight into her experiences.
The book is a quick read – the short chapters make it easy to read and then put aside if need be. I managed to read it in two days – while my wife was in the hospital at that. Burchard manages to balance being entertaining with getting her point across, whether it’s basic etiquette for auditions or explaining how she enjoys all the crazy aspects of the job. She even delves into the ageism and misogyny the system inevitably has. While yes, I did interview her and consider her a friend, reading this book made me feel like I know her now.
Act As If takes you through “the magic store” through Burchard’s experiences, and manages to keep your interest while doing so. She writes about the best – getting an educational trip to Oxford to study acting – to the not-so-great – her times auditing for commercial work and knowing she didn’t do a great job. She treats every experience as a learning one, trying to get a takeaway from each.
If you’ve ever been fascinated by the world of Hollywood (be that acting, film, television, or even just the industry itself), I highly recommend it. It’s an honest, yet optimistic, outlook on a world that is forever cloaked in mystery. You can find out where to buy – as well as her other book – on Burchard’s website. I’ll give this the highest praise I can: as soon as I finished it, I went immediately to grab her other book to keep reading her style. “Yes, and …” please.