INTERVIEW WITH VISIONARY FILMMAKER - PHILLIP E WALKER- MFA !!!

Phillip Says "Full-Time actor employment as averaging 40 hours of performance labor 50 weeks out of every year"

" An Entry-Level actor is defined as a beginner in Full-Time talent employment, who is most often paid minimum wage, which in California is $20.00 per hour plus overtime."

"Herein, I use the United States of America’s general employment definitions, as opposed to the popularly held definition that Full-Time actor employment is synonymous with stardom."

1. Phillip E Walker advises booking full-time work without an agent or union membership. Why do you believe this is the superior route for a newcomer in 2026?

My more than a half-century of acting experience (including 2000+ California based acting gigs and/or Worldwide lead role on screen appearances during my first decade in Hollywood), tells me that self-submitting is not only a superior route to becoming employed as a full-time Hollywood performer but is the ONLY pathway that works for more than 99% of those striving to obtain this goal. This is because the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) makes it clear that, unlike unions, The Guild does not help its Members find work. Additionally, since more than 75% of California professional performance jobs are “non-union”, joining SAG almost surely causes talent to obtain less work, not more work. Furthermore, while gaining talent representation is arguably the hardest single thing for a Hollywood newcomer to accomplish, my experience being represented by around a dozen different Hollywood talent agents and managers has resulted in none of them getting me more work than I have gotten for myself. This is true mostly because talent reps cannot compete with the amount of focus that I apply to finding work for myself. They have too many clients to be able to devote that degree of labor to me. So, I discovered that the way to qualify for 100% of Hollywood actor jobs is to forgo my SAG Membership and go Financial Core (Fi-Core). As well, experience says that the best way to use reps to augment my attempts to sustain full-time actor employment, is to give most of my personal attention to self-submitting. This approach, as opposed to my focusing on finding someone or something that secures work for me.

2. As a Veteran actor, can you please mention some difficult factors which affect a new talent in the Industry?

Perhaps the most difficult factor for novice performers to overcome is knowing, prior to arriving in Southern California, what action to take in order to secure full-time, entry-level acting employment. This is true because the traditional activities succeed in securing full-time acting employment for such a small percent of talent who follow those paths. ELA & HAJ employment securing advice quickly overcomes this difficulty by supplying specific, actionable steps that I have personally proven are capable of delivering full-time Hollywood actor employment for anyone who religiously applies my unique techniques. Another difficult factor for new to LA actors to overcome is accepting an entry-level, non-acting “day job” to “pay the bills”. Doing so is a problem because too often such an employment choice makes one unavailable to accept entry-level acting gigs, while said non-acting entry-level “day job” soon becomes that acting novice’s profession.

3. Your “EntryLevelActing.LA 2026 Promo” emphasizes that "smart work" is just as vital as hard work. What is the single biggest "rookie mistake" actors make that your Promo aims to correct?

I have referred to this answer in everything stated above. Based on more than 10 years of observations, I would say that the biggest rookie mistake is believing that securing talent representation and union membership will result in being given full-time actor employment. Despite their years of failure in using that traditional approach to become employed as full-time Hollywood talent, I find that too many workers hold on to the belief that their not yet gaining talent representation nor union membership is the reason why they are not getting enough performance work to establish an LA based living from their acting labor.

4. You mention that completing every section of a profile boosts "search rankings" on platforms like Casting Networks. How exactly does your method ensure an actor's profile stays at the top of a casting director's list?

First of all, more than 15 years of experience tells me that Casting Networks and Central Casting offer the World’s ONLY acting job application platforms which are worth devoting extensive self-submitting action, if one wants to become employed as an entry-level, full-time Hollywood actor. One would have to read my E-Books, view my Infomercial and/or attend my Workshop in order to gain specifics on methods I used to stay at the top in securing daily entry-level acting employment through these two platforms. However, one exact method I TENACIOUSLY applied that resulted in me being offered daily entry-level acting employment was to EVERY DAY self-submit up to 100 high-quality, TIMELY applications for roles in which I could realistically be cast. The World’s only entertainment market that has enough production in which those many creditable daily applications is possible is Southern California USA. Yes, at the entry-level in Hollywood it’s a numbers game, not a talent game!

5. How does having an award-winning Promo change the way aspiring actors perceive your instructional advice?

Unfortunately, strong promotion almost always increases the credit ability of any product. Although too often inappropriately so, this is a fact of life in Western civilization. Therefore, I personally spend more time marketing for the delivery of my instruction than I do actually delivering said instruction. Hopefully, as my revolutionary actor employment securing approach becomes more established, that marketing / instruction ratio will flip.

6. You chose to release this Promo on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. How does the message of the film align with the themes of opportunity and breaking down barriers celebrated on that day?

What with the impetus of the decision to devote my life to acting coming as a result of my delivering the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “I Have A Dream” speech as a 1968 graduating high school senior on the day after his assassination, I have often connected art that I self-produce to ethnic holidays. My creating art with a purpose began with devoting 30+ years of traveling internationally while performing at least twice in every United State, my one-man-show about the history of Black leaders, “Can I Speak for You Brother?”. That Play was first used as an educational tool to encourage every State in the US to make Martin Luther King, Jr. Day an Official Holiday in their particular jurisdiction. After that goal was accomplished, I turned “. . . Brother?” and other productions of my African American Drama Company into tools to encourage the World to celebrate Black History Month. During that same time period I also produced and performed in the traveling interracial cast children’s production called “Kwanzaa Musical”, which played the likes of the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame, San Francisco’s Pier 39 and Disneyworld. Soon after moving to SoCal’s Inland Empire, I created the Indigenous Film Fest to encourage celebration of Indigenous People’s Holiday. Plus, I now deliver Worldwide, the 407+ times honored “Hapless Revenge” original Juneteenth tale docudrama, in addition to annually creating a “Rancho Cucamonga Juneteenth WALK” local documentary which aims to encourage my own hometown to also make that particular U. S. A. National Holiday an Official City Holiday. So, given a long and storied history of producing ethnic holiday art with a purpose, when at the beginning of this year I was ready to publish a 2nd edition of “Entry Level Acting in LA”, it was a no brainer to choose MLK Day 2026 as the E-Book release date. Then, the next month, the Golden State Film Festival helped celebrate Black History Month by presenting the World Premiere of “EntryLevelActing.LA 2026 Promo“ at the World’s most famous cinema, Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theater. Appropriately, even the answers to these Festival de Indie questions were finalized during America’s 250th birthday weekend!

7. How does your ELA Promo teach actors to turn a single Background role into a long-term professional relationship with an employer?

Although I do not instruct how to turn a single Background gig into long-term employment, my ELA Promo video and additional instructional materials do teach how to reliably be offered one or two California based Background jobs EVERY DAY!

8. For those inspired by your Promo, how does the Hollywood Actor Employment Residency Intensive bridge the gap between reading your E-Book and actually working on sets?

Perhaps because folk these days do not read, I have found that only a small number of performers have become aware of my unique actor employment securing advice as a result of them reading my E-Books. Also, my more accessible instructional videos have too often failed to cause viewers to see the light. Additionally, even when my interactive Workshops allow attendees to understand my self-submission techniques, I perceive that those workers still do not believe that my full-time employment securing techniques can work for their particular situation. Therefore, my SoCal based, live & in-person “Hollywood Actor Employment Residency Intensive” supplies more than a week of me holding artists’ hands, while personally coaching and walking participants through their becoming employed as Hollywood actors, in real time. By the Residency week’s end, attending performers will surely believe that they also can quickly become employed as entry-level, full-time Hollywood talent because I personally prove to them that it is true, due to them working multiple jobs during the Residency.

9. What was the most desperate or difficult moment in your own career that inspired you to create this hopeful message for others?

Ironically, it was the opposite of desperation or job securing difficulty that prompted me to codify, then make available my Hollywood actor jobs obtaining advice activities. Rather, it was my becoming employed as an entry-level, full-time actor from the very first day in which I auditioned in Hollywood. After that remarkable, new development in my long life as a struggling professional actor, during each subsequent day of work on Hollywood sets, I kept hearing actors complain about not getting enough work, while I was turning down one of two entry-level job offers nearly every day. Then, about halfway through a wildly successful first year of actor employment in California, my publisher told me that since I was obviously doing something different than my colleagues, it would be worthwhile to write down my job securing techniques during my first La La Land year, less I forget what action I took to break into Hollywood so quickly. That New Publishing Company CEO’s statement was the seed that, by the end of my first Hollywood year, encouraged me to write the “Entry Level Acting in LA 2016“ Workbook, and the rest is history.

10. How does the ELA Promo address the unique challenges or opportunities for diverse and international talent looking to break into the LA market today?

Because Madison Avenue has finally figured out that they can sell more products to diverse cultures if on the screen those particular potential buyers see people who look like them, my Entry Level Acting and Hollywood Actor Jobs securing techniques do not give any attention to the ethnicity or nationality of the upcoming employee. That is exactly what is meant by my theme statement that “There is enough work in this Town of everybody . . . you just have to know how to apply”!

With the original version of this “EntryLevelActing.LA 2026 Promo” published at https://EntryLevelActing.com, the “Entry Level Acting in LA 2026“ E-Book is available to download at https://EntryLevelActing.LA.

Purchasers of that Hollywood actor employment Road Map also receive: a free download of the “Entry Level Acting in LA 2016“ Workbook; three (3) free days of streaming the “Hollywood Actor Jobs Infomercial 2026” instructional video; free admission to any single traveling “Hollywood Actor Jobs WORKSHOP” presentation; a 20% registration fee discount on the “Hollywood Actor Employment Residency Intensive” to be held December 26, 2026 thru January 3, 2027 in Southern California; plus a single weekly question answered via email by Phillip E. Walker-MFA himself.