3 Things you should know about acting in Nigeria.

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There are a lot of things you need to know as an actor, but here are five lessons I wish I’d learned early in my career.

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1. Know your “type.”

Sure, in school you learned how to play any role—to stretch, to challenge, to grow. Out in the real world, you are unlikely to be able to play much outside of your general age, height, weight, etc. It’s very important to have a clear sense of who you are when you walk into a room and what that means in terms of the roles you can audition for.

This takes work, soul-searching and asking friends, teachers, agents, and casting directors to give you some hard opinions about your type, and your headshot should reflect that person. You may very well be capable of playing many other kinds of roles, but you won’t get them unless you first get the jobs you’re right for.

2. The first year is the hardest.

If you thought college was hard, wait until you hit the real world. What I hear from former students most often is, “I knew it was going to be hard. I just didn’t know it was going to be this hard.” This business is not for the faint of heart. It takes a lot of hard work and belief in yourself to even feel like you’ve gotten a hold of the bottom rung of the ladder. Learning to be patient and wait your turn are skills you can work on every day.

3. You need to work at it every day.

If you want to get through those first difficult years, you have to work at it every day. If you leave it to chance, you’ll always be able to convince yourself that you will have time to do those mailings, make those calls, and read those trades “soon.” You have to start by scheduling at least an hour every day that you’re working at your business—and it’s a business. Any day that you’ve done at least one thing for your career is a good day. This includes auditioning, doing mailings, etc., but it also includes working out, eating healthy, seeing plays, movies, new TV shows, etc. Your job is to learn the business. It’s “learnable,” but you do have to learn it.