An Actor Prepares...to Live in New York City: How to Live Like a Star Before You Become One

by Craig Wroe

Book Overview

A guide for actors, and everyone else, to getting the best for less and surviving, thriving and living the good life in the Big Apple. Here is the ultimate guidebook for the hordes of aspiring young performers who arrive in the Big City determined to climb the ladder to stardom. But the purpose of Craig Wroe, an actor himself, is not to provide instruction on how to refine acting, singing or dancing talents or how to land a job in the chorus of The...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879109866
• ISBN13: 9780879109868
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Limelight
• Length: 354 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Don't Move To New York Without This Book!

Actor or not, this book is a huge help in finding the cheapest of everything in New York City. Listed by category, the author gives listings and phone numbers of the cheapest of it all. There are hints and tips on how to make it in New York on a budget, how to find a place to live, and even where public restrooms are available!

You don't need to be an actor to love this book

What a gold mine! This book isn't just for actors--it is a meticulously-researched, up-to-date and readable guide to living well in Manhattan without watching money flow through your fingers--it covers everything from haircuts and clothes to great deals at the opera. I'm recommending it to all newcomers, regardless of profession. If I had to find one small flaw, it's that I'm not quite confident about his recommendations for women, as--and he freely admits this--they rely on the judgment of his female friends, and the reader can't gauge whether these women share the author's ability to find the best, the least expensive and the most hard-to-find secrets of New York. Regardless, a minor detail in a worthwhile book.

Absolutely FABULOUS book!!!

Where was this book 10 years ago? That's when I moved to NYC, and I couldn't believe how much I learned from this book--and I live here! So many ways to save money that I never even thought of and resources I never knew about. This was the best purchase I ever made.

Amazing book

I just bought this book and read it in 2 days - it has already helped me find tons of stuff for my new apartment (I just moved to New York 3 weeks ago) at amazingly low prices. As an actor, it has shown me all kinds of things I didn't know, like tax deductions (I can write off this book!), actor support services. Best of all, it tells where bathrooms are all over the city - although New York really has no public restrooms, this book gives the low-down on finding one in an emergency. The guy who wrote this book should be the new patron saint of actors.

This review appeared in TheatreMania.com

The title of the book is a clever allusion to Stanislavski's 1936 bible of performance technique, An Actor Prepares. "To survive the ups and downs of urban life and the acting profession," according to Wroe, one needs "equal parts confidence and cunning, stamina and stability, tenacity and even mendacity." He has devised a guidebook, practical as salt, that points the reader to goods and services essential to the daily grind: opening a bank account, establishing credit, eating out and eating in, keeping fit (or getting buff), locating bargains, and finding clean, safe places to pee and freshen up in a city plastered with the warning that "Restrooms are for customers only." An Actor Prepares...To Live in New York City is clearly aimed at those who wish not merely to persist but to prevail. Its grandiose subtitle is: How to Live Like a Star Before You Become One (A Guide for Actors and Everyone Else to Getting the Best for Less and Surviving, Thriving, and Living the Good Life in the Big Apple). The author says that, during his 18 years in New York, he has been "unwilling to sacrifice quality of life to my tight budget" and has "become the master of living above my means without paying above my means." Wroe's authorial voice is benevolent and lightly paternal. He understands the rhythms of the actor's existence, with theatrical gigs interspersed among spells of "survival work" and unemployment. He's sympathetic to the fact that "downtime can be brutal," wounding the ego and exacerbating insecurity about "our talent, our place and ourselves in the business." He's practical: "[O]ur rent bills must be paid and we must eat." But he understands that "survival work," if it's unpleasant, "exhausts us emotionally and physically and bashes our egos that much more." Most of all, he understands the exaltations of the performer's life: "[W]e get that acting job and [we] are back on top of the world." The author has ample advice for coping with the combined stress of city and career. He recommends sundry forms of recreation and urges the reader to take advantage of New York's cultural riches -- and he tells how to do these things without spending a fortune. Wroe has created a thoroughly accessible guidebook which is distinctive among similar products on the market.