A Dose of Reality for Wanna-Be Actors : A six-week UCLA Extension course will examine the ins and outs of making it in Hollywood and how to avoid trouble along the way

Every year, thousands of starry-eyed wanna-be actors in small towns and big cities pack up and head for Hollywood. Every year, thousands are bilked of money and robbed of time by their own ignorance and unethical promises of scam artists.

“It’s a major problem, and it’s ongoing,” said Ronnie Rubin, acting director of UCLA Extension Department of Arts, where 15,000 students a year take performing-arts classes. “There are so many people here who take advantage of innocents who come from small-town America and around the world hoping to get rich and famous overnight.”

The answer, said Rubin, is, in addition to drama classes, some lessons in the real-world business of acting that students don’t usually get.

“Young people,” she said, “need to be introduced to real, leading professionals who also set high standards of practice out in the field. They need to learn about acting plus understand how challenging it is out there.”

So when former actress and studio executive Faye Mayo proposed a class to bring in working producers, directors, agents, actors, coaches, photographers and personal managers, Rubin included it last summer as part of the UCLA Extension curriculum. Now that six-week course, titled “Becoming a Professional Actor in Hollywood,” will again be taught, starting Tuesday.

The class, a “dose of reality,” said Mayo, teaches tools of the trade--how audition and casting processes work, how to avoid scams, the importance of training, how to find good teachers, what you need to know about agents and managers, and how actors’ unions really operate. “No one is born a star,” Mayo emphasized. “And the odds are great against anyone making it. If you can think of anything else that would make you happy, then do it.”

To send that message to more wanna-be actors all over the country, Mayo also recently finished film production of “Becoming a Successful Actor,” a 77-minute video with the same guest-speaker format as the class. The tape will be distributed in bookstores and by mail.

“I’m walking a fine line, trying to be honest with people without being completely negative and turning them off,” Mayo said. “Now kids who are serious and prepared to do the work can watch the video and save two to three years of trial and error in figuring things out. But if they’re just living a fantasy, they’ll think twice before coming.”

In her class, Mayo draws from three decades of experience in the entertainment industry. In addition to acting in motion pictures such as “Rebel Without a Cause” and TV shows including “The Paper Chase,” she produced more than 40 plays, worked three years as production executive at MGM/UA, and for the past seven years has run Mayo Entertainment, a personal management and production firm in Los Angeles.

“The class and video grew out of sheer frustration,” she said. “Many of us in this business are upset about these sincere kids coming out here with no clue about how things work. And we’re upset that they get ripped off by unscrupulous managers, agents and so-called casting directors.”

Scams operate in all areas of the business, she said. “Today you have the people who for $400 will guarantee auditions but send you to open calls, and the people that charge up to $5,000 to print your picture in a slick magazine that gets distributed to agents and directors who never use it,” Mayo said. “The exploitation just goes on and on.”

Hollywood wasn’t always that way, she said.

“The late ‘50s and early ‘60s was a time of exodus of New York actors with solid theater experience coming West to Los Angeles,” Mayo said. “Sure, there were devious things, and people here who used power and position for favors, but overall, it was pretty terrific and not as cutthroat. People helped each other then.”

Mayo said one reason things were better 30 years ago is that the business was much smaller and more confined.

“Back then, there were only seven major studios and one or two independent production companies, that were centrally located,” she said. “An agent could hit every studio once or twice a week, go to the casting office and find out what’s happening.”

But today, as a result of the ‘60s breakup of the major-studio monopoly, the proliferation of independent production companies and the explosion of television, the entertainment industry is spread all over Los Angeles and surrounding areas, Mayo said.

As the industry grew, there weren’t enough reputable agents to handle everyone, and they could no longer give much time and attention to actors, she said. Personal managers, a group who had heretofore functioned primarily in the nightclub and music industry, stepped in to fill the void. But with the new complexities of the industry, scams multiplied.

“Unethical people posing as managers will tell needy actors that if they pay a fee, they will introduce them to 10 casting directors,” Mayo said. “Then the so-called manager will find a casting director who wants to make an extra couple hundred dollars a night spending a couple minutes with each of 20 people.” Although the phony manager has done what he or she promised, nothing will happen for the actor who is high on hope.

“Each sits breathlessly waiting, feeling they will be discovered, or will at least get hired so they can get their union card,” she said. “But it’s like playing the lottery--99.9% of the time, you don’t win.”

The reality, said Mayo, is that today there are 80,000 members in the Screen Actors Guild. In 1989 alone, the guild took in 7,000 new members. And those figures don’t begin to count the thousands of actors who aren’t qualified for membership, she said.

And of those 80,000 card-carrying members, one-third make no money at all, and 80% make less than $5,000 a year in their chosen profession, Mayo said. Only 3% make more than $50,000 annually.

“The numbers are staggering,” she said. “In Los Angeles, virtually every waiter in every restaurant is an actor or writer trying to support themselves. No one should go into this business for wealth and glamour. If you’re not committed to the work, you won’t be able to sustain yourself.”

Elizabeth Downes, 35, came to Los Angeles from Tucson five years ago. Since the age of 5, the Arkansas native wanted to pursue a career in the entertainment industry and had prepared well, she thought, with 25 years of dance experience, 10 years of singing in musicals plus a master’s degree in drama.

“When I got here, I was shocked,” she said. “Suddenly I was faced with a lot of problems that I was not prepared for. No university taught me how hard it would be.” Downes spent her first two years commuting four hours a day trying to take classes and get jobs, she said. But despite her efforts, she only landed one commercial and some stage work. Last summer, she took Mayo’s class. She said she wishes she had taken it earlier. “That I wasted so much time is what killed me,” she said.

“This market is flooded with people who are not prepared, with people my age, with unethical acting teachers doing therapy to bust you wide open like Humpty Dumpty and then can’t put you together again, with Elvis-type agents that will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.” (Judging by her expression, Downes was referring to Elvis in his later days.)

The reality of the business is discouraging, Downes said.

“Everyone is having a terrible time. And no one will help you, because they’re trying to pay their own light bill.”

Now, even though her whole life was devoted to becoming an actress, Downes is pregnant with her first child and has thought of changing careers and forgetting her dream, she said.

“If I was 18 I would say, ‘Oh goody, now that I know the rules of the game, I’ll get out my equipment and play.’ But when you’re 35 and want a normal life, you start weighing things and asking yourself, ‘What am I going to get for all this?’ ”

“I’m not Goldie Hawn, who is already in there,” she said, “I’m down here among the plebes.

“I am no longer willing to pay the price,” she said.