Ex-Child Actors Make a Name With New Talent

Every day revives childhood memories for ex-child actors T.J. Stein and Bethany Constance, whose Academy Management grooms young talent in a workaday whirlwind of casting calls, coaching sessions, interviews and pitches--fitted around a nonstop search for marketable new faces.

The 10-year-old firm trots out a stable of 50 or more young actors in the high-stakes Hollywood youth talent business. Academy Management, a limited liability partnership, grossed about $2.25 million last year, Stein said, by collecting a standard 15% fee from client earnings (although top earners pay just 10%).

The firm fielded talent in three categories: principal actors, twins--mostly babies who double their age group’s limited working hours--and a background unit supplying crowds of youngsters to populate scenes set in classrooms, playgrounds and the like.

The background department was sold Jan. 1 in what Stein called a strategic move to allow Academy Management’s staff to concentrate on principals--that is, actors in leading, supporting or featured speaking roles. The move seems to have paid off, as the company landed clients on four new network series, with a fifth staying on for the second year of a Nickelodeon cable network series.

The talent management business is part of an intensely competitive industry, with nearly 7,500 Screen Actors Guild members under 17. Although easily more than 1,000 parts are open every year for children in TV, film and commercials, many of the roles are filled by young-looking adults--who can work more daily hours than minors and don’t need teachers and guardians present.

But the few starring roles landed by children can be financially rewarding. Stein said starring roles on prime-time network series can pay $15,000 to $25,000 per episode, and similar parts on cable series may pay $6,000 to $7,000 per episode.

That level of compensation sends scores of managers trolling Southland dance classes and acting workshops for prospects. They say success boils down to providing attentive service for clients, developing solid relationships with other show business professionals and banking on instincts for what will work.

For Stein, 34, Academy Management’s president, lessons began by taking the subway to auditions while growing up in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. By the time he was 13, he had earned membership cards in SAG, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and the Actors’ Equity. He appeared in national TV commercials for Wisk detergent and Coca-Cola, landed off-Broadway parts, had a recurring role in the soap opera “One Life to Live” and appeared in the movie “Amityville II: The Possession.”

“I went to auditions, found myself an agent, got myself into acting classes,” he said. When you’re a kid in New York, he added, “you don’t need someone to drive you around.”

Stein and Constance met at Syracuse University. After graduation, she pursued a stage career. He started his behind-the-camera career in New York as a production assistant to casting directors.

Still in his early 20s, he came to Hollywood, and after a few years he foresaw opportunities in child talent management.

Stein points out that the most successful Hollywood talent managers customarily stay for years at large agencies and represent major stars. But the child talent field has been more accessible to new independent managers because of an ongoing need to replenish the stock in a transitional category.

In the late 1980s, he invited Constance--primarily a New York stage actress whose credits include an appearance in the first commercial for MTV--to move west. Using high-interest capital and sweat equity, they launched what was originally called Academy Kids Management.

“What I did was take three or four credit cards, which added up to $25,000 or $30,000 in credit, and then I found out that the more credit you take out, the more you get,” Stein said. “I got it up to $50,000 or $60,000 on extended credit and went to the bank and got cash and started the business.”

The firm’s early days brought an ironic turn of fortune. Academy quickly landed clients on two network sitcoms--bringing rapid success. But the shows were abruptly canceled, business dried up, and Stein said he was reduced to taking an old bottle of pennies to the bank for food money before fees from a client’s commercial residuals got the business back on its feet.

With Stein as president and Constance as chief executive, the partners worked for years building their clientele, attending countless talent showcases and acting workshops and conducting their own open casting calls, a promotion they called “Super Sundays”--which attracted thousands of youngsters, with whom they established their background unit.

The background department thrived on sheer volume, as on a day two years ago when they had more than 1,200 youngsters on stages and location sets all over Southern California. The company peaked with more than 20 employees compiling work cards and payroll records and staying late calling actors in for the next day’s shoots.

Academy Management sold its background department to veteran talent manager Richard Spiker, owner of Kids! Background Talent Inc. of Glendale. Spiker said demand remains strong for the $95-a-day background jobs, and often production companies offer more openings than he can fill.

Shedding the background department trimmed the work force by half and gave the remaining employees more time to lavish on actors such as 16-year-old Kyle Sabihy of Northridge, who dropped in to Academy Management one day last week to study lines for his role in “Go Fish,” described as a coming-of-age series that was ordered for next season by NBC.

“When I saw this part, that was a natural thing for me. I didn’t have to push to say the lines,” Sabihy said.

As is often the case for Academy Management clients, he also got a few doses of good-natured tough love from Stein, who draws on his own youthful experiences in handling clients.

Sabihy has achieved notable success as a child actor, with a long list of TV and film credits--he’s best known as Billy Crystal’s smart-aleck son in last year’s Warner Bros. comedy “Analyze This.”

But as they were talking over the upcoming role, Stein reminded the youngster that at least once last season he showed up “unfocused” for a key audition, in a reading for a series pilot backed by a big-name Hollywood actor. Although the show never took off, Sabihy rebounded this season to land the new sitcom role with a strong reading.

“He learned from that experience,” Stein said. “He came back and he was sincerely ready to work on every project we gave him.”

“I understand their excitement and that when you’re a kid, you get a lot thrown at you,” said Stein, who’s been running the business while Constance, who gave birth to a baby girl this month, is on maternity leave. “I try to keep them focused.”

Promoting professionalism is important to succeeding in the child talent business, said casting director Robin Lippin, who worked for many years on the NBC Saturday morning show “Saved by the Bell.”

“When we book one of T.J.’s kids, we know they’ll be there on time and well-prepared to give a good reading,” Lippin said.

Actor Ryan Janis, 24, who grew up in the cast of the soap opera “One Life to Live” for eight years, said he signed with Academy Management after many years with another manager.

“The goal is to get the highest quality auditions, and they’re pretty well-connected,” Janis said. “And they understand what it is to be a young performer.”

Perhaps the key art in the child talent business is communication, said Sarah Clossey of the Writers & Artists Agency, who as Sabihy’s agent has the legal role of representing the actor in the formal contract with the producer.

“It’s important to keep the client and his or her parents and the agent informed about scripts and projects,” she said. “It’s a good way to head off problems before they get out of hand.”

Stein copes with a variety of problems. Many children can’t deal with the rejection when they don’t get a part they have read for. Stein admits that’s what steered him out from in front of the camera.

Conflicts with parents are another big pitfall. A parent may feel his youngster isn’t being promoted for certain roles, or will contact a producer to get his child’s role enhanced. Such a move usually cripples a client’s bargaining position, Stein added, but sometimes a parent can’t resist.

Despite all that, Stein said he finds the business rewarding. Academy Management’s business plan calls for adding a literary department and branching into project development in the next few years.

For now, however, the challenge is a daily juggling act involving scripts, pitches, auditions and meetings with casting directors, agents and parents. But mostly it’s about the kids, he said.

“I remind them that your windows of opportunity are right in front of you right now,” Stein said. “And as many people walk around your school are jealous or mean to you, I tell them that if they could do and have what you have in your life, they’d switch with you in a heartbeat.

“You’ve got to keep on reminding them of that.”