Purple Cow
Being able to do everything sounds like the safest career strategy. But if nobody can immediately explain what makes you remarkable, all that versatility may be making you harder to remember.
Is it versatility or invisibility?
Everybody thinks the safest career strategy is to become more versatile.
“I’m open to anything.” “I can play everything.” “I just want to work.”
And yes, versatility is valuable. An actor with range has more tools available and potentially more places to use them.
But versatility is not the same thing as marketability.
In fact, when versatility becomes the primary way you describe yourself, it can make you nearly impossible to remember.
The problem with being everything
Seth Godin has a famous marketing idea called the Purple Cow.
Imagine driving past a field of cows. The first few might catch your attention. After a while, though, you stop noticing them. They’re just cows.
But if one of them were purple? You’d notice immediately.
The purple cow isn’t necessarily better than every other cow. It’s remarkable because there’s something about it worth remarking on.
That distinction matters for actors.
You can be extraordinarily talented, highly trained, versatile, professional, and employable and still give people no particular reason to remember your name.
That’s a dangerous place to build a career from.
Versatility and specificity are not opposites
I don’t want actors to become less versatile. I want them to stop confusing versatility with identity.
You might sing Golden Age musical theatre, contemporary legit, pop, rock, folk, and country. Fantastic. Keep all of those skills.
But when someone asks, “What does Sally do?” the answer cannot require a five-minute explanation of everything Sally is technically capable of doing.
The industry needs shortcuts.
What immediately comes to mind when somebody thinks of you?
Maybe you’re the funniest high soprano anyone in the room has heard in years.
Maybe you’re a Shakespeare actor with extraordinary command of language who can pivot from razor-sharp comedy into devastating tragedy.
Maybe you’re the rock tenor whose performances have a kind of emotional honesty that makes the room go completely still.
Those identities don’t prevent you from doing other things.
They give people a doorway into your work.
Stop sanding off the interesting parts
Actors often spend years trying to eliminate anything that might make them too specific.
They want another song for the book. Another accent. Another vocal style. Another dance class. Another genre. Another special skill.
None of those things are inherently bad. Training broadly can make you a significantly stronger actor.
The problem begins when all of that training is being used to answer the wrong question: “How can I fit into more boxes?”
Casting already has thousands of actors who can fit into boxes.
A more useful question is: “What makes me unforgettable?”
That question requires a different kind of training. Instead of constantly repairing weaknesses, you also have to invest aggressively in strengths.
Find your unfair advantage
Start with what comes unusually naturally to you.
This can be difficult because the things we do easily often don’t feel impressive to us. We assume everyone else can do them too.
They can’t.
Pay attention to what teachers repeatedly notice. What directors keep asking you to do. What your classmates struggle with that seems instinctive to you. What kinds of material suddenly make you look more alive. What people specifically remember after watching you perform.
You are looking for the intersection of three things:
Something you do unusually well.
Something you genuinely want to keep doing.
Something the industry has a reason to need.
That intersection is much more useful than a vague attempt to be “well-rounded.”
Train the strength, not just the weakness
Actor training often becomes an endless campaign against deficiencies.
Can’t riff? Learn to riff.
Weak dancer? Take more dance.
Struggle with Shakespeare? Take Shakespeare.
That work matters. Professional actors need enough range to meet the demands of the job.
But there’s a ceiling on how valuable deficiency repair can become.
If you spend your entire career turning your weakest skills from a four into a six, while neglecting the thing that could go from a nine to a twelve, you may become more competent without becoming more remarkable.
Your greatest professional advantage may not come from fixing what you do worst.
It may come from becoming almost absurdly good at what you already do best.
Make the strength visible
There’s one more problem. Being remarkable privately doesn’t help much.
If the thing you do extraordinarily well never appears in your audition material, website, reel, social media, classes, performances, or professional relationships, nobody else has a reason to associate you with it.
So once you identify your Purple Cow, build evidence.
Choose material that lets us see it.
Put it in your reel.
Let it influence your audition book.
Make sure your website demonstrates it instead of merely listing skills.
Find rooms where that ability matters.
You aren’t announcing, “Here is why I’m special.” You’re letting the work make the argument.
Become the shortcut
Casting decisions frequently happen under enormous time pressure. Directors, casting directors, agents, managers, choreographers, and music directors are constantly trying to connect a particular need with the right person.
That means a powerful professional position is becoming the person whose name appears quickly.
“We need somebody who can do this.” “Oh. Call them.”
Your name becomes shorthand for a particular kind of excellence.
That’s different from being pigeonholed. Pigeonholing says you are only capable of one thing. Specificity says there is at least one thing you are impossible to ignore doing.
Once people know you, your versatility can reveal everything else.
But something has to make them look in the first place.
Build your Purple Cow
Try this in three steps.
Identify what you naturally do better than most people around you. Look for repeated evidence rather than simply choosing the skill you most want to be known for.
Train it until it becomes undeniable. Don’t merely maintain the strength because you’re already “good at it.” Develop it with the same seriousness you would give a weakness.
Make it visible. Your audition material, repertoire, reel, website, training, and professional choices should repeatedly give people opportunities to encounter that strength.
You do not need to become less versatile. You need to become more specific about why anyone should remember you.
🥜 In a Nutshell
Versatility gives you options. Remarkability gives people a reason to think of you.
Don’t chase being the “best actor.” Build the thing you can become extraordinarily good at, then make sure the industry gets to see it.
