Trying to say your lines in an interesting way and not really staying with the scene when you aren’t talking. Several of these actors go immediately to reading and prepping their next line after speaking instead of listening to what is being offered back by the reader.

Clear objectives are missing. Many people look awkward as they wait for the reader to finish so they can say their next important thing. A great audition should look exactly like a close up of a scene. You need a clear objective that you relentlessly pursue from the very beginning and you can’t stop until the end of the scene.

The business looks forced and planned. Don’t be “interesting” just do what your objective has you doing. When is the last time you tried that hard in real life to convey what you were doing?

A good audition should make me feel like a voyeur seeing real life happening not an audience member watching an actor tell a story. If I am aware – the magic didn’t happen.

You can tell a lot of the actors planned some really cool ideas at home and then tried to recreate them perfectly for the audition – unfortunately this attempt to have the perfect audition often supersedes the attempt to simply go after your objective. Sounds like it will be less interesting to watch but being interesting isn’t what we’re trying to do — we just want to be interested in pursuing our objective. That’s when the real magic happens.