I am glad to have found others out there that have somewhat fallen for this nonsense.
I drove my 7 yr old VERY EXCITED daughter to an "audition" today, after seeing an ad on Nickelodeon saying they were looking for actors. This alone is a big fat lie. They are not talent scouts, it isn't even a school!
They offer very expensive classes all around the country, in hotel rooms! I live outside of NYC where I am sure i could find plenty of acting schools, real schools, if i chose to.
They pile hundreds of parents and kids into a room, interview the parents to see if you are commited to helping your child persue their dreams, which actually means they want to know how deep your pockets are!
They claim to only take about 5% of the childrn into the "school" but that there is also an actual agent on site and if the school doesnt think your child has potential, the agent may. Meanwhile, my daughter read 2 lines for an agent that barely looked up at her and thats it, you walk out.
You are told to call a number the next morning to see fo your child made the cut. And if so, to be prepared to come inthe next day! No time to research or think about laying out $over $7000.
You just KNOW the actual agent -that costs nothing-will never call. And you also just know that anyone that calls and is willing to lay out the money will make the cut!
This is a terrible practice and it is sad that Nickelodeon allows this type of advertising on it's network. They should not be allowed to imply that they are affiliated in any way with Nic.
I googled a name listed on the paperwork as the National Director for ACT, Hugh Ridell, but cam up with nothing. I also did not see the name of the woman that was there, Lindy Kwock, anywhere on the ACT website. They say they have locations in several states but no actual addresses. Lindy claimed to have flown in from LA but LA is not even lited as one of their locations!
To the person that said we as parents should listen and pay attention and then we would see this is not a scam-what exactly is your agenda? Do you work for these fools? Do you not see how unfair it is to these kids and parents as well? I would love to hear form a single person that has been called by the agent but not by the school. I bet that hasn't ahppened.
I was surprised when I googled Frontier Booking. They seem like a legitimate agency. What they are doing with ACT is beyond me! The woman from Frontier, Heather Finn, was the one that had the kids read a few lines. I watched her and she did not seem to be paying attention to these kids at all! My daughter included! They had music playing and i couldn't even hear my daughter so i don't know how she could have!
How can we put a stop to this? There is not a lot of info on the 'net about this and it took me a long time to find this site and i found one or two other comments on peoples personal pages.
I will report this to the BBB and also alert the hotels that they use. Short of that, what else can be done to stop these clowns??
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