Your Young Actor

Should Your Child Actor Take the CHSPE ?

Barron's CHSPE Guide

When a child actor becomes a teen, it is not uncommon to be excluded from auditions for characters who are meant to be exactly your age. These roles are often specified as “18TPY” (18 To Play Younger) or perhaps as “Legal 18.”  It is precisely at this time that the CHSPE may be of interest to you if you are a child actor (or the parent of one).

My daughter was small when she was young and looked a little younger than she was. This was very convenient for auditioning.

When she turned 11, she matured. She grew taller and started to look and act older than she actually was. By the time she turned 13, people often thought she was 15.  This trend of looking and seeming older than she was continued. We saw a sharp decline in the number of auditions for her.

She did background work for a movie once just for fun, and when the kids all gathered around the Christmas tree for singing and games, she was “kicked out” to be in the scene with the adults because she was “too old.” She was actually over a year younger than the girl who had the lead role in the film and several of the other children! This was very upsetting to my daughter who was only 11 at the time.

When my daughter did get into auditions, we frequently saw other teens who were older but were shorter and looked much younger than my daughter. We even saw girls who were 18 and looked younger than she did.

Have you noticed how many teen roles on TV and movies are played by young adults?

There are many reasons why this is so: mature content, maturity of the actor, the number of hours an actor can work, schooling requirements, other “on set” requirements for minors, and ability to drive, just to name a few…

Seeing so many projects with roles posted for “18TPY” or “Legal 18” is enough to make any child actor who is not yet 18, particularly if that teen is also in SAG-AFTRA, feel frustrated and perhaps want to throw in the towel. It caused my daughter to focus on other performance opportunities and just about everything else except acting for TV and film, especially while she had braces on her teeth.

In the last year or so, as our daughter got closer to the age of 16, she, my husband, and I started discussing her taking the CHSPE. I began reading about the test and trying to decide if this might be a good option for her.

What if you could take care of a couple of the items that interfere with your teen’s ability to audition for and book roles meant for a teenager? That is what taking and passing the CHSPE can do for you. (See “What Is the CHSPE?” for more details about the CHSPE, including when it can be taken.)

So, “Should Your Child Actor Take the CHSPE?” Read the rest of this entry »