JAMES GREEN

Every week I meet someone new who asks me what I do for a living. I openly tell them that I do TV presenting and Modeling. Their reaction is always the same to the modeling, "wow, check you out! You must have an easy life". If this were true, this blog would be a completely different read and would probably make readers feel jealous of all the greatness going on in my working life. The truth is in the title of this blog piece, "being at the bottom of the food chain". Life in the modeling industry has changed dramatically over the last 2 or 3 years. Gone are the days of huge payments for very little work. Gone are the days of constantly travelling to exotic locations. It is a completely changing industry. When the financial market took a massive turn for the worse 2 years ago, businesses had to cut their out goings to survive, which meant reducing their spend on advertising (where models come into play). I've spoke before about this, but it is not goin...

Being back in England has been nice at times when catching up with friends and family, and back working on a regular basis, something that I greatly needed in order to improve my self esteem, which had become very low after a frustrating time on the work front in the US. However, it's still not an easy run of things in this country. Castings are few and far between for modeling and I have been missing out on quite a few castings because of my knee situation, which is still no closer to being operated on. Speedo casting (need to swim), Mizuno casting (need to run)and others just seem a bit typical for my fortune right now. But I have not been dwelling on this and I am starting to do all I can to increase my opportunities to gain more work away from modelling. I am trying to get representation from a talent agency to help gain me some presenting work, something I firmly believe I am good at and could do very well if I get my opportunity to show people my talents. Now, I ho...

This wasn't exactly the kind of news in my life that I thought I would want to be writing in my blog. I didn't realise how overcome with emotion and anger from watching what has been happening these past few days that I have become. I have been unable to keep my eyes off of the news reports, the live videos and the constant interviews with people across society over the matter. It has completely taken over my life, my thoughts and my mind and distracted me from all that I need to start doing to kick start my working life again. The behaviour of every single person involved in these riots is absolutely disgusting. Some of them are showing violence, some are showing vandalism, some are showing thieving, some are arsonists and some are now even murderers. So many of these people are pure and simply opportunists, taking advantage of a very difficult situation that started with the death of Mark Duggen in North London. Worryingly, you could ask so many of these rioters who he...

It is amazing and very strange how in one country you can get hardly any work, and you move back to another and its non stop. But as my strange life continues, it brings about little surprise that this is the case, as it add's more confusion to my already complicated life. After taking 5 days to rest up from my jet lag, I was straight back in the swing of things back at live casino channel Smartlive Casino. I am so grateful for everybody at Smartlive for giving me the opportunity to come back to the show after being away for over 7 months. In today's extremely difficult society, I feel very fortunate to be able to get some work as soon as I get back with Smartlive. Also, the advantages of smartlive is that it is Live TV and that you can often get the opportunity to talk about just life. This helps me get much needed practice for any potential presenting work that could come. I have set my sights on really achieving as a presenter and practice, like in any industry, is essential...

I have described a lot about life in LA, the differences with regards castings and work, but haven't necessarily talked about how I'm personally getting on. I believe the time is now for that and to explain why I have returned to the UK. In LA I was doing some football coaching to keep me busy and to get some money to simply enough be able to live out there. I was greatly appreciated to be able to do this as it kept me busy, kept me motivated, but more importantly enabled me to be able to put food on my table. Sound dramatic? Well its not. Having the responsibility of being in an adult relationship and living with someone requires you to be committed and sensible with everything. The coaching wasn't earning me a lot of money, but it was a necessity. With modeling work and presenting work not really happening over there, I needed to ensure I was earning enough to survive. This was very different to how I was living my life previously and how I have lived my life in the past....

This section is to let you know what castings are like in LA and how they differ to anywhere I've been in the world. The main difference is the fact that you very rarely get an opportunity to meet the clients for the jobs you cast for. There are a lot of casting directors and casting agencies in this town that are employed by companies to cast potential talent for jobs. What this also means is that it add's an extra stage to the casting process, which for the client it makes it easier to cast someone. For the talent however, it is a completely different story and one I have become increasingly frustrated by since arriving in LA. It means that for practically every single job available, whether a modeling job or an acting job, there are a minimum of 2 stages of castings. That means 2 trips to the casting studios on two different days, a lot of time commitment and more money spent on travel. Now you can imagine that if your casting every single day and if you get fortunate enough...

Tinseltown was upon me and I arrived in January on a 3 year working visa ready to take on Hollywood and all that it had in store for me. I was extremely fortunate and lucky to have the amazing support of my girlfriend who has been living in this city for 4 years. It was tough at first, as LA is a city where you have no choice but to have access to transport, a car to be precise. The metro system is not great and the buses aren't the best either. I quickly learnt that castings were all over the city, and LA is one big big city too! From Hollywood to Santa Monica, to Downtown LA to Studio City, you name it and the traffic around the city is insanely bad. But hey that's part of my new life in a new city across the other side of the world. It was time to get out and about as much as possible, to start exploring my new home. I was straight into my agency, Wilhelmina and it felt great to start cracking the modeling industry out in LA. Castings were happening straight away, and I was ...