Ladders HQ

Many of us who are thinking about buying their first home do have a lot of concerns before they take that step on the property ladder. With house prices plummeting over the last year many have seen thousands of pounds come off the value of their home. Unfortunately house prices are still dropping in some areas due to the mortgage market not yet on the road to recovery. That was a rather gloomy look at the housing market. The good news is that while we can think about the unfortunate people who bought their home in the last two years who have lost out and quite possible are one of the many finding themselves in negative equity, things aren’t going to get much worse and a recovery is on the cards. The Bank of England base rate is at a historic low of only half a percent and the experts have said it won’t drop any further as there wouldn’t be any benefit and it is great for encouraging people to save. Many have decided to take the opportunity to buy a home now as although house prices many drop a little further the base rate will likely rise again sometime this year. Fixed rate mortgages are going to rise and the costs for lenders are becoming more expensive so it looks like the advice would be to arrange a mortgage sooner rather than later. The benefit of locking yourself into a fixed term over a couple of years now means when the base rate rises again you will likely more than save in monthly repayments and for those that like the safety of knowing what their monthly payments will be each and every month can have that piece of mind and avoid uncertainty. To get individual tailored advice for you ask an independent body such as government agencies if you want more advice on mortgage products, you can also check out websites which often have helpful communities. Mortgage brokers in your local community are experts in the market you want to buy and overall mortgage brokers will be able to search around to find you the best deals. So whatever you are looking for a mortgage Falkirk in Scotland or London, England, a mortgage broker can be very beneficial.

Image taken on 2007-12-23 15:52:03 by K. Praslowicz (Sjixxxy).

Many people work a long time, perhaps an average of six years is typical, in order to secure the first beachhead on the island of success.

Some actors, and it happens all too often, mistake that first beachhead for the island. They think they’ve clinched the career itself when all they’ve really got is a foothold on it: a foothold on the first rung of a very tall ladder.

There are many beachheads to be taken, many rungs to the ladder. Each new role that can be made to serve as a springboard to the next, and better, role is a beachhead.

Each new level of your career is a beachhead. As you work your way up the ladder from being a “day player” to that first enviable niche, an actor with an “established” weekly salary, and from there to the point where you are paid a certain sum for playing a part, and on to a guarantee of X number of pictures a year at a fixed sum – all these are beachheads.

But you, as an actor, haven’t got the island of success secured until you have taken the last beachhead; the one that assures you of continuity in your career and a genuinely solid place in the entertainment world.

In the early phases of his career an actor is as great as his last show. Only the seasoned star rises above his vehicle and has the staying power to survive a bad show, lift a fair one above mediocrity, and always enhance a good one by his very presence.

If you want to “live your own life,” don’t become an actor. As an actor you will have to live the life that will be best for your career. And you will have to accept one final source of authority to determine what that best is.

You will have to put your money into the right kind of clothing and accessories for the furtherance of your career, not into a helter-skelter assortment of clothes that you happen personally to prefer. You’ll have to get the haircut that will get you a job, not the one that follows a fad.

The world of the actor is made up of highly competent specialists who are vastly important to the entertainment industry – and to your career.

No single person ever “makes” an actor. Many people have a hand in creating him – possibly from some of the very substances inherent in you.

The head electrician, you will eventually discover, is just as much a specialist in his particular field as the writer or director is in his. The man in the cutting room is, in his way, just as important to a film as its producer.

The people in wardrobe, hairdressing and make-up departments know how the actor should appear in relation to a production as a whole. With their specialists’ eyes, they “see” the actor as he can rarely see himself.

The sound engineers, who have learned to hear as the sound system hears, know how the actor should sound. The publicists know how to spotlight public interest in him. The agents know how he should be presented for available roles that are right for him, just as the teachers and coaches know what he is professionally capable of doing.

All these people, along with other specialists, know best what is right for the actor. They are not prejudiced by personal whim. They arrive at their decisions by workmanlike co-operation, functioning in a chain of command that goes, link by link, to the top.

Thousands of careers have been wrecked by actors who “changed horses in the middle of the stream.” Those actors go from teacher to teacher without ever finding out what any of them have to offer. They switch from agent to agent before a long-range plan for their career can be developed. They go from one publicist to another, destroying the valuable groundwork of every publicity campaign. Finally, they fight their way out of legitimate contracts – and into oblivion.

The entertainment field is the only business on earth in which a girl who might never make more than forty dollars a week running an elevator can be molded by specialists into a commodity worth thousands of dollars weekly to one of the major industries of our time.

While the successful actor acquires prestige and social standing in plying his well-paid profession, he attains other gratifying goals.

Image taken on 2004-01-26 12:54:00 by christophe dune.