Hollywood is full of employment opportunities, and they don’t discriminate against someone that is a broke white guy. I was hired to be a “gopher” to certain actors and actresses on several shows. I worked on the sets of "The Office," "Criminal Minds," "NCIS" and many other less popular shows. It was a lot of work but the friendships you build last forever.
My job consisted of running a lot of errands. I would go buy coffee for certain people, pick up food, buy flowers (hated that job—a flower is a flower) and many other random errands. I would leave at four in the morning to get to the set I would be working at. I would go over any planned errands I would need to run such as delivering scripts to studio executives across the studio. Occasionally, for certain actors I would go through emails and check to see what was coming in.
As soon as they began filming the next season, I would read scripts with some of the actors and actresses. One good benefit of this job is you can make serious money and technically not have to report it on your taxes. I was responsible for delivering coffee to the cast of "Criminal Minds" and received a $50 tip from each of the main cast members. This was when I knew I wanted to keep this job. Outside the tips, I would make $15 an hour.
Getting a celebrity personal assistant job is hard enough. It usually requires connections in the business. Now outsiders have to compete with a new kind of competitor: the pal from way back. Stars tend to bring a friend from back home to be their assistant because they are otherwise surrounded by adult handlers and it gets boring. Everybody has to start somewhere, so it’s always possible that spending your days charging cell phone batteries and ordering face creams will indeed put you in line for a TV or movie career. Being in this career does have its perks. You'll meet a number of important people in the course of your work, so there are connections aplenty to be made. Just by the sheer amount of organization, planning and yelling at vendors over the phone that you'll be doing, your management skills will become incredibly refined.
After being an assistant to certain cast members of the different shows I worked with, I soon was invited to all different kinds of events such as birthdays and just private parties. You'll also get to know the business inside and out, which is essential if you ever plan on making a name for yourself here, whether you want to be an actor, represent them or exploit them for all they're worth. While the work gets tedious, there are benefits: You're going to be immersed in the culture that you've always dreamed of being a part of. You're going to be paid better than every struggling artist in Los Angeles and New York combined. You'll attend exclusive movie premieres and after-parties, mingle with the biggest names in the entertainment industry and generally feel like a big shot.
