Anthony Ames

“I had appeared once on a big billboard in Union Square, that took up the whole side of a building,” says actor and model Anthony Ames. “My brother saw it, and he was like, ‘dude, I’m walking down the street and there’s your effing mug on the side of a building!”

There was also the time when Anthony appeared in a story in Men’s Health magazine, and brother Louie marveled again. Says Anthony, “I didn’t care at the time, because it was just a regular job, but my brother was like, ‘dude, you are in an international magazine! That’s pretty cool!'”

Despite his success as a commercial print model, Anthony is not easily phased by it all. In fact, he’s rather unflappable. That may come with being a polished Ivy Leaguer, but maybe not (“after all, George Bush has an Ivy League education too,” he points out.).

Still, Anthony has had a good run since he first arrived in New York in the summer of ’99 and a girl in his acting class eagerly took his headshot over to Gilla Roos. Being the epitome of the All-American boy, he was just what the commercial print casting directors ordered, and they ordered him super-sized (hence, the side of a building).

“In one month I made like ten grand doing this,” he says. “For me, I recognized that I could make some money based on what I looked like. It was nothing more than that. I never had any experience in being invested in getting a job. I was never upset because I didn’t get it or feeling good because I did get it. I never really had that because I never really had all my eggs in that basket, and I didn’t make it mean anything about me when I booked a job or when I didn’t. I’m All-American apple pie. That was my market, and I knew it was pretty limited and I had a good understanding of why I got a job and why I didn’t.”

He grew up in an All-American, apple-pie-eating family, one of five siblings in Atlanta. True to the All-American form, Anthony’s whole life before New York was playing sports.

“I had the option to play football and basketball in college,” he says. “I ended up choosing football. I was a quarterback at Brown and went out for the pros, then decided to go live in New York. I had the opportunity to play football in Europe, but I wasn’t too hot on that.”

New York was more of a hot spot, as well as a hot spot for a hidden passion that he decided to explore further.

“Acting was something I was really thinking about in college,” he says, “but my schedule didn’t permit it. I was a history major. I knew I liked athletics and I knew I liked to read books about history. I also knew I liked acting and entertainment. I wasn’t sure, and I was afraid to pursue all of them. You have certain comfort zones and then you have a lot of things that you don’t have a lot of experience in. The fear of failure comes up. I went into the acting thing sort of unsure of myself because I had never done it. But I just grew from there.”

His experience as an actor fed his success as a model.

“With acting as well as modeling,” he says, “I realized that, more than anything, it’s working on yourself. I think people get into the industry – any industry – because they have a vision of what they want to be in the world, and they want to build that, or they think they can get something from it and make themselves feel better. Models often get validated. They get attention. I got a lot of validation from being successful in one field, and I thought I could do it in another. For me, it became more about exploring why I want to do something. If you want to model, you should ask yourself, ‘why would you want to do it? Why is it important? What part of you are you expressing?'”

The expressing part has always been the most interesting for Anthony, and often the bigger payoff than the paycheck.

“I always have fun,” he says of photo shoots. “You’re getting paid to sit around, most likely with a hot girl, and probably some other people who are pretty cool. It’s a great networking experience. I eat good food. And you laugh and have fun in front of the camera.”

Although he continued to model while pursuing his acting career, he, like thousands of other models, felt the strain of the economy and the changing current of the industry as the new century set in.

“That was the time of all the strikes, and everything shut down,” he says. “I originally thought I would be making ten grand a month. Then it wound up being much less predictable. More sporadic. I would hit hot spots: I would book two jobs in a week and then one in two months. So I really started to get a pulse on how the industry worked and how it didn’t work.”

Taking his career highs and not-so-highs into consideration, his advice for young models, male or female, is crystal clear.

“Be clear on every exchange,” he says of modeling jobs. “There shouldn’t be any problem about being clear in the exchange. That’s why they came up with money. You clean up the leaves in my yard and I give you $20 an hour.

“I never felt like I was in a situation that I couldn’t get myself out of. If you get a feeling in your body, a bad feeling about it, don’t suppress it, don’t ignore it. Address it. Be clear: I’ve got this going on within me. If some clients ‘mad dog’ you, or what I call get ‘big head momentum,’ and raise their voice and get defensive, you probably touched on something. If you’re not clear about where you are going, you are going to be a pinball.

“Don’t be afraid to ask questions in the fear of losing a job. If you lose a job because you asked questions, there is your answer. You didn’t want that job. I ask myself 'why' everyday. Why am I doing this? Why am I doing that? If you don’t get an answer, the question just deepens. The result is that you know you better. And you know how you interface with everything that you’re doing.”

For more information on Anthony, check out www.anthonyames.com