Tip No. 5: Lie your ass off

Photo Assistant: Ryan Van Ert; Groomer: Traci Fein

What advice does veteran actor Laura Fisher have for actors starting out in Chicago? Fib like you’re Tony Rezko trial star Stuart Levine.

“I lied my way into every job that ever kept me afloat,” says Fisher, 44. “A lot of actors aren’t really trained to do anything practical, so you always find yourself bluffing.”

From her first waitressing job at age 13 (she was too young to work in Illinois) to a computer help-desk job (she was determined to have a day job that could support her acting career, and her dulcet phone voice got her in the door despite her total lack of computer knowledge) to teaching voice students despite her lack of proper vocal training (save her help-desk phone skills), Fisher has made a habit of slyly faking it.

But it was her best-ever bluff that swept her into the acting world. When her brother Bob (an original cast member of the Annoyance’s seminal late-night comedy Co-Ed Prison Sluts) heard his pals from the University of Chicago needed a girl to round out their all-male improv team, he tipped off his little sis. Just out of Loyola’s theater program and without a lick of improv experience, Fisher blithely convinced the members of Cardiff Giant that she was an improvisational pro, never letting on in her audition that she was a neophyte.

That now-legendary team of eccentrics—including Urinetown creators Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann—created all of its full-length works (LBJFKKK, After Taste) through improv. And the group’s attention-getting comic antics launched Fisher’s Chicago career.

Today, she’s the embodiment of the seasoned local actor. She works regularly at the city’s largest institutions, yet her résumé is like a Bob Mackie gown: It’s covered with fabulous fringe. She was a member of Famous Door Theater, the late, lamented company that created long-running hits like Hellcab and Early and Often, for which Fisher won a Jeff Award.

In a city known for hyperbole and corruption, certainly Fisher isn’t the first Chicagoan to fib her way to success. Perhaps if the problem with Chicago is lying politicians who are bad actors, maybe its asset is lying actors who are good politicians.

Next gig Fisher tells us she’s playing George Washington Carver in a new HBO miniseries. Opposite Marilyn Monroe. But we think she might be putting us on.

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