What to tell your kids if they want a career in Hollywood

For the past five years, I’ve been interviewing Hollywood professionals about what they wish they’d known when they were starting out. The entertainment business can feel opaque and overwhelming, and many who navigated it the hard way said they want to help level the playing field for those arriving with passion but without connections.

The best advice — which is collected in a book I co-wrote with my former Times colleague Jon Healey, “ Breaking Into New Hollywood: A Career Guide to a Changing Industry ” — was often about how they handled chaos. The key to longevity, many said, is how you manage the rejection, instability and heartbreak that are unavoidable in the industry.

And as Hollywood has weathered the COVID-19 pandemic, strikes, recessions and periods of contraction — some re