It’s pilot season in Los Angeles, the time of year when new TV shows are being considered, and Brittany Ross is gearing up for the audition marathon.

The former Hawaii Pacific University cheerleader and recurring actress on the ABC sitcom "The Middle" figures she could have up to five a week. She goes for any part that’s young and blond.

Ross has been a steadily working actress since she moved to L.A. from Hawaii five years ago. She’s worked on more than a dozen TV shows or short films, including Disney XD’s "Pair of Kings," which just ended.

Ross loves auditioning, even during the hectic pilot season. It’s an opportunity to act, she said.

"I think people by the end of pilot season are numb to it, but right now it’s exciting," Ross said. "I think pilot season is fun. I love auditioning. I might be one of the few actors who says that."

Of course, already having a job you can count on definitely helps ease the tension of auditioning.

Ross has acted since childhood but majored in journalism at HPU, where she attended on a cheerleading scholarship. At one point in her life, she dreamed of going into broadcast journalism.

By the time she arrived in Hawaii for college, Ross had lived all over the world. Thanks to her dad’s career as a petroleum engineer, she was born in Alaska and spent her early childhood in Scotland, Colombia and Venezuela, where she spoke Spanish with a Scottish lilt. After that she went to Houston and Chicago.

Ross moved to L.A. to start her acting career after graduation. She didn’t view it as a gamble, but it took about a year to land a TV role: a part on Disney’s "The Suite Life on Deck."

To pay the bills, though, she worked as a nanny and a waitress. Ross also teamed up with a friend to give acting clinics to children, which is a big market in L.A. when it comes to television.

Having recurring parts on two separate shows — Courtney on "The Middle" and Candis on "Pair of Kings" — was an actor’s dream, Ross said.

"They overlapped a little, but it was always awesome to know that you were leaving one show and going to work on another one."

Both were a blast, she said.

Candis was the gossip girl who caused problems and wore the best clothes. "It was my ‘Legally Blonde’ role," Ross said. "I got to be that blond girl that everybody loves to hate."

And as Courtney, a cheerleader, Ross revisited her past but this time with a different personality. "Courtney is very condescending," she said. "I always say that I feel she is oblivious to how mean she is. I say she is mean for the greater good."

Ross will use the same thing to survive pilot season that she uses to deal with the capricious nature of show business: a thick skin.

"Sometimes it hurts when you don’t get a job," she said. "They dangle it in front of you, and you don’t get it. But it doesn’t stop. You just dust yourself off and go on."

The trick is to keep it enjoyable. Or, as Ross likes to say, "Embrace your uniqueness.’"

"It’s not about booking the job, it’s going on and being the best version of yourself," she said. "There is so much that goes into each part that it could come down to something as silly as too much brown hair."

AND that’s a wrap …

Mike Gordon is the Star-Advertiser’s film and television writer. Read his Outtakes Online blog at honolulupulse.com. Reach him at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.