What does it take to be an actor?
It is true what they say, working in the creative industries isn’t all glam and showbiz parties. It takes years of networking, hard graft, and lots of unpaid work experience to even get your first rung on the casting ladder. Even the training is a life-long commitment and you have to stay focused and dedicated to your craft if you ever want to nail that next audition. I am exploring here what are the traits that make a great actor, misaligned values, and how to relate to your life experiences during the creative process.
What makes a great actor? You must be committed to exploring the emotional journey of your character in the text in order to be able to create a believable, and relatable character through your storytelling. An actor who soaks up all types of culture connects with people and has a varied life story make the best performers. The most interesting actors I have met have been determined to succeed through adversity and never quit when the going gets tough. I love meeting actors who have followed an unconventional path and changed careers when society expects them to relax and put their feet up. Truly committed actors will be always looking to ignite their creative flame and keep the passion burning, even when they don’t feel inspired. I have recently started reading ‘The Artists Way’ by Julia Cameron which is a bible of daily wisdom on how to stay connected and fill up your cup when life is draining you. We can all find inspiration in daily life when we dig deep enough.
Preparation is key and enjoy the process. This is essential for any audition. It is very obvious if you try to wing auditions by not fully reading the script or indeed learning your lines. I have learned this lesson the hard way. It is particularly difficult when you are starting out and you are needing to build your portfolio for either showreel or stage credits to apply for agent representation. You can often feel caught on the hamster wheel by needing to apply for everything and then feeling overwhelmed if you get offered auditions or have to do self-tapes for jobs. I have and still am in this situation but I think it is important to not lose sight of your short, medium and long-term goals otherwise you can very quickly become derailed and end up doing anything. You have to make deliberate choices otherwise casting sites become a brain drain. My own experience is that you will always get found out and develop a reputation for not being committed and present if you don’t dedicate yourself to the preparation stage. My greatest tip and piece of advice to any wannabe actor is to always be prepared with a selection of monologues that you can freely perform at any given moment. The greatest asset to boosting my acting career has been developing my mindset to treating it as a business in terms of weighing up where opportunities will take me, limiting the amount of unpaid work I do as well as turning down the wrong opportunities. I have actually trained my mind to now enjoy the casting and audition process and believe that if a role is right for me, it will work out and I will be cast.
Embrace your challenging life experiences. All of us have experienced trauma in our lives at one point or another to varying degrees. Over the course of our lifetime, we will likely face grief and loss, breakdown of relationships, challenging financial situations, ill-health, and/or career stress. It is not necessary to have experienced every single one of these emotions or experiences to channel into your performance but connect with the feeling of what this would look like for you. This is the starting point of your character study by knowing their backstory and what drives them. Whilst it is easy for me to say that it shouldn’t define you (I know it does as you are living through the moment) but time is a great healer in letting the dust settle to give you perspective. For me, I am in a place where I can draw on the positives of my adverse life circumstances to help me colour and shape my character journeys. I have found that the most believable and relatable characters I have played are ones that have been in alignment with my own trauma and healing journey. In 2017, I played Mary in ‘Memory of Water’ after losing both of my grandparents in quick succession and was therefore able to inhabit the character’s movements, outbursts, and bickering with her family whilst drawing on this emotional trigger for me. We do have to be mindful though when life imitates art in not overshadowing our own projections onto a story that is vastly different from our experiences. We use our own life experience to draw on the feeling and how we connect to grief, tears, and the many different emotional shades of grief. Grief isn’t just about bursting into tears, it is often about silence, contemplation, and feeling spiritually connected with your lost ones. We have to remember the rainbow of emotions means different things to different people. It is our own portrayal of one person’s reactions to this life experience that makes it a unique performance. Keep your performance fresh every time and experiment with different shades of emotions.
Overall, some actors trust the process, go with the flow, and live a truly creative and aligned life, whilst others focus on setting ambitious goals and striving for the next big project. For me, it is about a healthy balance of both approaches as you can only truly find enjoyment and fulfillment when you detach from the outcome. I am guilty of being to goals-driven at times, and can often feel the high volume of rejection letters is not a testament to my efforts. Intuitively, I know that I am not aligned to every casting that I apply for and this is the real reason behind not securing the job. Over time, I hope to tune more into what roles suit me rather than being focused on needing lots of footage for showreels and for my portfolio to present to agents and casting directors.