The Best Advice

I’m taking care of the NIDA grads over the next 3 months

So my brain is once again shifting from my own work to:

“how can I help these performers progress best?”

It is therefore important for me 

Being on the other side of the curtain 

To be clear about what’s most worth investing valuable time and resources in

So

Let’s get clear

What is the best advice I can give to an actor right now?

Focus on being the best

And everything else will take care of itself.

What do I mean?

There are many things in combination that can help build a sustainable career

Kindess

Agents

Social media 

Networking 

Etc

However…

Kindness alone won’t build a sustainable career for you

Agents alone won’t build a sustainable career for you

Social media and networking alone won’t build a sustainable career for you

At the end of the day

At some point 

On set or in the casting room

Everything will go quiet 

Everyone will stop what they are doing and look at you 

A camera will be pointed on your face

And Someone will say 

“Action”

If…

In this moment…

You are able to give your best work

Your most generous work 

The career will build itself

The work will come

The money will flow

Agents will beat down your door

Lovely relationships with great colleagues will develop 

Companies will fight for you to wear there clothes

Social media followers will frantically click buttons

You get the point

Acting skills

Your ability to actually act on cue

Your ability to give your most generous work in between “action” and “cut”

This is the thing worth focussing on most

It’s been said before: 

“Be so good they can’t ignore you” 

And I really do think we inherently know this

But it’s easy enough to just say “be really great at acting”

Much harder to turn this into an actionable process 

There are teachers all around the world

Classes running late into the night

Many decade-old acting books being combed through

All giving their two cents on how to get better

But how the hell do we know what to actually focus on?

Well

This is where individual choice comes in

Theatre?

Screen?

Improv?

Distinct characters?

Supporting roles?

Superheros? 

Simply put… 

What floats your boat?

What energises you beyond words?

What do you go to bed dreaming about?

What makes you forget to eat? Not need to sleep?

Who inspires you?

Who makes you insanely jealous?

What’s the kind of work that makes you go “HELL YES!”?

For me?

When helping other actors 

I have a heavy bias toward leading roles on screen 

So for today

Let’s go down that rabbit hole

Let’s just pretend that you want to get as good as you possibly can at playing leading roles on screen

Well

What skills does one need to get good at in order to give leading role calibre work?

There are three main areas one needs to become proficient at in order to give leading role level work

ONE: Darkness - Ownership of fear, your shadow, all parts of yourself that you judge as “bad” or “wrong”. Can you channel this and allow pure fear to flow out of you on demand?

TWO: Light - Ownership of love, vulnerability, all parts of yourself that requires you to surrender to the human standing opposite you. Can you channel this and allow pure love to flow out of you on demand?

So we have darkness and light

Light and darkness

The “boy and the beast”, so to speak

These are two out of the three main areas

A heavy amount of training steers in the direction of these two skills

Many a class have I sat in until the early hours of the morning (literally) 

Watching teachers push and pull actors into the extremities of these two areas 

But

Time to ask an important question

When watching lead roles on screen

In any film or show

How often do we see these two parts released?

Exactly

The majority of training focusses on pushing and pulling actors toward releasing darkness and light

Fear and love

Yet

These areas make up a small minority when it comes to professional work on screen

Interesting to note the majority of training is focussing on the minority of skill set actually required in ones career!

This leads us to our third area required for leading on screen

In order for actors to earn the audiences support when releasing darkness and light

They need to spend the majority of the job doing what I believe to be the most under-utilised area in training

THREE: Breathing as one’s self 

The vast majority of what you will be asked to do in terms of acting on screen

Will be breathing as yourself in front of the lens

This will make up 95% or more of your professional work

If you can do this well

You will be asked to release the other two main areas

But if you can’t breathe as yourself in front of the lens

Chance are you won’t be consistently asked to release the darkness and the light

So if breathing as yourself is so bloody important

Why do acting classes focus so heavily on the screaming and the crying?

Well

Because it’s more interesting

It makes people feel like they are progressing way more than breathing does

For a teacher to hold a students hand, ask them to close their eyes and drudge up all their childhood woes…

Yeah there’s gonna be some tears and people will applaud and everyone goes home feeling buzzed

But will the teacher be there to help the actor get to that same place tomorrow on set?

Nope

It’s a short term win

And as great as short term wins can feel

I’m most curious about the long term work

The boring stuff which no-one what’s to focus on

Persistence...

To rock up to class or practice 

Week after week

And focus on breathing as ones self on screen

That takes discipline

That’s boring as heck

So of course people aren’t going to do that

But back to what’s most valuable

The people who are on set

Getting paid to lead shows and films around the world

They are getting paid more than anyone because they can do the thing that so few can

Breathe as them-self 

So back to my initial question

What is the best advice I can give to an actor?

If you are wanting to give leading work on screen

Then focus on getting as good as you can at breathing as yourself in front of the lens

Do this

Invest in this

And everything else will take care of itself 

I really hope this helps 

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