The Audition.

Auditions.

They are the hardest things you’ll ever have to do in your career.

Why go to the audition.

Going to an audition without doubt or hesitation is good.

However, before you go, it’s not bad to ask yourself, “Do I want to go to this audition?” You should consider both yes and no as possible answers.

Looking at the facts might help you clarify the yes answer.

- It’s an opportunity to get a role.

- It’s your job.

- Casting, producers, and directors will remember your audition.

- It fulfills your agreement with your agent.

- They can consider you for another role.

- It keeps you part of the industry.

- It gives you contact with your peers.

- It can give you creative satisfaction and keep you in flow with your artistry.

The no answer is all you really have as an actor. The state of the industry has you in a difficult position to say no. Sometimes saying no can put you in conflict with the producers, agents, and casting directors.

Projects that are racist, sexist, anti-human, pornographic, dangerous, etc. are ones you might say no to.

Taking a stand based on your conscience is something to be proud of and puts you alongside all the actors who’ve said no before.

Having a clear head as to why you’re going to an audition helps you act better. 

American accent.

You have to have it to work in American movies. 

Years ago, in acting class, the actor/director Adam McDonald came up with this handy line for practising your American accent:

I’m sorry, but I think it’s about time you get out of the house right about now.

Vitamin C. 

Is a popular vitamin these days.

When you take it, the body takes what it needs and gets rid of the rest. 

You pee it out.

Does that remind you of breakdowns? So much information on them that it’s hard to take it all in. Especially the character breakdowns. Enough adjectives and adverbs to sink a ship. Impossible to fulfill.

What to do?

You can’t absorb all that. It’s a bit like taking 10,000 IUs of vitamin C.

Take from the breakdowns what serves you to play simply and truly.

And just pee the rest out.

Block your audition.

One way to give you confidence in an audition is to block it.

That can be said both for Zoom and in-person auditions.

Choose how you’re going to sit or stand as that is where you will be playing from. Whether you’re leaning forward or sitting back. It’s your base, it shows character, and it supports your work.

Being on an angle, instead of facing front, looks better in the frame as it gives texture and shape to the picture. It also allows you to work away while thinking and to come back when you’ve got your point — making movements that are recognizable and suit the frame.

Starting the scene is key. Choose whether you want to enter the frame (that gives you volition) or start on camera being involved with activity that gets interrupted by the other character (that gives you a transition). Doing “the moment before” work can give you an imaginary start rather than starting by just saying your first line. 

Eyelines are important. For multiple-character scenes, choose different eyelines for each character or not. You don’t have to have different eyelines so the producers know that you know there are different characters. Set your eyelines so it helps you play.

Move your eyes under the lens when you look from one side to the other rather than “spiking” the lens by looking into it.

Looking close to the lens is the best place to play most scenes. Look just under the lens if typing on a computer or looking at something. We want to see your eyes, and we can’t see your eyes if you look straight down.

If you are driving a car in a scene, you don’t have to look directly to your right to a character sitting beside you. You can look to the other side of the lens and then return back to your side.

Use props if you want to, but it’s never necessary to show the producers that you read the script and know that props are indicated. If you want to use a prop, then setting where and how can be useful. Keep the prop in the frame when needed, and don’t let it cover your face.

For high status characters, you can keep your head symmetrical, not blink, and be still. Actors call it “jawline acting” because the firm jaw denotes strength.

If you are going to cough or pull at your ear as a character trait, do it early on in the scene. Around the second line. That sets your behaviour. Then do it again about halfway through and that will confirm that your character has this behaviour. Doing it too much can divert the viewer’s attention, and doing it only once looks like it’s you the actor coughing.

If your character is in a scene that’s big and emotional, then blink and move around as much as you need to. Play without care about the blocking but with care to the truth of the situation.

Blocking an audition does not mean every moment is set in stone, but using your conscious technique can release your unconscious creativity. 

What to wear.

What you wear to an audition is important.

The acting is more important.

Try not to second-guess yourself or compare what you wore to what others wore.

Learn to make your decisions on hair, wardrobe, and makeup quickly and clearly. You’re auditioning for similar types of roles, so learn the colours and styles that suit your types. 

Then you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time. Those decisions are made — now on to the acting.

Listen to professionals who say which colours suit you and pay attention to Hollywood’s iconic colours: grey T-shirt is the shirt of choice, TV likes blue, black is everywhere, etc. The colours change as fads change.

You only need one piece of clothing per type, and you can wear it over and over to auditions. Buy cheap versions of designer clothes.

You won’t get hired for wearing a real designer outfit.

You don’t want to be diverted worrying about what you’re wearing or if your hair looks good while you’re auditioning.

If your outfit makes you self-conscious — don’t wear it.

Like what you choose, so you’re relaxed.

The waiting room.

This is the most difficult place.

Try to take it up for solution. Think about it and develop tactics that can become your habits, so before your audition you’re in a good state.

Just because everyone is doing it doesn’t mean you need to. So, if there’s a lot of chatting going on, you don’t need to chat. If colleagues are there and want to catch up, you can say “Let’s talk after the audition.”

These small efforts really help you be in the best space possible prior to playing.

Always try to go with what you need on that day. Be particular. Which means one day you might be chatty.

The waiting room is like backstage in the theatre. It’s the working space prior to performing. 

Treat it as such.

Socialize if you want to, listen to the gossip if you want to, but be careful. Try not to get diverted. Protect yourself.

Any working actor who doesn’t understand why you’re doing what you’re doing isn’t professional.

Before you go to the audition, visualize the room and what actors in your type may be there. Especially the actors, room, casting people you don’t like. You must make a plan to deal with them, so you don’t get dragged down.

It’s best when you feel unity with your fellow actors — all in battle — and can draw succour from that.

It’s best when we “help the producers make their show.”

It’s best when we’re at one with the system and its parts.

That’s best. 

But . . .

At some auditions, we need to protect ourselves and hold up the hand when someone comes over to talk.

Audition room. 

You enter the audition room and are greeted by the person behind the camera saying, “Stand on the mark.”

Try not to get diverted and take that greeting literally by putting each foot equally on either side of the T. 

The translation of their greeting is “Hello.”

Obviously, you are going to stand on the T, or near it, behind it, to the left of it. However you have prepped the beginning of the scene.

See if locking your feet equally on either side of the T is taking energy away from playing the scene simply and truthfully as yourself.

Clarifying moments like this adds up.

And doing as you’re told won’t guarantee you a job in the movies.

The reader. 

“If only the reader would play the scene with me better, I’d do better auditions!”

A reader is there to facilitate the audition. They aren’t there to play the scene with you.

Scene partners are your fellow actors in plays or on set. And they’re the actors you practise with in class.

The best readers will make sense of what they say, say it lightly and fairly quickly. 

They lift up the scene for you to take and do with what you will. They give it to you. 

But they aren’t and shouldn’t be scene partners.

This needs to be learned, so one more false expectation is given up and one more piece of disappointment goes away. 

Leaving a bit more space for your acting.

To the black wall.

Seeing a black wall at the end of your audition is deadly. 

It’s best if your auditions are part of your ongoing work and life. With none of them ever being the be all or end all. 

The continuity. 

As with all your work, watch your visualization sharply and see what it looks like when you see your audition finishing. You should see yourself leaving the audition room and walking out into light rather than darkness. You should see your work and life continuing.

Not hitting a black wall.

See the end of your audition while doing your prep. What you see at the end is very important.

To like how you’re leaving the audition is as important as liking how you start because it sets you up for the next one.

Desperation is a horrible quality that can derail you. Take the auditions in your stride, put them in perspective, and see how you get stronger.

Putting you in good shape for the next audition. 

Get your 3 yr. old daughter to read.”

That’s what a top casting director said to me recently.

Or you could say, “You never get cast because of your backdrop and lighting.”

That’s true.

Lots of your auditions now are self-tapes and on Zoom and you’re usually doing them where you live.

Don’t get diverted trying to have a perfect “studio” setting. The showrunners and producers casting shows have a large quantity of actors to see in each category and they are scrolling on mobile phones or, at best, on a tablet.

Decisions are being made quickly using their own criteria. Lighting, backdrops, who is reading, etc. don’t come into play.

No need for you to feel overwhelmed having “ten pages to learn.” 

Let them see who you are and what you are doing at the beginning.

If they consider you for the part, you might get a director’s Zoom audition or they may actually watch all of your self-tape.

You and your colleagues always do your best work. That will continue. For all the pages.

But as the audition pressures change — so you change.

. . . your 3 yr. old son could be a reader too.

“I think they liked it.”

When the audition ends and they stick up their thumbs and say “Good job, great, perfect,” it doesn’t mean you got the part.

It mostly just means “Thank you.”

An audition is only the middle with no beginning or end.

If there were a beginning, you and the director would have discussed the role, rehearsed it, and then, when it was polished, you’d film it. And the end would have been the two of you discussing the work, analyzing it, summarizing it.

That doesn’t happen.

All that happens in an audition is that you do the work in the middle. That’s the condition. 

You prepare the audition on your own. Every actor does. That’s the beginning.

You summarize on your own. That’s the end.

If they said “Good job,” then you probably did do a good job. But don’t you do a good job every audition? You’re a professional, you’re prepared, and you have TV and movie experience.

Watch out that your desperation doesn’t have you grasping on to what they said. Learn to judge the quality of your work yourself.

Most of the factors in casting are out of your control, and you’re not privy to the discussions that decide casting. 

What is in your control is your acting. 

Keep getting better and better at that.

Audition feedback. 

Asking your agent for feedback after an audition sounds like a good idea.

But does the feedback assist you, or does it make you self-conscious? Everyone may be doing it but does it help you? If it helps you, then great.

Before you ask for feedback, some questions are worth asking, such as: What is the process for getting the feedback to you, and under what conditions is the feedback being considered?

Just imagine if your agent asked a casting director for feedback only two days after your audition. The casting director may have seen fifty people that day in five categories and maybe the same again the next day. What can they remember and what can they say?

Don’t forget the pressure agents and casting directors are under. They’re busy doing their work.

Any comment that comes back to you from a casting director via the agent has enormous weight. It’s often critical and can, at times, be quite damaging to your confidence. A comment is sent to you and there is no discussion as to its meaning, and if it’s dire, then there you are left holding it. “He’s too theatrical!” It can stay on your mind for a long time. 

Why not let the casting directors and agents do their work and you do yours?

Work on your craft with your acting coach in rooms where the critical discussion is full and does support your practice.

Asking for feedback might sound like a good idea — the reality might be something different.

Callback.

Do what you did in your first audition. Wear the same clothes.

Try not to overwork or overthink prior to the callback. You want to do well, but observe what diverts you from — and what keeps you from — the magic that you had in the first audition.

Usually the director will be there and sometimes producers. Go as you would go to a working session — like going to class. They’ll be giving you directions, so have your working-actor mind ready.

It’s a slightly different mindset than the audition one.

Getting a callback might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

Often, they bring in actors doing their first audition at the callback. Casting, directors, and producers want you there and for their own reasons. They’re not sure yet what they want — they’re looking for it.

Callbacks are positive, yes, but best if you can normalize them and not boast to give yourself validation. Even if everyone does it.

Producers’ sessions and multiple callbacks for series regular roles require strength and conviction. Come to terms with your conscience, so you’ll see the process to the end. 

It’s hard work.

A callback is an audition that gets your hopes up.

Chemistry read.

You’ve done the first audition and the callback, and now they’ve asked you to come in for a chemistry read.

Does the term divert you?

So many terms in the movie business need to be translated. You can be caught off guard if you take them literally.

What does a chemistry read mean? Can you prepare differently for a chemistry read than for another audition? Is it adding to your pressure? Are you dispersing your energy trying to figure out how to make sure you have chemistry in the room? Is it confusing and mystifying?

You could say acting is making chemistry. The Oxford Dictionary’s definition of chemistry is “the complex emotional or psychological interaction between two people.”

Sounds like acting.

Your time in drama school, at auditions, and shooting movies has been spent doing just that.

Definitions are essential to being professional. Once you’ve clarified or translated the idea, then you’re free to fulfill it.

One thing you know is that the Hollywood publicity machine loves to talk about chemistry between actors. As if it’s special and different from good acting. 

Has casting picked up the term from publicists, gossip columnists, and reviewers?

Sometimes you hit it off with your scene partner and sometimes you don’t. But you’re always professional, trying to play truthfully and fulfill the writing.

If you look right, have the right energy, and the right tone, then the producers will hire you. They might say afterwards, “Oh, the two of them had such good chemistry,” but they cast the actors that suit their taste.

After the audition, you could justifiably say, “We were two actors who knew how to connect to play the scene truthfully.”

Chemistry read. Sounds like Hollywood-speak.

Self-tapes. 

You’re doing more self-tapes these days.

Many interesting points to consider while doing them.

Who you do the self-tape with is important. If it’s a friend or colleague, watch it doesn’t get soft and they start being coaches or directors. That will divert you. 

Also, if it is in a casting studio, the same thing can happen with the reader/operator. You give them authority by asking them “what they think” because they are the only ones in the room. They’re used to being asked and are used to giving direction. Do you want it?

Learn to know your own work.

Don’t do too many takes. Usually where you’re at with the audition is where you’re at, and unless you’re an actor that really does improve after many takes, just do four or five.

More is not necessarily better.

It’s normal you’re a bit nervous for the first couple of takes but then you’ll drop in. 

Watching the takes back is also something to consider. Do it if you want to, but as soon as you don’t like how you look or the sound of your voice — stop.

You’ll know which takes were good. There will be very little difference between take three, four, or five, so don’t beat yourself up by trying to pick “the best.”

Just because you’ve booked an hour doesn’t mean you have to work an hour.

The great thing about self-tapes is that you can choose where to do them, control the time, the amount of work, and channel the energy.

Homeopathy. 

In homeopathy, one treats the main symptom first. 

Do the same when you prep for auditions.

An actress with lots of theatre experience comes to me with a TV audition and says, “Geez, I’ve never been to a TV audition! I don’t know what to do.”

So I say, “Why don’t you go to the casting studio, look around, see the space, wait in the waiting room for a bit, and often a studio is open, so you could go in, stand on the mark, see the camera, and just experience it a bit.”

She does. Afterwards she tells me that it really calmed her down.

Allowing her to do her work.

Another actress blurts out, “I have an audition for the lead in a sitcom. I shit you not. Me an audition for the lead in a series? Whoa.”

I say, “My first point is to stop saying Whoa. You may not stop thinking it, but don’t say it out loud anymore because that will affect how you do the work. If you’re not going to read for the lead, who is?”

She has to deal with the idea of the lead before she can get to the audition itself.

The work.

Treat the main symptom first.

You’ll be one of the first to know.

You’ve done an audition and are dying to know if you got the part. Fair enough. It’s understandable — roles are damned hard to land.

So, you call your agent and ask if you got the part. 

Good idea?

My agent once told me, “John, if you’re booked on a show, you’ll be one of the first to know.” Sound advice.

Watch that you don’t set yourself up for humiliation. Be professional and try to withstand the harsh winds of this business. Your agent has no idea if you’ve booked the job until casting calls and says so. 

Then your agent will call you.

Desperation is easy to fall into. The very nature of show business gives rise to it. 

Stay on the high road and know that your work is good, you have experience, and you’re ready, willing, and able to land a part.

Build your willpower to help resist urges that put you in a pit.

It takes too much energy to keep crawling out. 

Eyelines in auditions.

You have multiple characters in your scenes for your audition.

What to do?

You never need to show the producers that you know there are multiple characters in the scene. That won’t help you get cast.

But you may want to sort your eyelines to help you play the scene. If so, look near one side of the lens — in a Zoom audition or in the studio — when speaking to the main character. Secondary characters can be on the other side.

Work in a triangle of about thirty degrees on either side of the lens. That way they can always see both of your eyes.

Practise crossing your look either above or below the lens. You don’t want to spike the camera — looking into the lens.

Be careful not to feel locked within that space. You can always move. 

Often trying to place different characters in different places just diverts you from playing the situation. Your focus is on eyelines and not the acting.

If so — don’t do that. Play the scene looking close to the lens and leave it.

Big scenes — emotional or physical — should be played out fully and truthfully without attention to the eyelines. In those scenes you can be looking anywhere; you can have your back to the camera.

On set, eyelines are important and you should always ask if your eyeline is good.

In auditions, it’s up to you.

“My audition could have been better.”

The audition you do at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning is the best audition you can do at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning.

If you could have done better, you would have. 

There’s no need to set yourself up for constant regret. You’re already in the business of auditioning and acting in movies and TV, so just keep going. 

That’s the key — keep going.

If you want to summarize, critique, or analyze your audition — good. 

The best way to do that is to pick one point to work on, not a dozen, which will only confuse you. 

Thinking you could have done better also confuses your mind. What we really want is to get our mind clearer. 

What is clear is that you prepared your scene and tried your best at that time, on that day.

Leaving the audition is as important as going in because it sets you up for the next one, so try to leave with a clear head. 

Job done.

Go in, in character?

Don’t forget that casting directors have seen everything.

Enter the casting room how it best suits you: in character, or not.

Maybe you work best always “in character.” Then after the audition is finished, you break out of character and say “Thanks for bringing me in” and leave.

Fine.

Maybe you need to go in as “you,” say hello, suss out the room, hear what casting has to say, and then do the audition.

It depends on two parts. You, the subjective factor, and on the role, show, day, casting, etc.—the objective factor. You need to take both into account.

There aren’t any rules in acting, but there are lots of guidelines that you, in your practice, can use on any given day. 

Which of your techniques or tricks will best serve you upon entering the room?

Today.

The audition room is your working space. It harkens back to the great amphitheatres in Greece. When in front of the camera, you are in your place of work. It’s where you act.

Enter it in character or out of character. 

Either way, it won’t determine whether you get cast or not.

Without hope.

You have an audition and decide not to wear your glasses.

Then you think, “I’ll wear them during part of my slate.” OK, so far. 

Now the key question is whether you are hoping they will see the glasses and think that’s the look they want and you’ll get booked.

Or you’ll wear them thinking it’s a bit cheeky and you like it and are happy to wear them and show you have glasses and are just content and happy to do it. 

Without any desperate hope.

It’s best if your work develops on your own terms. That you take your position. With clarity and with lightness. Without reaching so far that you’re overextended.

Doing instead of hoping.

“If only I knew what they wanted.”

They don’t know what they want. That’s the TV rule.

Episodic television is very much about making it up as they go along. Searching for what works under time and money pressure.

The character description in the breakdowns is merely the first sketch of what — maybe — the showrunner would like. It’s in the ballpark, but it ain’t written in stone.

And sometimes it isn’t even in the ballpark. They get to a certain point and say, “No, we don’t need that character” or “We want the character to go in the opposite direction.”

You have to devise a plan, so you do your audition clear-headed and not confused.

If the character breakdown could lead you two different ways, it’s smart to prep both ways. You could say “I’ve got two choices here and I’d like to show them both to you,” or you could present one and then casting might redirect you to the other, but you won’t be caught off guard as you already took that choice into consideration. 

You can send in both choices from a self-tape.

Try not to get distracted by trying to figure out exactly what they want.

Breakdowns are written either by the showrunner, a writer from the writers’ room, a junior writer, or casting. They can divert you in two ways: 

- Adjectives. A list of adjectives that is impossible to fulfill.

- Activity. Telling what your character does. “The grandfather tells his daughter to follow her dreams.”

Neither assist you to figure out what your character wants and how they get it. Plus, it’s clear in the script that is what the grandfather is doing, so why write it in the breakdown?

What you can do — and are already doing — is learning what TV is, learning the icons, learning where you fit, learning how to suss out the genre and what your character’s job is.

That’s the main work — analyzing the scene. Then playing the situation as you.

The clues are there and you need to get better and better at recognizing them and recognizing them at speed. It’s like learning to see the clues Shakespeare put in his text that help guide the actors.

Tread carefully in using the character breakdowns as your only guide.

Crying over the injustice of you not being fully informed of exactly what the producers want is distracting, humiliating, and a waste of your time.

Although it is an injustice.

Kiss, kick, kill. 

Your audition sides may call for you to kiss, kick, or kill. 

What’s the best question to pose? Is it “How can I show that?” or is it “How can I use that?”

You never have to show the producers that you know what is written in a scene. You won’t get cast for doing that. If a tiger appears before you in the scene, you don’t have to make sure the producers know that you know it’s a tiger.

They want to see you afraid of the tiger.

What will assist your acting is finding out what happens to you before, during, and after the kiss, kick, or kill. How does it change your breathing? How you feel? 

Don’t give up the opportunity to play those moments because they seem difficult to do.

For a kiss, you can close your eyes, you can move your mouth, you can put your arms around yourself — anything — if you want to.

Or you can do nothing, live through it truthfully and breathe. 

Point is kiss, kick, and kill are great transitions to play. 

Ask those good questions — Is it the first kiss, the last one, the kiss of death, kissing a baby, kissing a loved one goodbye, a mother’s kiss, etc.?

These activities don’t have to be mimed. 

Holding a gun. No one will notice if you’re just pointing your finger as the gun.

Do it — point your finger. Hold your hand up to your ear as a phone. 

All good.

You won’t look stupid because they will be watching you behave and the gun-hand will be peripheral. 

If they’re looking at your gun-hand . . . well.

Learn to let these iconic activities serve you. 

Knowing your lines

No actor ever got cast in a movie because they recited their lines correctly.

You get cast in a movie if your acting is good enough and if you look and sound the way the producers and director want.

All actors learn their lines. It’s kind of the first thing we set out to do.

In an audition, the key is to show yourself doing something. Don’t get diverted by trying to remember lines during the audition.

You won’t be reprimanded for not knowing your lines; this isn’t school — it’s the movie business. The casting people will know you’re prepared by how you play the scene.

Carry your sides or don’t carry them; it doesn’t matter. You need to find what works for you. Don’t pay attention to any gossip you hear about casting directors “hating it” when an actor holds their sides.

Nonsense.

This isn’t a job interview; it’s an audition. Big difference.

If you have a large chunk of dialogue and are overwhelmed with “How am I ever going to learn this speech?” then flip it and say to yourself, “I’ll stay in the situation with the lines I know, play the scene, and when I come to the long speech, I’ll still stay in, but I’ll read it.” Bingo! 

Weight off your mind, leaving your preparation to move ahead more freely. 

If the idea and practice of memorizing a scene exactly allows you to play truthfully — then fine, do it.

Be smart in these auditions and set yourself up for success.

Someone you know, love, and trust. 

Use this “like” when needed.

Playing to the lens in a commercial extolling a product, the question can come up: “Who am I talking to?” Picking a real person you know, love, and trust can assist you to make the pitch intimate.

Giving a speech in a crowded banquet scene gets more difficult when they come in for the close-up. Who are you talking to?

Pretending you love your scene partner can work — substituting a real loved one might make it more real.

The phrase also describes intimates. 

Many movie characters who are intimate don’t have sex. Cops are intimate — they have each other’s backs; any partners on TV such as lawyers and doctors follow that dictum; U.S. Marines say they never leave a man behind; firefighters fulfill the phrase.

These TV procedural characters all know, love, and trust each other. It’s a key element of the trope.

Could be a useful phrase.

“Me or Character?”

It’s a question you may have asked.

It’s a complex question, much discussed and thought about.

A dialectical one.

The internet writes that a dialectical relationship is:

a relationship in which two phenomena or ideas mutually impact each other, leading to development and negation. Development refers to the change and motion of phenomena and ideas from less advanced to more advanced or from less complete to more complete.

You probably start referring to a new character in second person — “He does this,” “She does that.” Most actors start that way. You probably use I and me when talking about your work on the new character. “I’m struggling with this line.” Most actors do.

Then dialectics kicks in and a new — a third — develops from the two she and me into a new I. You, the actor and the written role, developed into this new I. A changed and more advanced identity.

Every role you play is a character. Every character you play is you.

The interrelation between those two aspects is complicated and depends on the project and your role. And how you like to work.

It’s constantly changing and developing.

Some TV shows are asking to see you, how you look, how you behave — fine. It’s still acting. You aren’t at home sitting on your couch; you’re on set in front of a camera. You’re a character in a story.

And some roles require limps, accents, wigs, coloured contact lenses, and lizard feet. We call these Character parts. But it’s still you playing the role, limping and sporting the wig.

Learn the genres to be a better actor, but don’t get bogged down trying to answer diverting questions. 

How a question is posed is everything.

Slate this!

Many breakdowns today have complicated slate instructions.

Some of the demands are difficult to fulfill at home — even impossible.

You don’t want to make waves with your agent who is telling you that casting director so-and-so is picky about the slates, but you also need to focus on your acting.

Casting and agents have the closest working relationship.

Often, the breakdowns, shooting and slate instructions for self-tapes can divert you. Something you don’t want to happen when you’re trying to do your best at what you do — act. And prepare it in a short time.

At the end of the day, if the producers like what you did in the audition, they will hire you and the slate won’t make a difference one way or the other.

But you have to deal with your agent and they have to deal with casting. 

It’s dicey. 

“Slate your name and height.”

Audie Murphy was a movie star in the 1950s, and he was 1.65 metres tall or 5 foot 4.

Kiefer Sutherland is 1.75 metres tall or 5 foot 7. Lucy Liu: 5 foot 2; Rachel McAdams: 5 foot 3; Catherine Deneuve: 5 foot 5; Reese Witherspoon: 5 foot 1; and Tom Cruise: 5 foot 5. 

On the other hand, Yaphet Kotto: 6 foot 2; Denzel Washington: 6 foot; Nicole Kidman: 5 foot 10; and Uma Thurman 5 foot 11. 

Why are you asked to give your height while auditioning for a role in a movie? Why not your weight or your shoe size? Ask around and see what you find out. See what your agent says. Maybe ask a director or producer on set. 

It certainly isn’t because tall people will sell more Coke, or short people more cars.

No, it’s because Hollywood wants the casting to be “height perfect.” So the lead actors look just right. So the show fulfills the Hollywood icons. So the viewer is never confused by the height of the characters, who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. 

Or who is going to get the girl, is funny, or is saving America, 

The more perfect the show, the more Coke will be sold.

So much of casting is based on how you look.

Alan Ladd was short and they used to dig a hole beside him for the other actor to stand in so Ladd looked taller.

Technical dialogue.

Learning technical dialogue can be difficult.

Legal, medical, military, scientific.

Try separating it from the playing part of the scene. Usually most of the scene is playable — then there’s the technical language, so you could lift it out, learn it separately, and then put it back in. 

The playing part of the scene you can learn and the technical part memorize. You won’t get cast because you pronounced the terminology correctly — you get cast based on your acting. You won’t be examined on your knowledge of the terms. You have to act them believably. 

Looking up the definition of the terms helps put things in context and makes learning the words easier.

Breaking the words down into parts may help. How many syllables? What is the root of the word — Greek, Latin? The prefixes, the suffixes. Do the words have similar endings such as -isms, -otic, -tional, -acti, etc.?

Look for the music of the words and the phrases. You can learn to sing it.

Find the correct syllable to be stressed. Google an audio link for pronunciation.

In an audition, you can read the technical language portion from the sides.

You know the situation — you play and play and then when it comes to the difficult text you lift up the sides and read it — then go back to playing and playing. This prevents you from getting diverted by worrying about the technical language. 

Don’t try to act as if you know the terms cold when you don’t because you’ll probably stumble, speak too fast, and embarrass yourself.

Speaking the terms slower and enunciating more can help. It’s a way of keeping your mind in control over the difficult words and stops you from capitulating.

Visualizing an image you associate with the word can assist as the brain sees the image easier and can retrieve the word. The mental images you create act as reminders for the words in your memory.

Even regulars on shows find it difficult. Michaela Conlin, playing Angela Montenegro on Bones, said, “By the end of the season, our brains start to turn to mush and it becomes harder to remember everything.”

Putting all your energy in your socks.

When you prepare your audition, put your energy into the acting.

Under pressure you can wish that by dressing perfectly, you’ll get the part. And that includes — both literally and figuratively — your socks.

How you dress, your hair — it’s all important. Make the decisions based on the show and the scene and make them quickly and decisively. 

You don’t want to be second-guessing what you wore or how you did your hair or comparing any of that to how the other actors dressed.

That only causes doubt.

Let how you look support your audition. You should like what you choose. That’s very important.

Avoid wearing something that you can’t support. An actress once went to an audition wearing a see-through dress and was so self-conscious she was trying to hide the whole time. 

Put your energy into the playing of the situation. 

Leave your socks inside your shoes.

Wall-to-wall dialogue.

That’s what they called it in the old days. 

Maybe they still do.

An on-camera role in a commercial with lots of dialogue — that’s wall-to-wall dialogue. Lots usually means six to eight lines, which, compared to a movie or a play, isn’t much at all, but in a commercial it is.

Yes, sometimes there are more than eight lines. 

Usually the text is extremely well-written, precise, and makes all the key points that the client wants to make. 

But because the speech isn’t natural dialogue, it could trip you up. 

A good method to learn the dialogue is to ask a made-up question before each line and then answer it with the written one. 

Let’s take a car commercial, for example. If the first line is “Everybody wants freedom,” your possible question could be “What’s one thing that all people want?”

Make up the questions so you like them and answer the questions as if you’re speaking to someone you know, love, and trust.

The next line might be “It’s a rare automobile that responds to nature,” which is a big jump in thought from the first line. The writers are expressing the ideas that the car company thinks will help sell cars. Often the lines don’t seem to connect.

Asking the questions allows you to make your own truthful connection. A flowing series of questions and answers.

The question could be “Can any car take all kinds of weather?” which provokes the bridge thought “No, it’s a rare automobile that responds to nature.”

Although the speeches in commercials might not flow naturally and logically, you can always answer fresh to each line by setting yourself up with an inner monologue question.

Try it. 

See if it assists you in speaking wall-to-wall dialogue.

On hold. 

Your agent tells you you’re on hold.

Or they put a pin in you, you’re on the short list, you’re first choice, checking avails. 

If you’re on hold, you’re working. You have plans that could include other work, family, health, holiday, or study. But your future is up in the air until you find out if you’re cast or not.

That uncertainty of being on hold — which also means postpone, defer, shelve, suspend, delay, adjourn, mothball — can make you anxious. You’ll be making plans to see how you might juggle what is confirmed and what may change if you’re cast.

That’s work.

Unpaid work. Unrecognized and unspoken work. You and your colleagues all burn up energy preparing for a change — often on short notice — and living in uncertainty and worry.

Those close to you worry too. 

You might be worrying if you’ll remember the lines, especially if you’re booked on short notice. Getting put on hold might make you think, “Oh good, I did a good job.” Putting you on a high, but then not booking puts you down into a low. 

A roller-coaster ride that you didn’t ask for.

Studios, producers, showrunners, casting, and agents don’t go on that ride. You do.

You’ll hear if you do book, but not if you don’t. You can call your agent and ask, but that’s not considered proper protocol. That doesn’t earn your agent any money — taking the time to find out if someone else has booked the job. 

Casting doesn’t want to be asked that question from agents.

Producers definitely don’t want to answer that question from casting.

And so it goes.

It’s left to you to try to figure out what’s happening. When normal returns.

Will you ever get paid for that work? Maybe add it to the fee of your next job.

Some may describe this process as “the actor’s life,” but it’s interesting to see what a thing actually is. 

Keep going.

While auditioning, you can keep going even if you drop lines.

Especially when you’re in it.

The struggle in the moment to find words to make your point can be gold. Not sure what to say — speak your inner monologue. That keeps you in.

You’ll soon find the written text.

Main thing is to keep playing the situation and your character.

Vapours.

At the end of the scene, don’t be in a hurry to end. You’ve created something, changed the space, channelled the energy, so let that vapour float you on for a time.

Like a white streak trailing behind a jet.

What you created is worth something. It’s what you smell when you sniff a well-cooked dish. Inhaling that feeds you for the next take, scene, or future work. 

Breath it in.

Casting directors don’t like . . .

Try not to get sidetracked by rumours in actors’ bars about what certain casting directors like or don’t like.

Ignore stories such as “Never bring props into an audition,” “Don’t wear stripes,” “Don’t shake hands,” and other tales from the dark that tend to sit heavy on your actor’s head.

Actors do, and the industry wants you to do, what you do — act.

Casting directors have tremendous power over actors, so they can demand whatever they want, but at the end of the day they are happy when you give good audition.

That’s it.

Shaking hands or not shaking hands won’t get you a role in a TV series.

Meaning what you say, playing simply and truly, fulfilling the job that your role requires, looking and sounding right will.

You’re already a nice person; you’ll be on time; you’ll bring a pic and résumé (not even needed now); you’re prepared; and you’ll be gracious and professional.

Good enough.

Once they say “Rolling,” all they want to see is good acting.

From negative to positive.

Before the audition, an actor whispers, “Watch out, the casting director is in a bad mood.”

She might be. And if so, why? 

It’s probably got nothing to do with you and everything to do with the high pressure of the movie business. 

There are a hundred reasons why she might be in a bad mood — session’s running late, clients aren’t happy, she just lost a casting job, actors can’t grasp the genre, etc.

When you have the energy and have sussed out the room, sometimes you can change the tense atmosphere to a more relaxed one. You can ease the casting person’s anxiety by being sympathetic, understanding, and professional.

It’s as if you’re asking, “Can I help you?” Or as if you’re giving them a hug. You might say something like, “Boy, this movie business is tough on all of us, isn’t it?” You’ll feel a sigh of relief when the casting director says, “Geez, you’re right.”

You’ve now changed the energy in the room from negative to positive. The new atmosphere allows you to do better work. 

This isn’t about sucking up so you get more auditions.

Locking horns with casting because they’re in a bad mood will get you nowhere. And it won’t help your acting. But you can’t ignore it, so some days you just have to take it — knowing it isn’t about you.

But on your best days, you can flip it — negative to positive — creating a better working atmosphere for everyone in the room. 

It takes thought, practice, skill, and genuine empathy.

An actor writes . . .

Stumbled upon a thought — an insight, for me.

I’ve heard the phrase “approach an audition” many times before, i.e., “how do you approach an audition.”

Over the last year, I’ve been taking an easier approach to auditions, not really forcing anything. Just observing it, approaching it quietly, talking to it, letting it come to me.

Some are more skittish; some are friendly and just run up to say hi.

It’s been working for me, so I’ve continued doing it this way, and now I feel almost like a wrangler, or a hunter, or perhaps an animal preservationist.

Notably, each audition is different, so requires a different approach.

But none of them can be rushed.

Though for all, I do feel a distance closing and a need to observe it a bit from a distance, study it, before getting close enough to put it in the net.

An actor’s story. 

Taking actions to protect yourself so you can do your work is good.

Being dogmatic usually not.

My recent audition experience as an actor shone a bright light on that.

I don’t read breakdowns as they divert me and the three unplayable adjectives bore in my mind like a buzzing bee. Fine. That’s part of my process and I stand behind it.

It’s specific and mine, and I like it. 

I can suss out the genre, the point of the scene, and the job of my character by reading the text. But this time I didn’t let that be my guide.

I peeked at the breakdown and read two adjectives. The text was warm and eloquent, but my two adjectives were cold and ruthless. I jammed the scenes against the writing and jammed my playing against the writing. 

But dogmatically, I wasn’t going to go back and read the whole breakdown. I knew better.

As soon as I got home, I did read the whole description, and the first three adjectives were warm, eloquent, charismatic. Further in the description it says “a ruthless side.” 

That’s the bit I peeked at.

Then, and this makes it a real actor’s story, casting sent my agent a note saying John did a good job and could he redo the audition but make the character warmer.

I guess if I get cast, it will be a happy ending. I may get cast — I might not. 

What lesson is here?

My colleague said, “If you peek at a breakdown, you have to read all the breakdown.” That’s funny and apt, but probably not the lesson.

I didn’t let what I know — text and its guide to playing — be my guide. And I didn’t stick to my guns by not reading the breakdown. My approach.

It felt like I followed an old negative pattern in my brain. Hard to describe what that pattern is, but I know it like an old friend. An old friend I don’t need to see.

Also, seems like I was dogmatic. Me insisting I’m right — trying to force the text against its will — despite the quality of the text in front of me.

It’s a difficult life being an actor, and auditions are the most difficult.

The Work.

Acting for the camera. 

This is the proper title.

At the end of the day, when we make movies, you are acting for the camera. The acting classes geared for film and TV must have this title.

Yes, read-throughs, first blocking for camera, camera rehearsal, masters, two shots all include other actors and lots of the set. 

But once the camera is just on you, then it’s acting for camera. Television is often called talking heads and that’s done in close-up. Ultimate acting for camera.

The money shot.

It’s not like a play where the audience sees your whole body, all the other actors, the full set all the time. Feature films combine size — a key element of the form — with tight shots.

Your performance is influenced by how you’re photographed and lit. As the shot gets tighter, you are being directed more to fit the frame.

How they shoot you influences what your final performance looks like.

What is filmed — by the camera — is then pieced together by the editor and director. If it isn’t shot, it won’t be in the film.

You need to do your practice in front of a camera. Learn and master what is specific to acting for camera.

Don’t try to out-act a tree.

At the Moscow Art Theatre, the actors had to pretend to hear the cherry trees being cut down.

In film, you have real cherry trees to watch being cut down. 

You’re an actor watching the trees being cut down, so what do you have to do? Nothing. Stand there and watch. The sound of the axe, the chips flying, and the woodcutter cutting all tell the story. 

We cut to your face. You watch. You are us watching. We see your face — a blank face — and we attribute to your blank face what we think you’re thinking of the trees being cut.

Then we cut back to the tree being cut down. The tree is just there getting cut down. It plays its part.

Don’t do any more than the tree is doing or you’ll look silly. You won’t be believable.

In David Lean’s film Lawrence of Arabia, we see a rider on a camel against the horizon, and for two minutes they ride straight towards the camera. Perhaps one of the purest examples of how cinema can capture realism in a natural setting.

Omar Sharif had the good sense to do nothing but ride the camel.

Be a good student.

The teacher and the student both have obligations.

In the actor training circles, the actor talk is often focused on what the teacher was like and/or whether it was a good class.

Very seldom do the actors discuss their own work and more importantly whether they fulfilled their responsibilitieM.

Being a proper student is simply being a proper professional. The two are one and the same.

Class is a great opportunity to learn how to be professional.

If you are an emerging actor or an experienced one, you must cross the bridge from the old attitudes you had as a student in school over to new professional ones.

If you are in class, you must fulfill the minimum standards of being on time, prepared, having an opinion, working consciously, and asking questions. If you aren’t doing that, then the teacher cannot conduct the class as the dynamic is not achieved.

Here is the Merriam-Webster definition of dynamics: “the forces or properties that stimulate growth, development, or change within a system or process.”

You have to be one of those forces.

An acting class is not a service where you pay and expect to get good value for your money and then complain if you think you didn’t. That’s trouble.

If you’re going to class for a quick fix, you’re also in trouble. If you’re going to class because you haven’t been booking work lately and you think by going back for one class you’ll start landing jobs — you’re in trouble again. 

Practising should be part of your actor’s life. Not the be all or the end all. You shouldn’t go trying to have a good class. More trouble.

Study and practice should be ongoing. Make it part of your cycle — class, audition, shoot, class.

Actors from the theatre come to film and TV classes wanting to learn how to act for the camera. Great. But they often cling to their narrative of “I’m a theatre actor, and camera is soooo different.” More trouble.

Let your narratives go and do the work.

The proper acting teachers are modern ones having assimilated the works of the masters. They continue to try to meet the demands of the present. They fulfill their duties and obligations.

As a student, you must ask questions. If the question is not appropriate, the teacher will say so. Then you must ask another question. It, too, may be inappropriate and the teacher will say so. Then the actor must ask, etc. . . . and on and on the training goes.

Just because you ask a question doesn’t mean you’ll get an answer.

Sometimes the teacher will answer the question.

The student must keep trying. The teacher keeps encouraging, critiquing, aiding, advising, and clarifying. That’s the back and forth.

It is an organic relationship with two equal parts even though the teacher has the authority. 

Rights and privileges, duties and obligations.

It takes two to tango.

Practice in class.

Practice in class is different from auditioning or performing.

Practice is when you train your mind and body to do your acting. Learn to train properly. It will give rise to good habits.

Always put yourself first, your fellow actors second, and your teacher third. The experience should be yours.

By looking after yourself, so you can act your best, you fulfill being a good scene partner and a good member of the collective art form that is movie-making. Being nice and wanting your partner to like you don’t help.

Of course, you’re professional, respectful, and appreciative of one another’s work. That’s the expected norm.

Use class to practise small parts of your work. We grow in little bits. Step by step. 

Try not to draw conclusions after experiencing good work. Resist the urge to try to remember what you did. The experience is in you. Keep going.

Just showing up for class makes it a good class, so there should be no need to impose your will upon it. That’s a path to working too hard.

Don’t try to be good or interesting.

As far as breakthroughs go, they come after repetitive proper practice and then — Wham! — you assimilate something. A breakthrough. 

You can’t set out to have one.

The best routine as a professional is to practise, audition, shoot, and then come back again to practice.

Asking questions. 

When preparing a scene, you should ask questions.

The answers aren’t the point; the point is the “asking of the questions” and getting your mind active. The questions will stimulate your imagination, which builds your confidence. 

Any new idea that you conjure while preparing will always be with you. You don’t have to hold on to it. It’s in you.

Work properly so that your practice gives rise to good habits. Asking questions is part of proper practice.

Treat your mind with respect and know it is both powerful and delicate. Simply put: be nice to it. Asking questions should be a warm and friendly stroking of your mind, getting its best juices going, getting you going. 

Ask questions.

“All rise!”

That’s what they say in court when the judge enters.

Well, they do on TV.

You might, like many actors, ask what you can do to be a better actor when you’re not filming or in class.

Observing. That’s something.

Go to a courtroom, hospital, or police station. Take a seat and look and listen. Stand around and see who you see.

All types you play on TV.

In the halls before court is in session you’ll see the accused, their families, the expensive lawyers in their expensive shoes, and the cheaper lawyers in their cheaper shoes. Cops in uniform, detectives in suits giving hard stares, court officials.

Go sit in court.

You can’t go inside the Emergency ward, but you can wait in the waiting room. Lots to see and experience there. People in pain. The health care system naked and bare.

Go to Obstetrics and see the babies. See the mothers. See the nurses. Listen to the crying.

Drop into a police station for a real reason or a made-up one. Ask a simple question. See what the cops in the station are doing. How the desk sergeant behaves.

Watch a cop direct traffic.

More movie types.

You’re observing yourself and others all the time as part of your work. These three particular workplaces can give you specific experiences.

Actor speak.

You don’t have to make any sense when you talk about your work.

Your talk should reflect whatever you are grappling with at that moment.

This doesn’t mean actors are nonsensical. No.

Directors and acting coaches need to be clear and make sense as they are running the overall in a horizontal sense. Seeing the whole picture.

Whereas you, the actor, are concerned in a perpendicular sense. Up and down with you and your character — narrow — not lengthwise of the whole movie or class.

Your concerns should be how to play truthfully. Voice that struggle.

In that context, you don’t have to make any sense. The directors — the good ones — will be able to follow any mutterings, grunts, howls, protestations, ramblings that you make and hopefully translate them to assist you.

When asking the camera operator about the size of a shot, you should be clear. Of course. Or telling wardrobe the sweater is too tight. Then you will make sense.

And when agreeing or disagreeing with your agent on what your fee should be, you want to make absolute sense.

But in the heat of putting up a scene, making sense is not what you should have uppermost in your mind. Getting it right, impressing others — that isn’t why you should be speaking. 

When it comes to you actually speaking about your acting, it has to serve you first and communicate second.

Breathe as you breathe.

You have practised and heard so much about breathing.

We breathe all day long, so why the focus on something normal?

My experience is that it takes a long time — a lifetime — to assimilate the best breathing practices into your acting. To make it yours. To breathe as you breathe when in the scene.

Your goal should be to breathe as you when you’re acting. Not imitating the breathing you learned in voice class or yoga while acting. That’s a disconnect and your mind doesn’t like it.

The journey of practising better breathing to make it your own is key.

But you’ll probably — if you’re anything like me and other actors — have to act for many years carrying the disconnect of imitating learned breathing while acting. It isn’t a crime — it’s part of your development.

The point to know is that with conscious practice, your breathing will change qualitatively. It will become yours and it will include all the best practices you learned.

Once assimilated, your instrument will be trained and you will breathe well both technically and as you.

In acting and in life, the cycle goes impulse, breath, speech. That’s the linked journey you want to assimilate.

“I’m ready.”

Don’t start until you’re ready.

After “Action!” you need time between their order and your beginning.

It doesn’t have to be much time, but not jumping when the gun is fired is critical. 

Always try to be on top of your work. To put yourself first. 

To be in your own time and space that suits you. Not theirs.

It’s a question of an outlook and approach that is opposite of trying to please, of trying not to hold up time, of trying to get it right.

Going in your own time is qualitatively different.

This does not mean you hold up production. No. It doesn’t mean you don’t hit your mark in time or meet the dolly move or the camera push. Doing that is being professional.

It’s the mental conception that you start.

When do you go on set? When the Trainee Assistant Director comes and calls you and leads you on to set, chatting all the way, or when you decide to get up and leave your trailer and go in your own peace and quiet? 

See if there’s a difference.

In acting class, we practise this by saying, “Say when you’re ready.” When they are ready, the actors respond, “I’m ready.”

When the actor says they are ready, they aren’t telling me or the other participants. They are telling themselves and saying it on voice. A verbal recognition of their starting. 

We also do a hyper exercise highlighting starting. In that exercise, they can say ready or not ready. 

We take the exercise further by having one partner challenge the other: “You’re not ready.” “I’m not going yet.” “You don’t want to start.” “You’re not ready.” “Yes! I’m ready” etc.

The actors must give their answer of what they’re actually feeling — ready, not ready. 

There are a myriad of ways to do this — how you start — exploring your starting moment. That moment when you’re ready to act. 

It is about time and how you control it.

Place.

One of the five acting questions you ask is “Where am I?”

What space are you in?

How to translate location or stage directions — “She crosses the room.” “She gets out of the car.” “She runs out the door.” — in an audition can be confusing.

Only use what’s indicated in the script that you like and helps you act. You do not need to show the producers that you know what location is written in the script. Keep any activity that creates a transition for you — a before, middle, and an end where you’ve changed. You need that.

If you like imagining you’re in the same space that’s indicated in the script — fine, but the key is that you’re comfortable in the audition.

On set is different. The space is there.

It might not be completely real, so you can still let your imagination work. A set is usually quite realistic. It looks like the place indicated. An office looks like an office.

Exterior is even better. If the place is “the woods” and you’re in the woods, not much work is needed. Let the woods work on you and ease you. 

A street is a street. On location is one of the joys of filmmaking for you as an actor as opposed to the theatre where it is never a real forest or street.

Greenscreen and motion capture you need to really imagine where you are.

“Where am I?” remains a key actor’s question. Is it a familiar place — your home or a new place? What memories do you have of this place? What images are created in your mind when you enter the new place?

The adage works here too . . .

It’s your space. Take your place.

Doors 

Learn to appreciate the theatrical potency of doors.

Our Uta Hagen, when teaching away from her New York studio, always had the hosts install a stage door for her class.

Many things about doors. 

Beginning, middle, end. Outside the door, different space, different thoughts, open the door, space changes, enter a new space, new vista, new thoughts.

Watch those actors who don’t give up the door so quickly. “Doorway acting.” Just like “acting with your back,” acting in a doorway has much to offer. Holding on to the door handle.

If your character is entering a room and crossing to a table, couch, or desk, explore what can be had to express your character’s wants and tactics by the speed and manner in which you open the door, cross the threshold, and close the door before beginning your trajectory.

Character is revealed.

The character alone in the scene anticipating another character’s entrance.

You entering the scene is dramatic enough. Keep your door open for possibilities.

The scene is the unit of work.

How do you work on a screenplay?

Breaking it down into its first big parts helps. Those parts are the scenes.

As actors, directors, writers, and producers, we work on scripts scene by scene. They’re the units of work.

You shoot scenes out of order, so you must work on each scene as a separate entity. Its own whole.

What are the features of a scene?

Beginning, middle, and end. Occupies its own time and space different from the other scenes. Can move the plot forward. Has its own event. Each character wants something specific. It, along with all the other scenes, makes up the whole play.

To call scenes the units of work helps define the idea that the one thing leads to the next. Or, step by step.

When you’re in that scene — that situation — you have to be fully there and nowhere else. 

Within a scene, there are beats. Beats — as described by Stanislavski — are the next size of the play that can be worked on. The next smaller piece. There may only be one beat governing the whole scene, or a transition leading to a second beat. 

In beats, characters talk about the same topic in similar tones, time, and space. That’s a beat.

Then there are lines, individual words, and punctuation. Smaller and smaller parts to be looked at. All of this makes up a scene, and all the scenes make up the screenplay.

It’s like building a house.

In episodic television, what happens in one scene does not necessarily make sense in relation to other scenes. Learn to play the truth of each scene and try not to get diverted by trying to follow an arc. There might not be one.

Episodic television really proves that the scene is the unit of work. 

A read-through. 

Some words are written to be read aloud, and some words are written to be acted.

When we say “Let’s read the scene,” we mean “Let’s play it, let’s speak it, let’s act it.”

Text is written in words, and you can get diverted when asked “to read” by thinking you’re reading and not speaking a character’s words. 

A read-through actually means an act-through. Always. You’re an actor, not a reader. Other than at an event when you’ve been asked to read a statement, notice, or poem.

Patsy Rodenburg’s book is called The Actor Speaks.

“Just the facts, ma’am.”

This is what Sergeant Joe Friday, played by Jack Webb on the TV series Dragnet, used to say to witnesses when they strayed from the facts.

Getting the facts clear in a scene is half the battle.

Learn the plotline, sequence of events, key characters, location, time of day, good guy/bad guy, who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. 

This is the foundation to knowing what you’re doing in a scene. Know the facts before you start Acting. 

Then add the TV acting basics of being still, not blinking, and speaking on your voice.

Knowing your position or point of view is a different part of the work and is more sophisticated than knowing the facts. 

Long before you get to anything remotely emotional in TV acting, you must know the facts.

That’ll keep your feet on the ground. 

A great place to have them when you’re acting.

The event.

The event is what the 2nd AD writes in the call sheet for each scene. 

For example:

“Josh nervously divulges his plan to the audience.”

“Dr. Hertzberg provides another breakthrough.”

“Lucy gets educated in finance.”

“Lucy and Josh find the picture in a drawer.”

These descriptions consist of a proper noun (the character), a verb (what he does), and the complement noun or subject — the recipient of the action. 

The event describes the central action of the scene. It’s the main reason the writer wrote the scene. Sometimes it’s something new for the audience. 

“Josh nervously divulges his plan to the audience.”

Josh may never have revealed his plan before, so that’s new to the audience and is a plot point. 

“Lucy and Josh find the picture in a drawer.”

Maybe Lucy and Josh’s search for the picture was a MacGuffin and the finding of it a turning point in the story.

The event always tells you in simple terms the crux of the scene.

Knowing the event helps you to play the scene sharper.

Big scene. 

That term can be a headache you learn early as an actor.

Not a useful phrase.

Yes, some scenes and speeches are long or more emotional or more important. But watch this idea doesn’t divert you.

Because it’s “big,” then you might want to push, work extra hard, be better because it’s . . . big

Try not to do that. 

Approach the scene as you would any scene — as a situation that needs to be learned. 

The scene goes, as all scenes go, from one thing to the next. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. You can use techniques such as “like” or “as if” to substitute your experiences for those of the character.

All the good prep work you usually do works here too.

The issue is not to be overwhelmed by the size or import of the speech or scene.

If you take it as a “big emotional scene,” you can make the common mistake of playing in a general wash of emotion indicating the gist of it.

You’ll be confused doing that. We’ll be confused watching it.

Go step by step.

All your work has common parts to it, and your methodology can be applied to all those common parts — even in different situations.

Stick with the reality of the scene — not the idea.

Sustain it.

When you’re shooting a scene, be careful not to pick an activity that is difficult to sustain.

It might seem authentic, creative, or cool at first, but after hours of repetition, it might prove unsupportable.

Eating lots in a dinner scene. Continuous coughing. Twitching your eye. Screaming. These have to be thought-out and well-practised to be done without harming yourself.

Jumping off a horse.

Maybe once, but for repeated takes, it’s the stunt person who has the technique.

Training with a professional coach prior to performing a role will enable you to learn new things. The spontaneous choice can lead to regret.

Many movie stars and series regulars don’t actually eat in meal scenes. By not eating, they can focus on the scene and not get diverted.

Think if you can sustain the activity you’ve chosen.

Lose it.

The phrase is apt as your character no longer has control of their conscious mind but, rather, has lost it. Lost that control.

As an actor, you need lots of good, open breath to play there. Straining your throat is an early mistake.

It’s like being blind.

Rage.

Once it’s all out, it ends. You can’t live at this extreme level for long.

As always in our acting, we don’t want to be acting in grey but in sharp, well-thought-out colours. 

“General actor arguing” is grey.

What colour is the argument of your scene?

Essential oils.

The homework the actors had for the next class was size. Big emotion and big volume. Each were given events such as torture, birth, drowning, orgasm, trapped, eulogy.

They performed them well.

The work was excellent with good breathing supporting the vocal release of the emotion through the vowels. They had found their own truthful sources.

I then asked them to do more — cry more, suffer more, call louder — typical director’s result-oriented direction.

Most of them struggled with fulfilling the demand. I also got them to repeat the activity as if we were doing take after take. They struggled with that as well.

I encouraged them to use the pure source they had discovered through their sense memory work and add technique to that. To let their real emotion start and then make it bigger, louder, longer. Joining the technical with the pure can help fulfill the director’s needs.

A small concentrated impulse — like an essential oil — is enough to fuel size and repetition.

Technique coupled with the natural. A lifelong and complex pursuit.

As the actors tried it, we saw the relationship between organic emotion and technique. 

The one thing leads to the next.

Follow how the scenes are built.

Something is happening, maybe a spy is lying, so you change your tack and pretend to retreat, drawing in our spy. 

The one thing leading to the next.

The spy’s lying leads you to your switch. 

See how the writer wrote the flow of the situation and how your character follows the movement.

It’s simple, isn’t it? 

But key. Action to action. Beginning, middle, end, a new beginning.

Now you are backtracking, trying to lure our spy into giving over the information. Suddenly our spy reveals news, a secret that you didn’t know she had. Leading you on to something new.

Step by step.

Learn the simple progress of the scene. It may seem obvious, but the naturalness of how life unfolds — one thing leading to the next — is grounding.

You can’t add anything flowery on the scene until you have a solid base. 

Learn the situation.

When preparing a scene, learn the situation — don’t memorize a scene.

Learning the situation allows your brain to assimilate the words as they are linked to what is happening in the scene. 

Learning it is quite different from memorizing.

If you learn what is going on — how you’re getting what you want, the facts, relationship, time, place — you’ll have more to hold on to when you’re acting. 

If you memorize it, you’ll probably just be holding on to the words. It’s not enough. 

Always play the situation.

The situations in TV shows are iconic and usually each scene can be characterized simply. Such as girl flirts with boy, bad guy threatens, good guy speaks the truth, a couple argue passive-aggressively, two doctors do their job, etc. 

Once you learn it as a situation — which it is — then you make it yours.

The language we use reflects our method. 

Sharpen your approach and the naming of it. This isn’t semantics. It’s a question of clarifying what is your best practice.

The moment before. 

This well-known practice can assist you to have a good start to the scene.

At best, it bulwarks against you beginning by reciting memorized lines rather than playing a situation. It is one of the best tools you can have as an actor to help you get in.

All scenes have a beginning, middle, and end — the beginning is the most important.

Given circumstance or backstory is different from the moment before, in that it covers more history, more time.

Time is key here.

An obvious example as how to use this precept is if you have a typical TV line like, “No, I didn’t see anyone.” Here you’re most likely answering someone’s question, which is not written as they “got in late” in the scene. So, you could write out the imagined question “Did you see anyone?” as your moment before. Having that moment before imagined will allow you to have a start from a useful place — your imagination.

And it brings your breath into play — another key element. By “hearing” the question after “Action!” you will breathe in to answer with your first line.

It’s on that inhalation that you drop in.

Your imagined, unwritten question sends a signal, which creates an impulse in you and your breath as needed and respond. 

Send and receive — Yale School of Drama.

You create your own send and receive. You start from your imagination. You engage your breath.

There are many ways you could use the moment before depending on what you like and the scene. Could be a headache — feel the headache; coughing; out of breath; lost in thought; nervous and more. Something psychological or physical or both together.

Start there, breathe that in, and play.

You could be in mid-activity with a prop.

Launching from your moment before is qualitatively different from being pushed into their time and space on action and then trying to catch up to get into yours.

Practise to develop a habit to begin your way.

Think quickly. 

One of the best directing notes I ever received was from Peter Bogdanovich who said to me, “Think quickly.”

I’ve repeated that to many actors since.

It doesn’t mean speaking quickly. It means moving forward doing what you need to do in the scene and eliminating the actor resets. 

You jump off the cliff instead of inching over the edge — carefully.

You may be acting this way: dialogue — actor’s thought; dialogue — actor’s thought; dialogue — actor’s thought. Constantly interrupting yourself.

Resetting and dropping out.

It’s leaving behind all and any preparation you’ve made. If you try it — thinking quickly — you’ll be surprised how much guiding and checking you were doing. Giving that up creates space, and that space leaves you with nothing to do but play.

Be careful with the word quickly — it doesn’t mean fast.

The time, speed, pace of your mind in the scene and that of the scene itself remains intact and is found in rehearsal and shooting. It’s neither quick nor slow. It has its own integrity. 

The time in your mind and that of the scene is the time needed.

“Pick up your cues!” is something directors and teachers say. Watch you don’t give up your time in answer to their direction.

John Barton, in Playing Shakespeare, uses the same phrase — think quickly. 

Three basic levels of arguing.

There are as many levels of argument as there are human situations. Here are three common ones.

Passive-aggressive. 

This common low-level argument form is frequent in relationship and sentimental TV fare. 

Distinctive characteristics are the level, tone, and repeated beginning, middle, and end structure. As is often the case, the dialogue is call and answer as each character speaks nearly the same amount of words and syllables as the other. 

There is a ping-pong equality to it. 

The ping-pong analogy would be played something like this: Hit, hit (aggressive); put the ball down (passive). Repeat: hit, hit — put the ball down. 

It’s the deliberate and fake putting the ball down that gives the passive quality. “I’m not arguing anymore. I’m above that.”

You want to argue (aggressive), but you pretend you’re not, so you end it. You put the ball down. You do it with passive bridge phrases like “Anyways.” “Whatever.” “Forget it.”

Then you start again — hit, hit.

Your burning need to win won’t let you stop.

Argument.

This is when you’re in full, normal argument state. Blood is up, voice is connected, and you’re committed to argue it out. You don’t drop the ball or go back. It ends either by someone leaving or with a final clinching point.

Again, as in all beats, the two sing the same song. The rhythm, tone, volume, length of line all echo each other and your agreement that you are arguing. You make agreements with your partner, and they are usually unspoken but absolutely clear.

This middle level of argument will not end in divorce or death. Part of the overall agreement at this level is that the two characters will continue their relationship. An apology may or may not be made afterwards.

Lovers have the right to say anything to each other in the heat of the moment. 

Lose it.

The phrase is apt as your character no longer has control of their conscious mind but, rather, has lost it. Lost that control.

The argument now becomes more physical than mental. The pure emotion, the energy, the heightened breathing are all physical forces fuelling the size of the argument and the content.

This argument can lead to divorce, death, or any kind of violence. Uncontrolled acts. 

As an actor, you need lots of good, open breath to play here. Straining your throat is an early mistake.

Losing it is like being blind.

Rage.

Once it’s all out, it ends. You can’t live at this extreme level for long.

As always in your acting, you don’t want to be acting in grey, but in sharp, well-thought-out colours. General “actor’s arguing” is grey.

What level is the argument of your scene?

From “Ha!” to “Help!”

Your character is a low-status bad guy. You’re confronted by a high-status good guy or cool bad guy.

There can be different responses from you, the loser. Here’s an iconic order.

Laugh it off.

The cool guy demands payment on the loan or else.

“Ha!” You make a joke, crack wise, laugh off the threat. First tactic. 

He pulls out a gun. Stakes are raised. Tactic failed. 

New tactic.

The high road.

You claim your right to be left alone and protest their nefarious threats. “How dare you?” You take the high road.

He smacks you across the face. Stakes are raised. Tactic failed. 

New tactic.

I’ll tell.

You threaten legal action. “If the police find out . . .”

He shoots you in the leg. Stakes are raised. Tactic failed. 

New tactic.

Sorry.

You apologize. “Please, I’m sorry!”

He shoots your partner dead. Stakes are raised. Tactic failed. 

New tactic.

Oh God.

“Help!” You beg on your knees and cry for mercy.

Typically, they take the money, shoot you, or both. End scene. 

Tactic failed.

We see this laugh-to-God iconic journey repeated in Hollywood movies. The three neophytes in Pulp Fiction follow that journey when the hitmen come to collect the money.

No icing.

If you’re asked to bake a cake, just do that.

Don’t add any icing.

Your direction is to walk across the stage. Just do that. Don’t add. De Niro says it’s the most important thing and the most difficult.

Use your observation — one of the pillars of acting — to see how you do the simplest things. Observe others doing the simplest things.

Human behaviour.

That is practice you can do when not in class. Take that up seriously. Professionally.

There is a story — perhaps apocryphal — that Lee Strasberg said the only actor he ever saw walk across the stage the way a human being walks was Eleonora Duse.

Maybe he did, and maybe she did. Point is, we like the story because it exemplifies the importance of simplicity and truth.

Be sharp with yourself in how you do this work. 

Part of what makes it difficult is that it isn’t dramatic. No screaming, crying, fighting. No pages of dialogue, complicated blocking, greenscreen acting. So, it can deceive you in its simplicity.

It might seem boring.

To cite another great actor, Uta Hagen always had a scene study door wherever she taught. For her, entering was a decisive moment. Again, so simple and obvious, but on examination and practice loaded with importance and potential. 

She stressed the qualitative difference between being outside the door and entering and seeing the other person. Just that act.

When the cake is baked well, it’s very tasty.

Pick a page, any page.

There are many wonderful writers on acting: Stanislavski, Sanford Meisner, Lee Strasberg, Keith Johnstone, Uta Hagen, Harold Clurman, and others. 

When you want to be inspired and enlightened, pick up one of their books and open it anywhere.

Read until you get bored and then put it back on the shelf.

These best books on acting can be read cover to cover, but be careful you aren’t trying to learn how to act by doing that. 

The ideas in these books will support your practice and experience that you have had as an actor. The experience comes first and is most important; the ideas follow and support that experience.

These classic texts can be picked up and opened anywhere and the passage will usually be interesting.

Occasionally you’ll find you want to read one of them from cover to cover. Wonderful. Terrific. 

But don’t try to remember or learn anything from what you’ve read. As a working actor, you’ve had your experience, and when an idea written in one of these books speaks to you — it will. Use these books in the same way you do your best practice. When and how you want.

At other times, you may need to solve a particular acting issue at which point you can turn to a section in the book and read what the author has to say on it.

It’s very useful to apply theory to a detailed point of work that you’re actively taking up. The book may give practical tips or a methodology that you can immediately put to the test.

If you’re seeking light, clarity, or good energy, these books can provide it.

Pick a page, any page. 

Playing potential. 

In auditions, develop your ability to see parts of the scene that have potential for you to play. Particular and specific moments of playing. Moments that are describable and definable.

At first glance, something in a scene may appear problematic, but upon examination, you can see it as potential.

If the script calls for you to fire a gun and that might seem like a problem, explore its potential.

Are you a professional killer? Are you firing in self-defence? What is your emotion before firing and then after firing. Exploring the moment gives you food for your acting and lessens the worry about “how to do it.”

You don’t need a prop gun. You can use your hand and point your finger. It’s your acting of the moment that they will be watching, not the gun.

Firing a gun offers a great transition.

If the script calls for you to vomit, that can seem impossible to do in an audition.

Again, explore what is making you sick. Are you trying not to throw up? Are you pregnant? Are you drunk? Make whatever sounds you want during the vomiting. You won’t be judged on that, and nothing has to come out of your mouth.

Then how do you feel afterwards? Another great transition that can get your imagination going.

The problem has turned into potential.

How to film these kinds of moments on set will be solved with you, the director, and any specialists needed.

Help or hinder the lead.

Does your character help or hinder the lead?

If a character played by a leading actor, such as Harrison Ford, is seeking to get on a plane so he can rescue his daughter from threatened death, then the character playing the ticket agent must either be helping the Ford character get on the plane or blocking him from getting on.

Certain roles can be categorized as either helping or hindering the lead.

Next time you get a script, ask yourself that question. It’s a small, important point to clarify.

If there is no space on the plane and Ford is demanding, cajoling, or threatening to get on the plane and you’re the ticket agent saying, “There are no seats left,” your role is crucial. You are the obstacle for him to overcome.

If, on the other hand, there are no seats on the plane, but you devise a way to get him on, then you become equally important. An important helper.

In one scenario you hinder, and in the other you help. Both roles are day players — and crucial.

You really do support the lead when you fulfill your job as written in the movie. That’s why they are called supporting roles.

The Harrison Fords appreciate it.

Foil acting. 

There’s a term.

You have an audition for a part in a series. The trope of the series is that there are dead people who can communicate with living people.

There is a set of leading roles all fulfilling this particular genre.

One lead character needs parents. The parent’s job is to show certain aspects of the lead character that help drive the plot. 

The parents are a foil.

An excellent example of a movie star being the foil to allow another movie star to take their space is in the movie Roman J. Israel, Esq. Colin Farrell knows he is a foil to the complex and unconventional role that Denzel Washington plays. Farrell astutely keeps still, fills the picture of a corporate lawyer, and leaves Washington to do all the fancy footwork. 

Merriam-Webster defines a foil as “Someone or something that serves as a contrast to another.”

The writers want to make a point about the main character and need a foil to contrast and show something specific about them.

Learning how TV and movies are written including tropes, icons, clichés, reveals, and more can help you play more specifically. Can help you fulfill your job in a show.

Not being sure why your character is in the script or — worse — thinking it’s more than what it is can cause confusion.

Find out what the thing is and not what you think it is. 

Or you might get foiled. 

Language.

As an actor, you already know much about language.

And tomes upon tomes have been written about it. Let’s touch on a few points. 

Writers know language best and actors second best. They create — you interpret. You always begin with the written word. Text.

In TV, the writing style reflects the genre. Learn those clues to better deliver what is needed. Shows with speeches having three lines or more and clauses in the line or shows with one-line speeches and single-syllable words. Different.

The length of line, the number of syllables give the music of the show. The shorter lines require less breath indicating character, action, and genre. More breath for longer speeches, and complex words indicate different character, action, and genre. 

Verbs. Doing your prep, mark the verbs.

Nouns. Is the point of the line driving to the noun? Nouns are the facts of the scene. 

Adjectives. Observe if you’re emphasizing the modifier or the noun.

Bridge phrases — like, anyways, so, well, listen — transitioning from one point to the next. Changing the subject, giving you status as you control the scene. They give your brain time to formulate the new. It stops or diverts the other character and gives you the floor, the status, the control.

But. This wonderfully useful word juxtaposes the previous point and introduces your new one. Poses the opposite. Contradicts. From the B of but to the T of but can really make a point. The T is a good sharp sound.

Punctuation. Even in postmodern TV series, punctuation is still the guide. Old rules still stand: period is the end of the point, allowing you to go to the next point. Beginning, middle, end.

Vowels carry the emotion, consonants the intellect.

The English emphasize the noun and not the adjective; the Americans tend to hit the adjective, the modifier.

Text analysis is practical, not academic.

Hamlet says, “Speak the speech, I pray you . . .”

How your mind enjoys its own cleverness with language.

As you speak, your mind can be aware of the beauty and clarity of the language it’s creating.

With certain characters — speakers — there is an awareness that their dialogue, their speech is good. Or the manner in which they are delivering it sounds good.

It’s an overlapping support, praise, and confidence-boosting ride.

You speak; it’s beautiful; you’re encouraged to speak more; it’s better; you keep speaking; and so forth. Your mind likes it, and you like your mind liking it.

Think of Mark Antony in Julius Caesar and how his brain would be processing as he moved forward in his funeral speech. He would have liked it as he began the repetition of “All honourable men” and “Ambition.” He would know that it was making the point in an artistic way and very moving orally.

As the speech moves forward, one voice in his brain could be saying, “It’s going well,” “I like this,” “They like it.” Giving Antony more strength and confidence to continue and widen the parameters of his speech.

Observe when you have text that is tasty. 

Some actors have the awareness that they speak well.

Donald Sutherland was a speaker. An actor who enjoyed the enunciation, the sound, the variety, and the complexity of language. Often, it was one of his character’s main qualities.

Call it what you will — a showing off, a celebration of English, the beauty of rhythm, syntax and colloquialism — a love of language.

The minting (John Barton’s word) of language as you speak, and your awareness and enjoyment of that minting are gold.

Learn to enjoy the sound of your own voice.

Counting words.

Does counting the number of words in your line and the number in the other character’s line help you learn the scene?

Part of the form of the scene.

Supporting the content.

Often the two lines are equal. Rhythmic ping-pong. Back and forth. Echoing each other.

Either in agreement — or not.

And then there’s syncopation. When the speeches of each character differ in length, composition, and word type. A five-line speech followed by a one-line answer. Unequal.

The form revealing relationship, status, intent, etc.

While working the Kaffee-Ross scene from Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men in class, we discovered that the scene ended with a couplet. Both lines with equal words and syllables; both saying the same thing.

“Oh, ya? Well, blah, blah, blah.” And the response “Oh, ya?! Blah blah blah to you too!”

Same meaning, same number of sounds, same single-syllable words. Couplet endings. 

Equals speaking equal language.

Sorkin knew what he wrote.

You act in English, and these musical rhythms are part of that language you speak. Text expressed in repeated forms to elicit particular meanings. Content in the form of content.

Count the words.

“Can I change the words?”

It’s a bit like how many fairies on a pin head. 

Much debated by actors in bars.

There is no one answer to the question, but even if there was — what good would that do you? 

Treat each situation as needed and as dictated. 

For a typical TV audition where a particular tone is needed, a particular type of role, then focus on that. The words can be secondary. 

If there are medical, military, or legal terms, these must be exact. Part of that reason is to show the producers you can handle that language.

Some projects demand lots of improvisation, and others are letter perfect. You adjust and do your job. As a professional, you fulfill the director’s vision.

As far as casting goes, they don’t check you word for word, but rather want to see if you suit the role, look right, and have caught a colour that suits the episode.

In acting class, try working letter perfect for a while. See how that suits you. Then try only knowing the gist and saying it mostly in your own words. See how that goes.

Don’t get sidetracked by watching interviews with movie stars saying how they improvised every line and then think, “Ha, that’s the answer!”

Big movie stars can change the text to suit themselves. And sometimes they can’t.

Student films, web series, short films, low-budget features are generally all open to changing the lines.

Focus on playing the situation truthfully and simply as you — they’ll let you know about the dialogue.

Point.

As you rehearse, add the word point to the end of a line.

Better still, say it at the end of each point you are making, which may be more than one per line.

Say it with the same tone, intent, and volume as you’re saying the line. 

It gives you a magic opportunity to send the point of the line farther. And as you do it, your brain is realizing in reverse what the point really is. It’s a way for you to clarify your intention and give your brain a nice, sharp workout.

It’s a good way point, to sharpen your work point, because as you say it point, it pricks your point point, into a brighter clarity of intent point.

It goes like that.

Drowning. 

In an audition class one evening, there was a scene where an actor had to drown.

How to do it? She was stumped. Maybe we all were.

We thought we’d improvise drowning and see what it revealed. 

Revelatory. 

First it came out there were two parts to it — above water and below water. That meant breathing (above water) and holding your breath (below water).

Well, as an actor, you know anything with breath as key is very useful to you. Something you know and like a lot.

She did the drowning improv a few times, and each time the discovery was the terrifying experience of not being able to breath versus being able to.

Essence of life opposites.

When she was submerged, the whole class was holding its breath and a wave of fear swept across the room. I was clutching my chest, fearful, wondering, hoping.

Then! when she broke the surface and gasped, we all gasped. It was powerful. And all sourced from the breathing.

I haven’t done that in class as an exercise since, but I will. 

She went back to the audition format and did the scene again. She found that if she kept that essence of not breathing/breathing and maybe did it three times where the drowning part happened, that answered the question “How do I act drowning?”

Mean it.

That means you mean it.

The you is understood. It is a very useful reminder phrase to keep you playing truthfully. It is simple and direct and with the you understood, it can keep you on the hook and not off it.

Try using these simple guide phrases and see if they assist you. Just before they call “Action,” you can say, “I’m going to mean it.” Or after a scene, you can ask yourself, “Did I mean that?”

You have to practise something — including a simple technique like this — seriously for a period of time before you can tell if it assists you; otherwise it’s an opinion and not based on your experience.

Observe yourself in life when you really mean something, and feel where that comes from. Observe the difference between meaning it in life and acting it in a scene. 

As James Cagney said, “Hit your mark, look the other fellow in the eye, and mean what you say.”

Don’t act it — mean it.

Between the lines.

Those little thoughts that occur as you’re ending one line and beginning the next one. 

You’re speaking your line and your mind is conjuring the points and clarifying the points that you want to make and once your mind is happy and sees that the point is about to be made, that is when your mind begins to create the next point. It’s that time that is interesting and useful to observe.

Your mind, happy with what it has created, now begins building a bridge to the next line. From thought to thought, line to line.

It happens so quickly as the brain works at such speed that we often don’t pay attention to it. That moment of creation.

But that moment, which is both the conscious and the subconscious mind working, is useful to observe.

Sometimes as you’re finishing your thought — your line — the mind says that’s it, there’s no more, and I’m done. No new speech created.

Learn to observe this transition — that bridge from the ending of one idea or thought to the making and beginning of a new one. A new line.

It’s a fabricating, a conjuring, a minting, and it happens in the space between the lines.

Beginning, middle, end. 

In acting class, working with two beginners, one of them asked, “How do you do commercial auditions?”

One key part is to go ready to improvise the situations they give you. 

Another part is to find the beginning, middle, and end of the scene.

I made up a Coca-Cola ad. The directions were: 

You walk in very hot and tired; you wipe your brow; look down at the table and see a can of ice-cold Coke; you pull the tab and drink; then you make a satisfied sound, “Ahhh!”

They both tried it. They missed the transitions and thus the parts of the scene.

I said there are beginnings, middles, and ends to this scenario. As there are in all scenes, all things.

Let’s look at it. 

The walk starts. Beginning. The walk continues. Middle. The walk ends. End.

Wipe your brow. Start wiping. Begin. Continue wiping. Middle. Finish wiping. End. (They asked what started the wiping but couldn’t see that it was the impulse from the sweat. The sweat on the brow sends the impulse to the brain, which kicks in the arm mechanism to wipe the forehead. All happening at the speed the brain operates.) 

Thirst sparks the impulse to drink. See the Coke. Beginning. Snap the tab and drink. Middle. “Ahhh!” End.

I had the actors do each part and say out loud “Beginning, middle, end” as they did it. 

It was crystal clear to see how impulses fire the brain into activity. We saw it in a slowed-down and highlighted way as the actors said “Beginning, middle, end.” 

You can’t begin until you’ve ended.

You’ve finished the beginning of this entry. You’ve read the middle and now

. . . the end.

Drone phrase.

Find a phrase that is a key to what you’re playing.

Use words and phrases that you like and use every day.

“You’re stupid.” “Idiot.” “You’re scared.” “I like you.” “Nice eyes.” “I’m winning.” “You’re losing.” “Please.” “I’m sorry.” 

Swearing. Anything simple that you can repeat at any time during your text or your partner’s text. It’s an exercise suited to acting class.

And useful to find on your own in your prep.

Phrases that epitomize your actions, your tactics, what you want, what you think of the other character, etc. 

You speak your text and at the same time speak this inner monologue line — at any time. At first, it will seem disconnected and mechanical, but as you practise it, the phrase becomes part of the flow and supports the actual written text.

Say it a lot at the beginning so you get used to it.

Once you’ve assimilated the drone phrase, it’ll run through you as you play, supporting your work.

They should be short and sharp phrases that can make you smile with identification as to what your actions are in the scene.

It’s a hyper exercise. Part of unconscious creativity. Let the idea in the phrase float with your conscious, real-time acting.

Releasing the inner to support the outer.

Taking notes.

I often say to the actors, “Write this down.” 

What I mean by that is — take note of it. 

The comment can also be taken literally if you have a notebook.

Writing notes is one of the ways you learn. As you watch and listen, your mind is deciding what to write down. You’ll write what you like the most.

You can make up your own notebook format with highlights, boxes, ticks, underlines, colours. However your mind organizes it.

You don’t have to hand in your notebook to get marked after acting class.

If you make it your habit, you’ll start noting things from watching films and plays, from listening to interviews, from reading articles and books, listening to podcasts and watching videos.

An actor’s notebook is different from a diary. 

If you do it over your life’s career, you end with an interesting compendium of comments, observations, quotes, summations, and zingers. As the years go by, you may find it interesting to go back and read early entries.

You’ll have a kind of noted history of your acting life. You’ll see if what you thought important then you still think important now.

You get better as an actor by doing — the notes will support your practice.

(Always put down the date in your entries — at least the year!)

Left to right.

To get the left in a scene, you have to go right.

Or black to white.

Often, you might disregard the importance of the beginning of a scene waiting for the big moment to then start acting.

The moment when the news is given. 

“I stole the money.” “I killed the girl.” “I’m leaving.”

The key to receiving that news — the event — or giving it is to be fully into the beat before it. I call it “making spaghetti.” 

Cook, cook, cook; you’re only giving the other character 20 percent of your attention; the two of you are talking back and forth about normal things; the spaghetti is cooking; then the news — Bang! 100 percent attention. The spaghetti cooking stops.

Swinging from left to right.

If you’re languishing in the middle — waiting for the big moment — you will not receive the news fully or deliver it well.

The further and sharper you go in the opposite direction to a big moment, the more difficult the transition. That gives you more to play. 

The obstacle of dealing with the new.

More emotionally.

Sometimes, in class, I get the actors to literally lean to the left and when there is a transition, they lean to the right. The farther, the better.

You want to create active volition going from one state of mind to another. Watching you deal with that messiness is what is interesting.

A balloon.

At the National Theatre School of Canada around 1970, the director John Hirsch made a speech to the students. 

In his speech, talking about the shaping and pacing of a play and the actor’s role in that, he used the analogy of a balloon.

He said one had to be aware of how much air they were taking out of the balloon.

At certain points in the play, scene, or speech, only a small amount of air should be let out. At other points, more air.

To let out too much air and deflate the balloon at the wrong time is the error to avoid. Too much air too soon, leaving none left.

While preparing an audition recently, I reflected on the job my character was there to do in the episode of the TV series. I had started off taking too much air out of the balloon.

I considered why the writers had written that character and how the device of this character served the story.

That informed me to lessen the amount of air I was taking.

When we take the right amount of air out of the balloon in each line, speech, and scene, the balloon empties naturally.

Leaving the audience happy to watch as it deflates — from full to empty. 

(In 1965, Hirsch, founder of the Manitoba Theatre Centre, directed the landmark production of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage starring Zoe Caldwell.)

An arrow.

When you send a line, it can be like sending an arrow.

You could send that arrow right through the other character and out the other side into a wall ten feet behind.

Or you could send the arrow just to their chest, letting it stick there . . . hurting. 

The arrow could fall well short.

How do you draw back the bow? Rapidly, or slowly and deliberately? Is it your first time shooting an arrow? Are you a professional or a civilian? Are you defending yourself or attacking to conquer?

What tip do you have on the arrow? Is it poisoned, an ancient stone tip, high-grade steel, thin and razor-sharp, serrated?

You must play sharply. That’s how we live — like a series of very specific arrows shot from very definite bows.

See it. See what you mean, want, and how you send it — your line of text.

“I go, I go; look how I go. Swifter than an arrow from the Tartar’s bow.”

Follow.

When you’re playing a scene, consider if you want to lead (drive the scene), stay with your partner (equal), or follow.

To follow is to be active. But you lie back. Like a lion.

Very quick of mind but following. It’s deceptive. It’s lighter.

It’s not slow and heavy, no — it’s a different energy than leading. Having to drive a scene might put unwanted pressure on you while following might open space for you.

There are different concepts to playing a scene, different techniques that can be useful.

You can sometimes “quick cue” the other actor, cut the space between your lines and theirs, mentally being on top of their lines — ahead of them.

Following can be thought of as on the back foot and quick cue on the front.

You can also “slow cue” someone, which is a little different from following. You’re not late on your cue; you just stretch time a little, slow it down. Leading a line with an “uh” can fulfill that.

Look for crafty, sly, and clever concepts to playing scenes. Methods of attack that you like and may not have learned in drama school.

Try them.

Do nothing. 

After coaching an actor for a time, I often put them on the “Do nothing program.”

It can be successful.

What does it mean?

It doesn’t mean to do nothing. It means do something different. Usually the actor is working too hard. Which actually means not working well.

All big concepts.

Simply put, I’d say, “Look, for this next round of classes, get the scene, look at it, and don’t do any of the prep work you would normally do and don’t memorize the words. Just get the gist, the sense of it. Then leave it. Give it space.”

That immediately puts the actor at ease. It rests their weary mind.

But, as in life, they immediately wonder, “What the hell will I do?” They should let their mind ramble and all the usual questions can come up, but don’t act on them. Basic psychotherapy. The very act of the rest, the change, the do nothing, will have an effect. 

Don’t try to catch and hold on to that experience. Just have it.

Then when you come to class, you’ll play the situation — the scene. As a trained and experienced actor, you’ll get lots of images and ideas as soon as you read the scene. What the scene is and what your character is doing. 

That’s enough to practise with in class. It can even be enough to shoot on set.

You can see that the do nothing program is actually doing something. You will act the scene. 

Best is to pick something simple to do with your partner. Any small thing that hits you coming from who your partner is and from where you are. An impulse. If you can go with that, then the Do nothing program is really functioning.

Very little prep. Immediate choice.

The program isn’t guaranteed — but it is tried and true. You can see almost immediately how much more open the actor’s face is and how much simpler their work is.

Watchable.

It’s a pause, isn’t it? 

Say nothing.

Say nothing is when you change your self-talk.

Your old narratives.

It’s a cousin to the Do nothing program.

It’s essential for growth to look at your narratives. 

You know, like the one you learned as a young girl that Uncle Nate was a heavy gambler. That’s known. Then one day, many years later, you actually look into your uncle’s life and find out he only gambled for a few years to pay his way through college.

That narrative gets changed. The reality emerges.

You can develop many during your early years acting. “I can’t cry.” “My eyes are too small for film.” “My voice is squeaky.” “Theatre is big; film is small.”

Actors who come to my class with mostly a theatre background often repeat their narrative of “I can’t act in film because I’m a theatre actor.”

After hearing this repeated a few times, I encourage them to change their self-talk. Just don’t say it anymore — and you can’t say it in my class!

You’ll still think it, but don’t say it. Basic psychotherapy.

That has a positive effect on your consciousness. On your mind. If you do that — stop saying the narrative — the idea dies down. Speaking it out loud fuels it. 

Old narratives are like old friends even if they are poisonous. We know them and in a funny way are loathe to give them up. That means you may and probably will keep thinking those thoughts, but the issue is to not say them and not to act on them.

That’s change. It’s essential as you become more professional that you examine old ideas and see if they still stand up. See if they’re true. 

Change happens in small parts.

The theatre actor just keeps practising acting for camera but drops the narrative.

Raising your bar in part means to stop whining (whinging, as the Irish say) about things you’ve been whining about for years.

Even if everyone else still whines about them.

Inner monologue.

Literal or subconscious?

You can use your imagination to develop a like inner monologue that your character could have. That’s useful work.

You develop aspects of your character — speech, physical — and you make up an inner monologue. Sometimes you let that run while you play the scene.

That’s the most common inner monologue work.

It hit me that we seldom choose a thought from our own subconscious.

And best would be something the moment you’re about to begin the scene. “Geez, I’m tired.” “This actress is bugging the hell out of me.” “Man, this actor–movie star is so centred.” “I’m nervous as hell.” “Cool, man, I feel cool as ice.” “Love the sound of my voice.” “This is fun.”

Choosing an inner monologue like one of those could be useful, interesting, and odd.

Helps throw you off—always a good way to get on.

Which we love.

Caine and able.

Michael Caine is a wonderful actor. 

And he was a movie star.

The 1987 Michael Caine on Acting in Film, Arts, and Entertainment video is interesting to watch.

I took two tips from his video.

First, carry mints or breath spray so you have fresh breath when acting. Whether you’re kissing or shouting at your scene partner, it makes a difference and is courteous and professional.

And second, in your close-up when looking at the off-screen actor, look in their eye closest to the camera. It has a big effect on how we see your eyes.

Follow Caine’s two tips to be a more able actor.

Snap!

While working on a scene in class, the actors weren’t being sharp enough in the conjuring of new ideas and the receiving of them.

The scene, from the movie Johnny Suede, has one character coming up with topics on a pro and con list.

Neither the actor coming up with the idea nor the actor receiving the idea were realistic enough in their sending and receiving.

Colleagues at the Yale School of Drama shared the idea with me of “send and receive” as one way to describe human interaction.

In class, I said to the actors: “Let’s try a new exercise and we’ll call it Snap! As soon as you send the new idea, snap your fingers and point, and as soon as you receive the idea, snap your fingers and point back.”

They did it. They liked it. 

It highlighted the send-receive play.

We then began to elaborate on the question of receiving and noted that you can receive at different speeds. Sometimes you get the point before the other actor is finished speaking. Sometimes it takes time before the penny drops. 

It’s definitely not always at the end of the other actor’s line.

The same with sending.

We send with all different levels of intent.

When you receive the sent point, you react with an impulse that feeds breath so you can speak in response. Sometimes you breathe, sometimes you speak, sometimes you just receive and the impulse doesn’t trigger breath or speech.

You can look up how fast the human brain works — it’s useful to know.

As the instrument you play is you, then the more specifically you observe how you function, the more that can serve your work.

To the close-up.

They say the close-up is the money shot.

In television, it certainly is the size we see most. Talking heads, they call it.

Learn to use the time of rehearsal, blocking, master and medium shots to choose what you’ll do in the close-up.

Note where an emotional connection produces a move that will play well in the tight shot. A move, a tilt of the head, a glance that makes your point. You’ll learn there’s enough time prior to the close-up to get yourself ready for it. 

Realize that they won’t use much of the master or medium sizes. Those setups are good rehearsal time.

You don’t want to be surprised when the close-up comes.

Triangles.

In your close-up, as you think and speak, your head movement can follow a triangular pattern.

It looks good onscreen.

And it’s part of film language. We recognize the pattern of the movement from movies, and it usually indicates searching for an idea, getting the idea, and then finishing the thought. 

It’s also recognizable human behaviour. 

In life, we make the same triangular movement, so it’s both truthful and technically sharp — meaning it suits the frame and life. 

Can’t get any better than that.

It can go like this: the other actor sends you a line, and as you receive it, your head dips down and to the left as you’re thinking of your response. Then as your thoughts clarify and words unfold, your head comes up on the left. Finally, as you complete your thought, your head returns to its starting position on the right looking back at your scene partner.

It’s a flowing triangular movement based on your thought and dialogue.

It goes from right, down, up on the left, and then back again on the right. 

It could go from left to right.

It’s what you do when you think. You can’t hold eye contact and find your thoughts, so you look away. Once you’ve got the complete thought, you can make eye contact.

Certain high-status characters are trained to think and keep eye contact. To not give away a tell. So they can receive, think, and respond without looking away.

Triangles aren’t a rule or something to do mechanically, but it’s a movement pattern that humans do and looks good onscreen. 

Knowing that something looks good on camera quiets the doubt.

How to watch your footage. 

This is tricky.

You’ve got to be professional and use that as your guide.

Meaning don’t watch it with your partner, friends, family, or even most of your actor colleagues. They aren’t professionals.

Cherish your work; guard it. It’s hard fought for and precious. Treat it as such.

It’s not for giggling, Ooh-ings, Wow-ings, or Amazing-ings. It’s for critical study to get better at acting. 

If you’re self-conscious at all — stop watching. If you don’t like your eyes, lips, nose, or the sound of your voice — stop watching. This is important. 

If it’s a negative experience, then it’s a negative experience. It’s got to be positive and informative.

Did you hit the right note, is your mask suitable, did you catch the transition, is it believable, can you see yourself, can others see you, is it simple and clear, did you do the job required in the movie?

Ask practical questions about what you see. Ask specific questions about what you see. General “I hate its” or “I love its” aren’t useful. 

Play it with just the sound. Listen to the tone. Play it with just the picture. Watch your movements.

You can watch it with professionals who’ll give you objective critiques. That’s useful.

And just because everyone watches their footage doesn’t mean you have to.

Always an actor in front of you.

Whether acting in an audition, on set, or in class, a real person is always in front of you.

So, there’s no need to pretend.

Try to catch their attention.

Really try.

It won’t be easy to attract the attention of a famous actor; in an audition, the reader will usually have their head down, so getting them to lift their eyes will be a challenge; your fellow actor in a scene might be nervous and have “the Plexi’s up” (eyes glazed over, locked in position looking like Plexiglas).

Your fight to reach any actor in front of you is immediate.

Can you get the other actor to blink, blush, smile, hesitate, or give a tell as you send your line? What is there about the other actor that you like, and more importantly what is there about them that you don’t like?

The difficulty in trying to reach the actual person in front of you is everything — puts you right where you want to be — in the hot seat.

The camera loves that.

Everything is in the detail. 

An old and useful adage.

See how applying it helps put you in.

If you’re playing a character who is an investigator, look at the prop you’re holding and find the tiniest part of it. Go from that part to the next one. Small steps.

Can you feel your mind calming? The audience likes you calm.

Detail does mean specific. Detail does mean simple.

If your character is in a scene with big themes of life and death, it will be through the small — the detail — that you’ll get to the big. Reaching for the huge, theme may overwhelm you and have you indicating to try to show it. 

Details in the text, the speech, the line, the word, the letters in the word. 

Staying with the detail keeps you on your feet and in your time. You can’t get ahead of yourself if you go step by step. Nor can you fall behind.

What you wear in the role. Your collar: laid flat, pulled out, half turned up, all the way up, tips pointed. That kind of detail helps you create the role.

“The devil is in the details.”

Make trouble for yourself.

Find moments in the scene when you have to struggle.

To fight.

There might be a place where you are only giving your partner 50% of your attention. When she gives you the news, you’ll be jerked to 100% attention. You’ll be caught off guard.

That’s useful.

To you as a player — having to struggle on the spot. And for the audience — who loves to see a character trying to overcome an obstacle.

Learn to find those moments in scenes. They’re gold.

“Life is messy.” That’s the watchword. Find moments when you are in the “mess.” Best messy moments are like those that you yourself get into. 

Maybe there’s a place where it’s easy. You’re dreaming, having a peaceful time of it. Then more news — the event — hits you and you fight to regain your balance.

Good.

You may or may not let your partner see you getting hit with the news. See you fighting to regain your balance.

Sometimes the simple act of trying to remember complicated text can be the “trouble.” Or remembering the blocking. 

You’re trying to put yourself on the hook, not get off the hook.

Look for trouble.

Transitions.

It can be called a “moment” or a “beat change.”

Paying close attention to transitions in your scenes can help you play sharper.

Transitions: that time and space between the end of a beat and the beginning of a new one, where either your mind or the other character’s mind leaves the current subject and starts a new one. 

The transition is often caused by one character revealing something new. 

A change.

That change of breath for you, that time where you either float, leap, or are pushed to the new is so full of life, waiting to be tapped.

The transitions are filled with seasoning for the next chunk of dialogue. They flavour it.

They are often marked by physical activity such as standing, moving, or turning your head. 

Your action verb usually changes after the transition.

In the early days, you might just memorize lines and because they are typed in order, one after the other, you give them equal importance. That can lose you the potential of the transitions. 

The writers write the text as the character’s mind thinks and speaks it. Unequally.

A transition is often spontaneous, organic, and unconscious. 

Pitfalls with transitions: you plan it and it lacks the idiosyncrasy of real life; you go the other way and it is flat; you telegraph it.

Learning and knowing the parts of a scene make them easier and clearer to play. Once you’ve identified what it is, all that’s left to do is to do it. 

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines transition as “a change or shift from one state, subject, place, etc. to another.”

Your mother. 

There’s a limit to what you would let someone say about your mother.

No way will you allow your mother to be humiliated beyond a line of acceptable social humour or criticism. 

We defend our mothers.

This is a vivid tool when you’re asking the question “What’s this situation like?” It could be like when you need to defend your mother.

Like the way you defend your characters. How they’re always right and believe — for better or for worse — what they say or do.

It makes a great benchmark for your like, as if, or substitution.

The fact that there is no closer tie than between a mother and child can be useful for you as an actor.

It could help you not give in when you act, assist you to stand your ground, help you tap into that pool of power you possess, help you mean what you say, help you to fight.

Putting your mother in your mind’s eye and harkening to your love for her can help keep you away from acting. You’ll be more truthful. It can be especially useful when you’re preparing a scene.

If, in a realistic improvisation in acting class, one actor is baiting the other by making fun of their mother, watch what happens to the recipient actor as the level of ridicule goes up. There will be a certain limit — a line crossed — where the actor stops acting and says “Stop!” because the insult is too much. 

It’s that depth of connection that you won’t violate that is so useful.

As an actor, you must find intimate methods that assist you to believe. 

“Dear dirty Dublin.”

The phrase “dear dirty Dublin” comes from James Joyce’s novel Ulysses.

An actor from Cork taught me the trigger phrase of “Dear ol’ dirty Dublin, da mess on da doorstep.” He said if I got that right, I’d be off to the races with the Dub accent.

When learning an accent or a character trait, see if you can find a simple key that helps you unlock it. Something you like, is easy to remember, and is the essence of the thing.

Could be a slouch, wide stance, slight stutter, hands closed.

Always find a starter you like. 

Usually best if it’s small. A tiny diamond — containing all its qualities — cut, brilliance, colour, carat, weight. 

If you start acting by trying to remember all your research and preparation, you might get overwhelmed.

(For the record, Dublin is a beautiful city that I’ve worked in and visited for many years.)

Cops, doctors, and lawyers.

When playing these iconic roles, some guidelines might be useful.

First and foremost, all of these roles are people at work, doing their jobs. 

They’re good at them, they like them, it’s always just another day at work, they don’t have any other job.

The situation may be high stakes, but the protagonist is doing their usual job. That’s key for you to find the daily routine of these characters. 

The situation might be a big deal, but for them, it’s no big deal.

Also, they’re cool. Everyone on TV is cool except for victims, patients, witnesses, the elderly, etc.

These iconic types can say no. They have the power of life and death whether it’s giving a death sentence in court, saving your life, or shooting you dead.

Their work is repetitive — even boring — but they always strive to be successful and — on TV — they usually are. 

They’re successful while carrying personal problems — baggage.

You might be able to use like or as if relating your life to theirs. 

The starting point to playing a doctor, cop, or lawyer is that it’s their job.

Tics and twitches. 

As you’re reading this, you may notice that your foot is swinging regularly.

Mine is.

Or that your thumb is rhythmically rubbing your middle finger. These aren’t actually tics or twitches according to definition, but this is the best way I can describe them. 

They are recognizable physical behaviours that tend to calm you down. There is a stream of energy coming from this movement in the body. As if a run-off valve is releasing extra energy. 

Calming your mind.

Try to keep your tics and twitches while you’re acting.

Stillness is so important to acting and it may seem contradictory to include these slight movements as assets to good acting. In fact, it completes and complements your stillness and can be an essential ingredient to you dropping in. 

The movements are pleasing sensory experiences. Your physiology likes it. 

Being still on camera means natural breathing, space in your mind, and the inclusion of one of your rhythmical tics.

The fidget spinner toy serves to distract and relieve stress and plays a similar role as your tic or twitch.

The idea is that when you get up to act, don’t give up all your — seemingly quirky — personal behaviours. 

See how keeping some of them helps you.

Checklist acting.

You want to play well.

Your mind is running a checklist as you act and you’re trying to fulfill the list.

No.

It can go like this with your mind saying, “Now breathe. Use your diaphragm. Be in the moment. Listen. Mean it. Listen. Be truthful. Listen. Be compelling. Drop in. Listen. Breathe.”

And on and on, maddeningly, until the scene ends. And, well, you collapse.

Who wouldn’t? It’s too much.

You learn lots at drama school. When you graduate, your mind is chock-a-block full. It’ll take you much practice and time for that information to settle.

Even if you’re experienced, you may hear your mind checking the list.

The old adage of “Do your preparation and then forget it” holds. When you begin the scene, you breath in and start. Nothing more.

You cannot be playing a scene and answering the list. Answering the list is not acting. It’s something else. Another problem.

Meaning you’re now trying to do two things. Answer the checklist and act. Impossible. You’ve added a problem.

Conscious participation means, in part, the development of the control of your mind, so it can’t just run off as it sees fit, but, rather, you control it. You’ll control it more and more as you work properly. That’s the consciousness.

If your mind does run off — try not to respond to it. Just keep pursuing what you want in the scene.

It’s hard enough to do one thing well.

Focus your eyes. 

There are always real objects in front of you when you’re filming.

If you’re supposed to be seeing elephants running towards you, see what works best for you to focus your eyes.

For you and for us watching you onscreen. Watching your eyes.

If your imagination — of the elephants — does it, then fine. But a simple technique that is always available is to look at real objects in front of you. That includes the camera, the tripod, the dolly, the lights, the flags, the set, the back of the studio, the sound man, everything and everybody.

When you look at real objects, it focuses your eyes. That calms your mind. It helps your balance too.

We see it in your eyes that you’re really seeing something. The cut can reveal what it is you’re looking at.

Endless shots of “computer acting” demand the same. Motion capture really demands it. Greenscreen.

In the audition room, you can look at real objects, the people running the session, the camera operator.

When we watch you onscreen, we look at your eyes.

Walking.

I’ve always been a big fan of actors who walk well in movies.

John Travolta is one of the first I’d single out. A beautiful walker. And one who was aware of his walking.

He had the skill and accepted the theatricality of a performed walk in a wide shot.

Walking isn’t always easy to do. More than one actor, myself included, will relate a story of how while trying to execute the direction “Walk from here to there,” you start swinging your arms opposite to normal arm swings. Two left feet.

Helen Mirren, in her MasterClass series on acting, starts by walking across the stage and sitting down. Then she says, “I’ve just done one of the hardest things an actor has to do — walk across a stage.”

Be ready to put in practice time doing simple things like walking, sitting in a chair, getting out of a chair — things you would think require no practice.

In Louis Malle’s 1958 film The Lovers, Jeanne Moreau gives a brilliant example of walking well in a film. 

Free standing. 

You often have to stand with both arms by your sides, not holding on to anything.

It’s just you in space. At first, it can seem awkward. 

Learn to do it by standing well and easy, with your feet really on the ground, breathing regularly, arms hanging heavy, shoulders down, ribcage holding you up, neck long and head floating above you.

It’s much needed when acting as doctors, lawyers, and cops in TV procedurals. Other roles too. It’s a detailed part of your work.

Practise free standing until it becomes your habit.

Once it is, it becomes a great place from which to unleash your power.

Drunk.

The actor asks, “How do you play drunk?”

Good question.

“The old rule is not to act drunk, but to try and do what you’re doing,” I said. “How about you first really go overboard and do a drunk guy walking.”

He did and looked like an orangutan trying to dance.

“Take it down by half.” He did.

“OK. Did you like that?” I asked. 

“No,” he said. 

“Me neither. You’re indicating, aren’t you?”

“How can I make it believable?” he asked.

I conjured an exercise.

“Do you have a book? Good. Put it on your head and walk from one side to the other keeping it on your head.”

He did. I asked him what he thought of it. 

“I thought it was just terrific.” 

“So did I.” 

“OK. Now take the book off your head and try to repeat exactly what you just did.” 

He repeated it. 

He looked drunk. 

Grinning ear to ear, he was pleased and a bit amazed.

“Now walk normally.” 

He did.

“The difference is so subtle and yet clearly there. I think it’s the quality,” I said. 

The over-the-top drunk was quantity. Now we have quality.

I asked him what two essential things are happening when you walk with the book on your head.

He said, “I’m trying to get from A to B.” 

“Yes. Your objective.”

“And the second?”

“I’ve got a book on my head.” 

“Yes. Your obstacle.”

So, you want to walk from here to there — or do any activity — and you do your best to do it, but the alcohol has your brain addled and that makes it difficult. Those are the two parts of actually being drunk and key parts when acting drunk.

Try the “old” book on the head trick next time you have to act drunk. It might help.

Boiling water.

Acting class is a place where you can practise details of your work.

You’ll see some actors trying to be good or interesting. They aren’t practising — they’re indicating.

Working on one little thing is enough of a reason to be practising.

To make the point, I asked the actors if we were making spaghetti sauce what would be an essential part. One said, “Sauté garlic”; another, “The tomatoes”; and another, “Boil the water.”

Several actors laughed out loud at the last answer.

I thought it was brilliant.

They laughed because boiling water is such an obvious thing to do and so easy — why would anyone focus on that particular part of making spaghetti?

That is precisely why I thought it was profound. 

Let’s work on the first steps. Let’s practise first position in ballet, scales in music, grammar in writing. Let’s appreciate that the basics are — the base.

You can use class to practise any specific part of your work.

Chillin’ n’ vibin’.

Say what?

In leading the work on “What do you want in the scene and how do you get it,” two actors came out with chillin’ and vibin’.

It crystallized a key point.

That being: What’s your action or your tactic? What do you do to get what you want? How do you achieve your objective?

You might feel pressure to give a transitive verb that sounds good but isn’t a word you use. So now you’ve removed yourself one more step from the playing. You don’t want to use a verb that you have to work extra hard to relate to. 

You’re searching for a suitable action verb but thinking it should be more academic, intellectual, or artistic than what’s in your head.

I asked the first actor, “OK, so what are you doing?” He went round and round the block and back again, couldn’t find an answer, and then after some prodding said, “I’m just chillin’.”

Brilliant.

And he knew it was a good answer because as soon as he said it he became full of life, blushed, laughed, and was genuinely taken aback that he had pulled something ordinary — street — from his own mind. It so aptly hit the nail on the head as to what he was doing.

Simple language. His language.

Mamet wrote years ago, “Pick something that is simple and playable.” Good advice.

Second actor, the same thing. “What are you doing . . . etc. etc.” and finally he says “Vibin’.” 

Wow. 

That actor normally doesn’t use words like that, so he was taken aback. 

Again, he lit up like a Christmas tree. Vivacious. And only blushing because his natural truth came out and it surprised him.

It illuminated the lesson.

Pick things you like.

Deliberate practice. 

For many years, I have characterized my training work as “proper practice.” 

Some of the ideas in my practice come from Geoff Colvin’s book Talent Is Overrated in which he cites Anders Ericsson’s idea of “deliberate practice,” which

- is designed specifically to improve performance, with a teacher’s help;

- can be repeated a lot;

- provides you feedback on results;

- is highly demanding mentally; and

- isn’t much fun.

Reminder.

Often what the coach or director is telling you is a reminder.

You already know it but need to be reminded.

It’s good if you want and like to be reminded.

I was acting in a film one time with Eva Marie Saint and Jerry Orbach, and when Eva’s close-up came, she dried. The wonderful director David Jones whispered to me as he went to speak to her, “She’s nervous about her looks.” 

The close-up distracted her, and the director reminded her.

What are the coaches in professional sports telling the players during the games? The top athletes in the Premier League, NFL, American League, Rugby World Cup Sevens, the WNBA etc. all know what to do. But in the hurly-burly of the game itself, they get diverted and need reminding.

Just as you could get diverted amidst the chaos while shooting.

Try to take the reminders as if from an old friend. Rather than the old “Damn, I made a mistake” or feeling embarrassed.

That needed outside eye. That reminder that jogs your memory.

The teachers, coaches, and directors also need to be reminded that a lot of what they’re doing is just reminding.

Sometimes you’re being taught, sometimes encouraged, sometimes critiqued, and sometimes — reminded.

Be compelling. 

A local successful acting teacher tells his actors to “be compelling.”

I don’t know what that means.

In acting class, I’ll have an actor get up and wait for a bus. Then I’ll say, “OK, do it again, but this time be compelling.”

Usually, you see a stunned look on their face and hear the other actors kind of squirm or giggle.

If she tries to be compelling, all you can see is someone awkward, lost, and uncomfortable. Definitely not someone waiting for a bus, which is what the scene called for.

If you’re not going to try to be compelling, then what are you going to do?

The tried and true. 

Play the situation as you would, mean what you say, like what you’re doing, let us see you, pick simple and playable actions, give dignity to the character, be professional, do your best.

Doing most of that will make you compelling.

You can’t play an idea or an outcome, but you can do something.

Draw blood. 

It’s a nice image when you’re trying to affect the other actor.

How sharply can you send your point? How much blood do you want to spill? 

In this moment of the scene, are you going to prick your fellow actor, or are you going to open up a gash?

How much blood do you want to draw from moment to moment?

Of course, you never want to spill real blood.

That would be unprofessional. 

Fun.

Try to like how you’re playing the scene, doing an audition, acting in close-up, or blocking for camera.

Sounds obvious, but think about it.

The wonderful acting teacher Keith Johnstone often asked after an improv finished, “Did you like it; did you enjoy it; was it pleasurable; was it fun?”

Try not to get sidetracked by trying to have so much fun or trying to fulfill a complex idea of liking it. It can be something simple. 

Pick something particular. 

It can be anything — the sound of your voice, knowing your lines, your hairdo, a belief in your character, appreciating working with others.

Acting shouldn’t be like going to the dentist.

Liking it means it’s yours.

There’s so much pressure today that you can get off track. Learn to find what’s truly good for you when you’re acting.

“Do I like what I’m doing?” isn’t a small question — it’s everything. 

Hard work.

When you’re preparing an audition or going on set and you know the situation, the tone, the quality, what you’re doing — try to avoid beating it to death.

You want to work hard. Good. But ask yourself what hard work means.

Often it means not working.

Giving it space.

If the scene feels good, just let it percolate.

Know that your mind is doing its work even if you aren’t. Even at night. That’s the expression “sleep on it.”

One of the worst things you can do is repeat the lines over and over in your head and get into a loop. 

That’s the opposite of deliberate practice and will turn what magic you had into dross.

Leaving the work alone can be the hardest work.

Bit by bit.

As a working actor, you still want to change and grow.

At this level, you’ll do it in small bits. Each tiny change you make helps give you more of an edge.

Dominic Fifield writes about the footballer Harry Kane in The Guardian:

Harry Kane was striving for marginal gains. Those little tweaks to his daily preparations that would assist recovery time amid a cluttered fixture schedule, and always with the fatigue he had endured back in the summer of 2016 . . . If he was to retain his edge, particularly with a daughter on the way, then something had to change. . . .

“I want to maximise my potential and it seems to be working. When you’re playing Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday there’s not a lot of time to train, so it’s about making those little gains in other ways: ice baths, stretching, nutrition . . . little things that keep as you as fresh as you can be.”

[Gareth Southgate, the coach of the English national football team, says of Kane,] “But you’re talking about a player trying to maximise his ability and finding every edge he can. The marginal gains make a massive difference at this high level. Far more of a difference than at a lower standard of football.”

Keep growing as an actor — bit by bit.

Learning in the same place at the same time.

Can you study in the same space and at the same time of day?

There is much belief that the mind and body learn well — better — when done in the same place and at the same time. 

When you repeat that often, it becomes habitual.

See if it calms your mind and helps you work better.

Outside the canyon. 

Don’t get trapped in a canyon as you work.

If the character you are preparing is a nervous, giggling neophyte, then practising only the giggle can trap you.

First, it limits exploring “what it isn’t,” which we know helps you to find out “what it is.” And second, you may find yourself afraid to go outside the narrow limits of the giggle for fear of losing it. 

See if when you’re preparing a role, your work is in a confined space. The most productive place to be is with lots of space around your work.

It will give you more confidence in your giggle.

There is much more around the giggle than just the giggle, and to look at it, outside of it, under it, beside it, won’t lessen you being specific — it will help it. 

That extended work will be in you. Then if you get thrown in an audition or on set, this life outside the canyon you’ve experienced can steady you. 

Otherwise, what is not the giggle can just be a black void. Something you fear.

Better than the fearful black void is explored territory. Light. Your made light. New ground you’ve discovered through your imagination.

There is much to be had outside the canyon walls.

Everything happens in threes. 

You’ll find threes in the scenes you learn, the movies you act in, and the life around you.

As an actor working in film and television, your interest in threes can be both specific and broad. 

Specifically, as you examine the script, you may notice parts of the writing are in groups of three. A speech giving the character’s position could do it in three lines. Each line adding and furthering the position. 

Then within the line itself, there may be three words elucidating the point of the line. They could be modifiers, nouns, or even verbs.

Seeing that structure of threes may give your mind something it likes and can hold on to. On TV, the cop may list three clues, the lawyer give three arguments, and the doctor offer three options for treatment. 

Broadly, some examples of threes comes to mind: the rule of thirds in cinematography; the Latin phrase omne trium perfectum — everything that comes in threes is perfect; a tricolon — where words or phrases are equal in length and grammatical form; fairy tales with three wishes; Macbeth’s three witches: “Thrice to thine and thrice to mine, And thrice again, to make up nine”; the father, the son, the holy ghost; the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis; the three-act structure; in folklore deaths come in threes; veni, vidi, vici; comedy writing — line, line, joke; and mother, father, child. 

Threes are in the writing you interpret and in the culture you live in, which is reflected in the movies you act in. Explore how it can serve you.

Of course, not everything happens in threes.

(In the Lakota culture, everything happens in fours.)

Four. 

There are many useful dictums about acting.

Here are two that were passed on to me.

The Four Pillars of Acting: Immediate response. Observation. Memory. Imagination.

Four reasons “why we do things”: Love. Happiness. Validation. Necessity.

Identifying things helps organize your mind.

Work away to come back. 

Always be looking for ways to have your face away from the camera. Your first impulse might be to give your partner all your attention and look them in the eye.

Decide what is suitable and useful.

Looking away means you can come back. Opposites. That back and forth really suits the frame.

It’s the old idea in art of disappearing to reappear.

You need to be in thought while acting onscreen. Looking down or away is screen language indicating thought. Playing truthfully will produce it.

And knowing how to do it technically is professional.

When something gets all your attention, you look back at the other character — eyes close to the frame. 

This sweep through the frame helps make your point. 

Where you’re looking can signify how much attention you are giving the other character. You are always in the situation, but that does not mean you are always giving 100 percent of your attention to the other character.

This sweep into the frame helps make your point. It’s smart use of the medium.

Ebb and flow is sweet on camera.

Stay with one teacher. 

Pinchas Zukerman, the conductor, violinist, and teacher, says if you find a good teacher — stay with them.

I fully support this idea.

Learning from a different teacher is fine, but jumping from class to class to see “what the teacher is like” isn’t.

Actors often describe acting classes by saying what they thought the teacher was like but seldom what their work was like. 

Fooling yourself, you can jump from class to class experiencing different teachers but never end up actually doing any work. 

You turn into an acting-class actor.

If the atmosphere in the room is good, if the teacher is actually an acting teacher, and you don’t have any issues with their personality — stay there.

Eliminating the constant diversion of looking for and getting used to a new teacher allows you to put your focus solely on your practice.

Where it belongs.

Let the teachers do their work — and you do yours.

“Oh, now I know what you mean . . .”

You have a meeting to discuss building a fence for someone.

They tell you what kind of fence they want.

Then you have a second meeting, and the fence is explained again. Then in the third meeting, it’s explained once more and you say, “Oh, now I know what you mean.”

Learning can be like that.

Some activities have many parts to them such as a golf swing. Looks like a simple motion, but it’s made up of many specific parts. Those parts can take three or more explanations before you grasp what is meant.

Of course, practice is key.

But know that your brain does not always grasp what is said or asked of it the first time round.

On set, watch the experienced actors. They won’t go a step further until they know exactly what the director is asking them to do.

“Can you explain that again?” is a professional question and essential to learn so you know exactly what to do. If you don’t understand, then not to ask is unprofessional.

If you’re inexperienced, you might feel shy to ask the director to repeat the direction.

In acting class, I’ll ask an actor, “Do you know what I mean?” and inevitably they’ll nod and say “Yes.” 

I then might ask them to explain what I mean, and if they’re stuck and can’t, I won’t embarrass them, but I’ll explain again making sure the actor does understand. 

When I ask the question “Do you know what I mean?” I always add “And no is a good answer.”

Blink. 

I’m quoting below from editor Walter Murch’s book In the Blink of an Eye.

A blink isn’t much.

Yet Murch takes this act and elaborates up and out from it. See here how he correlates the blink to acting:

So, if an actor is successful at projecting himself into the emotions and thoughts of a character, his blinks will naturally and spontaneously occur at the point that the character’s blinks would have occurred in real life.

One of the things about unsuccessful acting is that the actor’s blinks seem to come at the “wrong” times. Although you may not notice this consciously, the rhythm of the actor’s blinks don’t match the rhythm of thoughts you would expect from the character he is playing. 

To my mind, it highlights the importance of seeing how parts make up the thing. How, as an actor, you need to find the bits making up the whole. This pulling out, identifying, and elaborating on parts is a hallmark of being a professional.

We want to appreciate how in acting, art, culture, nature, and life there is an endless myriad of tiny and miniscule aspects to all things and events and you identifying and naming them is a wonderful lifelong pursuit. It is the making of order of what, at first, seems like a mountain. 

The great Haida artist Bill Reid does the same thing as you can see from this excerpt from Doris Shadbolt’s book Bill Reid.

[Reid] tells a story of a recent trip to Paris during which he undertook a fellow-Canadian’s first introduction to the Louvre. Somehow under his guidance they managed to bypass most of the standard masterpieces but found themselves spending hours in a room containing a box, the work of the famed Russian virtuoso Faberge, that boasted a miraculously crafted hinge which for them outshone all the other attractions. When asked what they had experienced at the Louvre, their response was “We saw a hinge.”

Parts making up the whole.

Repetition. 

The former Manchester United football coach Sir Alex Ferguson wrote in Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography:

Prominent in the category of principles that are as important to me now as they were 30 years ago is the certainty that good coaching relies on repetition. Forget all the nonsense about altering training programmes to keep players happy. The argument that they must be stimulated by constant variety may come across as progressive and enlightened, but it is a dangerous evasion of priorities. In any physical activity, effective practice requires repeated execution of the skill involved. Why do you think the greatest golfers who ever lived have devoted endless hours to striking the same shots over and over again? Yes, I know golf, where the ball always sits still to be struck, is so different from football that technical comparisons are foolish. But the link is the need to concentrate on refining technique to the point where difficult skills become a matter of habit. When footballers complain about the dullness of repetitive passing exercises it is usually not monotony they resent but hard work. David Beckham is Britain’s finest striker of a football not because of God-given talent but because he practices with a relentless application that the vast majority of less gifted players wouldn’t contemplate. Practice may not make you perfect but it will definitely make you better and any player working with me on the training ground will hear me preach the virtues of repetition — repeatedly.

Sex and violence.

Warning: The following program contains scenes of violence and sex.

These are the two main themes in Hollywood.

Hollywood reflects the ideas of those who make the movies and America itself.

And as an actor, you’ll be asked to fulfill these themes. 

To land roles, you’ll have to learn where you and your type fit into sex and violence. Do you commit it? Do you facilitate it? Do you suffer from it? Do you profit from it? Do you work in the legal, medical, or police system? Do you control it?

When a character appears on TV, the viewer subconsciously wonders if that character has sex or not. TV has trained us to think this way. And as an actor, you’ll need to answer this question when you get a role. Similarly, “Does this character kill people?”

You need to learn the icons. You need to learn where casting puts you in terms of sex and violence.

Not agreeing with the ideas in a film is a different question, and often the only answer there is to say no.

To book work, you’ll have to be knowledgeable about Hollywood’s take on sex and violence.

Food in your teeth.

I often act with food in my teeth. 

No, not big pieces of green spinach in my front teeth that we all check for before our close-up.

Just some food that’s left there because I didn’t brush my teeth. I like it. I like it because it’s a secret. 

My secret. 

It doesn’t mean anything literally. I’m not advocating not brushing your teeth. That’s not the point.

The point is your privacy, your individual peculiarity, and how connecting to that, embracing it, letting it be, helps you act. 

It does me.

We are all bombarded with the notion of being ourselves and to see what that really means in little, ordinary ways might prove useful to you and your acting.

Donald Sutherland once said to me something like, “Take a piece of paper, write something on it — silly, poetic, cheeky, religious, rude — fold it up, put it in your shoe, go on set, and act.”

These tricks can bring an immediacy to your living in front of the camera.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

If you have blocks as an actor, explore different ways to loosen them.

A gay actor I worked with had a block about playing masculine roles. Any character described as tough, good-looking, macho, war veteran, etc. would send him into an anxious state. 

He knew he looked the part, but his mental block made him freeze when he came to those roles.

He thought he needed to do extensive psychological work about his life to come to terms with who he was — being human, gay, good-looking, a good actor, and masculine-looking. 

That’s one possible route. A long and complicated one.

Another would be for him to suffer through each audition trying to force his way through by indicating and pushing. Like going to the dentist.

That ain’t good.

One day, while practising properly in an harmonious atmosphere, I offered that he try technique to play the tough guy. He had never tried that before.

He kept still, spoke in his street voice, didn’t push or indicate, and he let us see him. Bang! He was the tough guy.

The point here is not to pose one approach against another. But if you’re stuck, see if discovery and exploration help you sort problems.

Instead of banging your head against the wall — lean on it.

Thought.

One way you can pose the question of acting for camera is to say the camera is photographing thought. 

It’s pretty good.

As always, none of these truisms are to be taken mechanically. It’s just another way to speak of acting for camera.

Viewers love to see thought in the eyes of the actors, and the close-up really allows that to happen. 

Set yourself up to be thinking. Let them film you. Keep your breathing lion-like: soft, fat, and rhythmical. This will help your mind turn and wander. Get lost. Dream while the camera runs.

Thought makes the eyes move. Naturally. And the eyes are the window to the soul.

Thought.

The medium of now — film and television — allows us to do something so psychologically intimate that it occasionally makes us gasp. To see someone thinking so deeply in a moving colour picture on a screen of 20 by 70 feet can be breathtaking.

You might sometimes hear that fearful voice in your head saying, “I’m not doing enough.” Forget it. We love to watch humans thinking. It’s an aspect of film and TV acting that’s essential. If you’re thinking real thoughts while acting in a scene, you’ll be compelling. And doing enough.

Observe yourself off camera when you’re thinking. Observe others when they are thinking.

You’re reproducing recognizable human behaviour.

Thought is a big part of it.

Read the source.

Read the original authors on the subject of acting.

That way you get to have your own first impressions.

It’s key to the development of your ability to think. Observing and having your experience in a conscious way as you read, then reflecting on what you’ve read, and finally giving your view and defending it. 

Reading some PhD thesis on method acting by some graduate of the Yale School of Drama won’t bring you any closer to the source. The source being the original works the thesis is based on.

Go to the source.

If you read Strasberg, Stanislavski, or Meisner in their original texts, then you get the tingle of the first sensation. You’ll have the experience of those books yourself and that will allow you to see what you think of them. Reading someone’s second-hand view of the original could confuse you and deny you the important opportunity of having that first impression that your mind loves.

Then you can say what you think of it.

Appreciate your ability to have an original experience.

Stillness.

You have to learn how to be still on camera. 

Observe how you’re still in life. 

Often, while acting you move because you’re resetting or dropping out. It’s you, the actor, and not the character who’s moving — a movement of self-consciousness. 

Observe when you’re doing that.

Movement can be distracting. It can dissipate your energy. When you listen, you’re usually still. Half of screen time is the reverse — when the other actor is listening. 

The listening actor is us, the audience, listening. She’s listening to the speaking actor and so are we.

The young football (soccer) player can run at great speed. He can go. But to become excellent, he must learn to stop. Once he’s stopped — he can start again. 

The lion as it waits for its prey is stock still yet alert, breathing fully and calm. A still lion — a moving belly.

Take that image back to your acting. 

Stillness doesn’t mean locked. The lion is still yet breathing fully and brain alert. 

Find your stillness by being on your breath and having space in your mind, and if your physiology needs movement, there’s the ever-useful tic or twitch.

Watch you don’t succumb to that actor’s voice of “I should be doing more” and start trying to be interesting or good. If you’re in the situation, in the space, time moving forward, plot moving forward — that’s enough.

You have power to release, and stillness is a state to do that from.

Waiting for god to appear.

Once you’ve done your preparation, and the scene is about to begin, you just start.

Actors prepare differently. There’s no one way to prepare to begin a scene. That’s true.

But you might find yourself waiting for inspiration and it might be a divine kind and it might not appear. 

I call it waiting for god to appear.

Just start. Go.

The old adage is “Do your homework and then forget it.” That’s kind of the point here. 

Watch actors who wait and wait for some magic moment they’ve imagined and crave but doesn’t arrive. Usually they’re simply stuck.

On your own time, breath in and play the first moment, which leads to the next moment. The work is in you. Learn to know that and have faith in that. 

That’s conviction.

“Divine inspiration is the concept of a supernatural force, typically a deity, causing a person or people to experience a creative desire.” (Wikipedia.)

Robert De Niro quote 

In a Parade magazine interview Robert de Niro said: “In acting, I always try to go back to what would actually be the real situation, the real human behaviour in life. It’s the most difficult thing, and the easiest thing, and it’s all you need—the truth of the moment. If you give too much, if you telegraph things, you weaken it.”

When in doubt . . . 

Follow the basic TV acting guidelines:

  • Look near the lens.

  • Be still.

  • Don’t blink.

  • Keep your mouth closed.

  • Speak at your normal volume and pace.

  • Keep your head symmetrical.

These are good fallback guidelines when you’re really nervous — either shooting or in an audition.

Of course, it’s even better when you like what you’re doing, are breathing well, mean what you’re saying, and reveal yourself.

But sometimes you’re off and guidelines can get you back on.

Work is precious. 

It’s difficult to build something up but easy to knock it down.

Just as human beings are the most precious thing, so, too, is the work you do as an actor. 

Cherish, guard, and defend the hard work you and your fellow actors do. Recognize and celebrate that work. Beware of the culture that can seduce you into blabbing your experiences as currency in the marketplace. That will belittle your efforts.

The work you do to make films and plays is a struggle, and that struggle is called life itself. 

It’s precious. Treat it as such.

The Business.

A yellow Rolls.

The young Canadian actor goes to Hollywood to read for a lead in a movie.

It goes well. 

Later that morning in the producer’s office, the young actor is about to leave when the producer asks, “Do you have a car?” “No,” replies the actor. “Hey, take the keys to my yellow Rolls-Royce convertible.”

The young actor thinks he’s died and gone to . . . Hollywood.

All this happens in the morning.

Later in the afternoon, the actor is told to please return the Rolls.

He didn’t get the job.

Once you have a contract, then you have a job. And once you get through the first day of shooting without being fired, then you have a job. And once you receive your cheque, then you have a job. And once the cheque is deposited and doesn’t bounce — then you have a job. 

Anything else is just talk. 

And for us actors who work for a living, certain talk can be very misleading and damaging. 

Develop your professional practice so that you can take everything in the movie business with a cool head. Try to be as sober-minded as you can amidst the hurly-burly of the glitter of Hollywood.

Someone letting you drive their Rolls doesn’t mean you have a job.

Full-time.

If you’re an actor, you work full-time.

No, not necessarily filming on a movie set every day.

OK. Let’s look at it.

You do one audition a week. That takes four days. British Equity has released a code of practice for self-tape auditions that says an actor has four days to learn six pages. Four days to learn the scene and then there is always a day to recuperate, summarize, critique, or analyze the audition to get ready for the next one.

That’s four or five days.

Four or five days per week equals about 250 days a year, which is the average number of working days for people who work in banks, construction, or communication.

What if you do two auditions a week?

And there are the days you are on set shooting.

Then there is the time during the year you’re training, getting headshots, writing scripts for self-run projects, applying for grants, and studying acting.

Sounds like a full-time job.

The next time anyone asks you if you’ve been working much lately and you’re tempted to interpret that to only mean filming on set — you can simply and honestly reply, “Yes, full-time. Ever since I became an actor.”

Agents work hard. 

Talent agents are under as much pressure as anyone else.

The good ones work hard to get you auditions and to get you paid as much as possible.

There are many talented actors ready and willing to work yet fewer roles available. This is the competitive nature of the acting profession. 

These are difficult times.

First and foremost, agents work for themselves — and why not? They’re in business and want to be successful.

They get their work through the casting directors who work for the producers. The agents provide and regulate the flow of work for you. They are part of the system that is the movie business.

They work hard to keep good relations with the casting directors and the producers, so you will continue to have a chance at landing jobs.

They keep up with the changes in the economy and how it affects the movie business, new rules coming out of contracts, changes in distribution, genres, taste, casting procedures, and everything else that goes on in the business.

Just because you didn’t get a call for an audition recently doesn’t mean your agent isn’t working. 

Changing agents. 

Have you changed agents during your career?

It’s a common occurrence.

And a most disconcerting event. The actor-agent relationship is the most difficult one you’ll have as an actor.

Why would you want to change agents? The first reason that comes to mind is it’s one thing you can do to help you get more work. Or something you think will help you get more work.

Sometimes you or your agent clash in personality. A reason to get a new agent.

You and your colleagues never have enough auditions or enough work. That is frustrating and you want to do something about it. All natural enough and coming from a real situation.

Desperation can set in and drive you to actions that might not be beneficial. Actions like getting new headshots, moving to another city, schmoozing at industry parties — and changing agents.

The reality of the movie business is that you don’t have any say. 

The system is set up with studios and producers getting casting and agents to closely guard the gates. It can be a mystery to you: Am I submitted? Why didn’t I book the role? Does my agent like me? Are my auditions good enough? etc.

If you’re a professional with a good agent and audition regularly and work regularly, then you’re fine and checking all those boxes positively. Your agent likes you. Casting also likes bringing you in and the producers like seeing you.

Problem is nobody tells you this. 

Agent-actor is a business arrangement. You must be clear on that. Within that framework, all the good agents are pretty much the same and have the same good relationships with casting. In turn, you have to be businesslike and fulfill your obligations, including to be a better actor.

Of course, getting a new agent can give you a burst of energy and renewed hope, and that’s positive. 

But, as always, you don’t want to make a decision out of desperation.

Flirting with the director. 

Even though the ideas of equality are all here, female actors are still under a lot of extra pressure. The reality is these modern ideas are yet to be fully realized.

You see it on set.

Actresses often flirt with the directors. The directors often like it. It’s all considered normal.

You’re under pressure to get along in order to help you book more roles. To be liked.

Those film and TV pressures are real. American culture has inculcated women to get by and improve their lot based on their looks and their charm. Not much has changed. 

It’s considered normal.

But why should a female actor have to flirt with a director? It seems absurd to even pose the question. 

Why can’t a female actor go on set, do her job, be respected, liked for her work, and go home? Knowing she did her job properly.

And why does the director — or anyone in power in the business — expect the female actor to flirt with them while waiting for the lighting setup to finish? 

Compliments.

Thank you.

That’s the best answer to a compliment you receive about your work.

You may be confused as to what to say to a colleague after watching them in a show. If they wanted your reviewer’s opinion, they would ask. If they wanted your acting coach’s advice, they would ask. 

No one has asked for your opinion on the piece or on the actor’s work. Why give it?

Your actor friend has just finished work and has done their best. Why not say “Thanks for the work” or “Good job” or “Well done” or “Congratulations”?

Then they can reply “Thank you.”

These are proper and cultured exchanges.

The problems of having a successful career as an actor can lead to desperation and a need for constant validation. A need for acclaim. It can become normal to define your life by the number of compliments. 

Seeking applause is common.

Learn to compliment yourself by the mere fact you keep going; you train; you audition; you act in plays and movies; you do your best; and — you live.

Those facts can ease a grasping for praise.

A compliment is giving credit to your method of work and your outlook. 

The praise isn’t actually for “you” but for your work. Knowing this helps curb the desperation for praise.

Learn to appreciate the work that you and others do.

It’s difficult to build something up; it’s easy to knock it down.

“Do you like your agent?”

One actor asks the other.

You want to have a good business relationship with your agent.

“Do you like . . . ?” is a question we pose when it comes to friends, family, or acquaintances.

The working relationship with an agent is the most important and difficult one in your career and should be based on professionalism, mutual benefit, straightforwardness, formality, openness, and clear and common goals.

An analogy might be found in other work you do. An actor writes:

“I know the great part of the bartending is I don’t care too much about it. Which is key. There is very little pressure added, and when I am not given a shift to work, I’m not too fussed or concerned. I have a very clear understanding of my relationship with the company. And a clear understanding of my value in their company. When I do work for them, I do it well and am good.” 

Actor-agent is a delicate relationship that needs your ongoing thought and work to make it successful.

And you must play your part by being active, ready, professional, gracious — keeping up your end of the agreement.

Liking someone is a different story.

The producers like you.

You might audition for the same series numerous times.

It’s common to wonder why they keep bringing you in and why you don’t get cast.

If you keep getting auditions for a particular series, it means the producers and casting want you on that show. They keep a list of actors they want to use. You’re on that list.

As always, they have their reasons for what type they need to fulfill the job of that role in that episode. You might be too tall, too short, young, old etc.

It’s not your acting — if your acting wasn’t good, you wouldn’t be getting more auditions.

The hard work of auditioning is part of the definition of being an actor. Hopefully, knowing the showrunner likes you helps you relax.

A problem with the system is nobody tells you they like your work.

It’s a positive thing that you keep auditioning for the same series. 

You’re on their list.

“I’m not making my agent any money.”

If you’re auditioning, you’re earning your agent money.

The agent’s most important business relationship is with the casting director. Submitting good actors allows the casting director to have a good session.

A good session occurs when a casting director’s submission to the producers is of high quality.

That means the casting director will get hired for other shows. That is how they make their money.

They are thankful for the agents who send good actors. The agents are thankful for the actors who do good auditions.

Neither group ever tells you this, but that is how the system works.

You earn your agent money not just by booking jobs but by keeping the system working well.

Now you’re on set.

And you run into difficulties.

Not with your acting.

But with a list of issues that seems to keep coming up show after show. Especially on episodic television and low-budget features like Hallmark, Showtime, Christmas, and horror movies.

Twelve-day shoots.

After some experience with these kinds of shows, you learn what you’re in for, come the next one. That’s good to learn how to protect yourself so you can do your best work.

What you can fight for and change and what you can’t.

The agreement is a good starting point. If you keep the key clauses in mind — overtime, turnaround, safety, heat and cold considerations — you’ll be on the right track.

You’re happy to book the work and then new problems arrive as soon as you’re on set. You aspire to basic professionalism, protocol, on-set etiquette.

The old guys say, “Making movies is easy; it’s how we make them that counts.”

“I hope it goes recurring.”

You often hear your fellow actor on set saying that. It isn’t a bad thought, but you should watch carefully where it might lead you and if you want to go there.

If the idea of turning the one-episode role into a recurring one takes hold, it may have you trying hard to be liked by the producers, director, and series regulars. 

That could humiliate you.

You could also get diverted into acting extra hard to be extra good. And that won’t jive with your best work habits.

The showrunners add recurring roles as it suits them. Roles being developed are also discussed in the writers’ room. There, ideas are thrown around and the “what if” question is asked and your character will be part of that talk.

Doing work that is extreme won’t guarantee that they will give you more work. If it doesn’t suit their plans — they won’t do it.

Being professional, always working at your best, helping them make the best episode they can, fulfilling your obligations — all puts you in good stead to keep your dignity. 

And it gives the producers the best chance to consider you for the future.

This straightforward approach is the opposite of hoping and wishing. Truth is, you can hope to become anything — a series regular, a lead in a movie, a movie star, or an Oscar winner.

But why do you want to get diverted away from what is precious to you and from what you have worked so hard at up till now?

Being a good actor.

“I heard it’s kinda slow.”

You hear actors say they’re going to call their agent and ask that question.

If your agent represents fifty or a hundred actors and they all call twice a week to ask . . . boy! That’s tough on your agent.

It’s difficult to sustain yourself between jobs. It can drive you crazy. Desperation can creep in.

Calling your agent seems like a good idea, but it only puts them under pressure. Besides, what you’re really asking is “Why haven’t I had any auditions lately?” Your agent knows this and has a pat answer ready.

They have to have those pat answers ready. 

This makes for an awkward conversation, and you may end up feeling humiliated. You don’t need that.

It’s actually pretty easy nowadays to find out what’s going on — Casting Workbook, Facebook, the internet, ACTRA, SAG, DGC, etc. 

This is your actor’s life and the strength required to carry on in the face of adversity is what it means to be one.

“Who got the part?”

You didn’t get the part, but you’d like to know who did.

Why?

It might seem as if knowing is part of your education of the acting business. You might want to know who the competition is so you can be more competitive. Maybe finding out what it was the producers needed for that specific role will help you for next audition.

As in all your practice, you’ll have to be sharp and specific to see if you gained knowledge by finding out who got cast.

Or did it make you jealous?

Jealousy is common but isn’t a quality befitting a professional.

Just because it seems like all the actors want to know who got the role doesn’t mean that it’s a practice that assists you. 

See if knowing who got the role is an asset or a liability to your work — and life — as an actor.

Be sensitive to your feelings. 

It’s not a real job; it’s real anxiety. 

The actor has been cast in a play that they want to do.

They audition for a recurring role in a series.

Their agent says production has put a pin in them.

The dates of the series and the play conflict. Three weeks pass. The actor hasn’t worked much in the last year. The series will pay much more than the play. The actor has a good relationship with the director of the play.

The actor doesn’t know if they are booked for the series or not.

Six weeks pass.

When asked about the TV job, the actor says, “It’s not a real job; it’s real anxiety.”

“Just do what you did in the audition.”

That’s what directors often say when you arrive on set to play a guest lead or day role.

They don’t remember exactly what you did in the audition; it’s a learned phrase that series shooters repeat. Or they say, “I loved your audition.” Which is even better, as it’s positive reinforcement.

The pros know the old phrase “Making movies is easy; it’s how we make them that counts.” So, those directors are putting everyone at ease.

These are good greeting phrases from series directors. Good protocol, good etiquette.

It’s hello.

The phrases aren’t to be taken literally.

Try to avoid worrying, once you’re cast, how you’re going to remember exactly what you did in the audition when you get on set. That’s not how TV works.

You’ll be prepared, as are the director, showrunner, and crew. Then together you’ll make up the scene — the blocking, acting, lighting. On the spot.

There’s no replicating-the-audition test that you pass or fail.

Truth is you always do remember what you did.

An interesting side note is that the direction you get on set usually differs from what you got in the audition from casting.

Small parts.

Why should you feel bad playing a small role?

If you’re in a large company such as Stratford where the season is long, it means you have work for a good period of time.

You deserve it.

You’ve trained, given your time, had disappointments, auditioned, so, in a way, you’ve earned this work. It isn’t taxing, but having work that is easy to do is part of your actor’s life.

It’s like shooting a commercial and not doing too much in it and then receiving residuals over a few years. Well, it isn’t a gift; it’s just part of the overall payment to you for your actor’s life.

You’ve certainly had many jobs that are difficult. And many that didn’t pay well.

Having good actors supporting the leads is crucial. That is why they are called supporting parts — they support.

“There are no small parts, only small actors” is the old adage. Truth is, there are small parts but those that play them are not small actors.

This idea that only the most famous actors are of worth is pernicious.

Movie stars.

Some actors are movie stars.

You may be one now or in the future.

Most of what you need to learn as a movie star is different from what you’ve learned as an actor. They’re two — often overlapping — different jobs.

Everyone knows the things movie stars do. Interviews on talk shows, red carpets, posing for pictures, promoting movies, getting involved with social questions of the day, being famous. You know all this because of the massive attention given to them, and that attention can be diverting.

As films are made collectively, it’s a contradiction to make the individual — the movie star — the focus.

They carry a huge responsibility when they take on a movie. The biggest stars are referred to when people talk about the project. That’s the so-and-so picture.

It’s their movie.

To be the focus of a multimillion dollar project is a very definite kind of pressure. Not an easy or natural pressure to bear.

Today, with social media, these famous people have a scrutiny the likes of which has never been seen before.

Hollywood created this idea of the importance of individual actors as one of the means to garner more box office. It’s lasted until today.

We watch the movie to see her or him.

One thing is for sure — you don’t learn how to be a movie star in drama school.

In the end, someone appearing in a movie is an actor. Their actual importance to society is only as great as the truth of their character’s portrayal warrants.

Movie stars are an interesting phenomenon in your actor’s world. 

Leads. 

If you’re a lead on a series, you have a particular responsibility.

A lead is a leader on set. 

Doing your job professionally and getting what you need to do that are the best ways to lead. It helps the show. Cast and crew will see that and emulate it.

Often, the biggest problem is just learning your lines.

You’ll develop your short-term memory.

The pressure on everyone is to shoot quickly. On most shows, there are few takes but lots of coverage. Doing your best in each take is enough. There is no time for second-guessing as a lead. The next scene is coming up.

The producers expect you to deliver the same tone, mask, and behaviour episode after episode and season after season. The advertisers have invested in that. To do that, you’ll nearly always be dropped in, instead of having to work hard to get dropped in over and over. That’s too tiring.

You’re looking for all the space you can get in order to play. As a lead, you must find the maximum space possible.

Some time-tested tricks to do that are: 

- Get your call time made later. Especially if your hair and makeup only take ten minutes. 

- During blocking, ask questions about the scene.

- You can always say “I’m learning lines” to drivers, hair and makeup, and sound to avoid chatting and dissipating your energy.

- If the story isn’t clear in the writing, stop and sort it with the writer or showrunner. 

- If you’re still getting the lines in your head and need more time, get them to do the close-up on the other actor and you go second.

- Ask for another take.

Once the show is running, you as the lead have power and often more power than the directors who come in for one or two episodes. Use it wisely.

TV writing doesn’t always make sense but rather serves the needs of the show as dictated by the producers. Play each scene on its own. There is usually no arc.

In the end, dealing with fatigue may be your biggest task.

They’re the best writers. 

Producers hire the best writers to write their shows.

Try not to confuse your personal viewpoint and taste with the particular writing that makes that show exactly what it is.

He who pays the piper calls the tune. 

To sell their products, advertisers tell the networks what kind of show they want. The networks buy those shows and hire showrunners to make them. The showrunners tell the writers what to write.

They’re doing their jobs and doing them well. The content may be racist, sexist, pro-war, put people down, harsh, violent, and more, but the writers are doing their jobs.

Your job is to interpret that writing and act the role the best you can. 

Look closely at how the writing keeps the style consistent through repeated icons, syntax, music of the language, length of lines, transitions, storylines, plots, types of guest stars, etc. The consistency of the writing fulfills the singular nature of that particular show — episode after episode. That takes hard work and skill.

Writers try to meet the demands of those who pay them.

They are the best writers. 

Sit in the back seat.

Try not to get diverted, so you can do your job well.

Take note of what diverts you.

Do you sit in the front seat of the transport vehicle and talk to the driver because you want to be nice? It might not suit you.

Maybe you want to sleep, look at your lines, or just daydream. Do it.

In hair and makeup, they might start talking to you, asking, “When did we last work together?” etc. You can hold up your script and say, “I gotta learn my lines, thanks.”

The TAD will come and get you to bring you to set. She’s been trained to be nice — so she chats. You may want to walk to set on your own — I do. And go on set when you want to — I do. You may not want to hear her talking on the walkie — I don’t.

While waiting for a lighting setup, all the actors sit in the cast chairs. There might be lots of talk. If you don’t want to talk — move your chair. When shooting, I sit on an apple box off to the side.

You’re already a nice person, so you don’t need to use extra energy to be nice.

Being professional is the watchword, and every other professional on set will recognize that and appreciate it.

On the set of the film A Dry White Season, the actress Janet Suzman noted that Marlon Brando didn’t look at anyone as he walked from his trailer to the courtroom set. He had his head down. He was going to work. If he looked at everyone — all who knew he was Marlon Brando and wanted to have a look — that would have depleted his energy. He kept his head down so he could keep his energy and do his best work.

Sit in the back seat.

Translating.

So many terms you run into in the TV business need translating.

They don’t mean what they say.

The point is to use your brain. Think things through. If a phrase has you caught off guard, give it some consideration. Rather than take it at face value and as the truth just because they said it.

The power of the industry to give or not give you work can divert you from seeing what something really is.

Learn from your own experience. Observe others. Ask leading professionals.

Let’s use “Stand on the mark” as an example. The phrase that greets you when you enter an audition room. 

It literally is just “Hello.” A greeting to get the audition going. One day, ask casting what they mean when they say it.

“Just throw it away.” In a way, they’re saying “Act better.” You might be indicating. They didn’t say “Stop indicating”; they said, “Throw it away.”

You have to interpret that.

Your agent might say, when discussing your fee for an upcoming film, “The producers just don’t have the money.” Actually, they do have the money or else they wouldn’t be making the film. That translation might read “The producers want to put more money in their pocket instead of yours.”

Stage directions in scripts don’t need to be fulfilled as they’re mostly the writers making it easier for the producers to read. See if a direction is useful to help you play. If not, try to ignore it. Especially in auditions.

Peer closely through the haze.

Planned responses. 

When you feel attacked or put on the spot, it’s great to have a good comeback answer. 

Even a simple, common question from a fellow actor can throw you off.

If you meet colleagues every day and answering the usual questions puts you down, that makes for a long day of hard work getting back up.

It’s culturally popular to put other people down to put yourself up. A fellow actor’s question such as “Are you working?” seems innocuous, but if you’re not working, it can sting.

Answering “No, nothing these days” can put you down.

An answer to that common question could be “My auditions have been really good.” 

Having a learned phrase at your disposal when confronted with the usual difficult question or greeting is a useful practice. 

Repeating the practice makes it your habit.

How to greet a movie star the first time you work with them? That threw me off for years. Then I came up with “Congratulations on all your work.” That kept me in good stead for years. Now, partly because using the planned response freed me from some of the pressure of the idea of a movie star, I just say, “Hi.”

“Did you book that job?” There’s another question, asked by a colleague you saw at your last audition, that’s actually uncultured, but asked anyways. Your answer could be “I liked my work in the audition.

A fellow actor asks you, “What are you up to these days?” and you feel the need to explain or answer honestly and say, “Not much,” or “No auditions,” or “I don’t know” . . . and down you go. 

Answering “Good. Doing some writing these days. How are you?” keeps you up. 

That will end the exchange right there — then the other person will start talking about themselves. You just saved yourself going into a hole.

Your answer is true — you are writing — and it is going well because you’re doing it. You can stand behind what you said.

It also calms your colleague.

Having an answer that ends with a positive, inclusive offer to your fellow actor is good. It includes them, makes the commonality — not the contradiction. Makes them feel better.

We’re in the same boat. 

These preplanned answers should be things that are true and that you can stand behind. Giving a response that is above and beyond you can make you feel awkward.

Simple phrases that you learn and repeat on cue strengthen your conviction.

Paul Robeson.

Why do some proprietors of casting studios hang posters of Hollywood movie stars on the walls?

You may have your own thoughts on Marilyn and Marlon, but do you need to be looking at them just before you enter the audition room?

It’s distracting. You’re trying to focus.

And as a Canadian, you’re already under so much American pressure.

Do you need to see videos showing scenes from the acting classes offered at the casting studio?

It’s humiliating to say the least.

Anyone who knows anything about the difficulties of being an actor in the movie business will know that actors auditioning need all the support they can get.

Meaning simple décor. Neutral colours.

Make it easier for the actors to take their space. 

I suppose if you have to hang a poster, at least make it of Paul Robeson. Or Gordon Pinsent. Or Alexander Moissi.

Are you Jewish?

One morning, I was talking with a close colleague. A Black actor, very experienced both on stage and in front of the camera.

The actor was relating to me the directions they had got from casting re: their callback.

“Be more Black.”

Talking about that humiliation, I remembered other Black actors saying the same thing. We both shook our heads at the situation.

I joked, “What if they said to me ‘Be more Irish!’?” (I’m half Irish, half Jewish.)

We laughed.

In the afternoon, my agent called me and said there was a lead role in a film and casting had asked, “Is John Jewish?”

We didn’t answer the question.

Old school is good school.

So many guidelines in the film and TV industry are gone.

The times have changed. Often protocol isn’t followed, clauses in the producer-actor agreements are broken, preparation time for auditions shortened, less days to shoot an episode, lower actor’s fees, more control by agents and casting, lower-level content, middle-management watchdogs, executive pressure.

It’s always been a tough business, but at least there were rules in place, etiquette followed, precedent referred to.

There was a way to make movies. Old school.

Change is constant and one never wants the old per se, but forms that serve should remain. It’s difficult to build something up and easy to knock it down. 

The question always is: Does the school serve the students?

Good old school allows you, the actor, and all the film workers a proper place to create and produce. 

Maybe old school is just school. 

Suck up, kick down. 

Try to present your work.

A common trait today, once someone has achieved a certain position of power, is to learn how to hold on to it. That can include kicking those down the ladder who are trying to come up and sucking up to those above.

If you get desperate, you may find yourself trying to do that.

Presenting your work in a straightforward, simple, and elegant manner is an altogether different approach.

You prepare your work, present it, and leave it — nothing more, nothing less — so the worth of it will be seen. 

That saves you the liability of being part of a vicious cycle leading nowhere — sucking up, kicking down.

How you relate to the producers, agents, casting directors, actors, and others in power in the film and TV industry is a serious question. Try to do it professionally.

Metaphorically speaking, you could present your work in the audition room like a samurai. Enter, bowing, throwing a silk cloth in the air, drawing your sword, turning it upside down, cloth floating down, crossing the blade, and splitting in two.

You replace the sword, bow, and leave.

Let mules and piglets do the kicking and sucking. 

How to self-promote.

You want to do all you can to promote yourself. 

How to do it is a complicated and difficult job.

The producers — through the casting directors and agents — keep a pretty tight rein on how much you can do. For instance, it’s considered a no-no to bypass the casting system and send your own tape directly to a producer.

Forty years ago, you could drop into a producer’s or casting director’s office and introduce yourself, but today that isn’t done.

You need to learn the current protocol for self-promotion and to develop new ones.

The old school way of sending a note still works. If you’re doing something positive and active like doing a play, booking a role in a movie, taking class or writing a play, let them know.

The note is a quick, positive reminder of you. 

Website, demo reel, photos, résumé, Instagram, TikTok, short films are all good, standard ways to make people aware of your work.

The straightforward presentation of your work is always the way to go. 

One agent told me that demo reels are more reactive than proactive, which means if a casting director wants to see your work on short notice, then your demo reel serves that reactive purpose. Otherwise, they’re too busy to watch it.

When festivals like TIFF get taken over by Hollywood as part of their campaign for the Oscars, then hard-sell “American”-style networking takes place. 

The producers have a new system where an actor’s popularity on social media counts in casting. They reckon this popularity will sell more tickets.

An example of how the producer’s interests are mixed in with actor’s promotion is the IMDb STARmeter and its award. This award recognizes actors and actresses deemed “fan favourites” on IMDbPro’s STARmeter chart, which measures the search behaviour of IMDb’s 250 million plus monthly visitors. 

But self-promotion also includes participation and raises important questions like: How do you as a modern actor participate in the movie business? How do you take your place? Where is the opportunity to have your voice heard? What are your concerns? What do you want your film community to be?

The intense competition for roles can be confusing. 

See what best suits you.

Headshots. 

There’s a lot of work needed to figure this one out.

Generally, in the early part of your career, getting a headshot is a bit of a nightmare. There aren’t any courses on it. On how to do it.

In fact, the very idea of a course on headshots probably sounds absurd. Certainly not de rigueur. And not discussed at most drama schools.

Often, you resort to a mindset similar to getting your picture taken in Grade 8.

Posing.

How to let them see you — that’s the key.

Acting for camera is letting them, us, the camera — see you

Knowing that you’re being seen, but not having dealt with it through practice sessions and analysis of what it is that’s making you nervous, can produce a horrible experience.

What do you want to show the producer? “One serious and one smiling” just isn’t good enough. Too general, too vague, and completely misleading. You usually just try to “smile” or “be serious.”

Disconnected.

Self-consciousness is the issue here.

Your hyper inner monologue could go like this, “Hello, casting, producer, director. You can look at me,” or “Hi there, I know you’re looking at me. That’s fine. I like it. Look as long as you want,” or “Being looked at is part of my job. Letting a camera photograph me is the work I do.”

Saying phrases like this out loud before the photo shoot is excellent practice and saying it during the shoot is even better. 

You have to be on your own breath. You have to have real thoughts going on — thoughts that will produce the picture you want to present.

Through your eyes.

Approach it as you would a scene, rather than a “photo shoot” with all the confusion that’s attached to that idea.

Act your shots. That’s what you’re good at.

You might want to be inviting, threatening, poised, low status, innocent, cool. The adjective has to be clear when you’re looking in the lens. Find your action verb to produce the adjective.

Decide who you’re looking at.

If you’re starting with a new agent, they invariably ask you to get new headshots and have the authority to choose which shots are used. That’s both an asset and a liability.

The best headshot photographers in the city are skilled. No question. But often they don’t follow the simple rule of taking a photo so it looks like you.

That’s a minimum.

They often make you look like a movie star. Why? Is that fulfilling some civilian idea you might have of what the movie business is and your place in it? Or the photographer’s idea of giving good value for the money?

It’s just not suitable.

Let movie stars take movie star photos.

A headshot doesn’t mean you should look gorgeous, attractive, handsome, or exciting because in the movies we need everyone and how everyone looks.

If you’re an actor who has a natural demeanor and look, then why wear heavy makeup and a low-cut top with a push-up bra? I see actors come into class who cannot play the types that their headshots represent. They can’t support the look of the photo.

That’s misleading for agents, casting, and directors.

The cost of the photo shoot is another real pressure.

Your headshot is important, yes, but it isn’t the be all and end all.

When asked about your headshots, you might be saying what many actors say: “I hate my headshots.” That’s not a professional comment about your work.

See if you can figure out how to take headshots so you say, “I like my headshots.”

“Lost track.”

In the meditation hall when the master asked the head monk why he rang the wrong bell, the monk answered, “Lost track.”

That’s all he said.

The head monk is a master teacher himself, so he knows what bells to ring and when and how, because he’s done it his whole life. 

But he made a mistake. 

Mistakes happen, but what should you do when you make one on set, in a play, a rehearsal, or in acting class?

Try to follow the example of the head monk. 

A simple recognition of the error.

On set, after the mistake, you must move forward with the work. The crew, director, and other actors are. There’s no need for complicated explanations that will further divert the work and draw even more attention to yourself. 

That isn’t professional.

If you are going to be late for an acting class, then just say “Sorry I’m late,” but don’t elaborate over the messy details. Same thing in an audition — especially in an audition. There are only two possible reasons to excuse your lateness for an audition — car crash or someone’s death. 

Otherwise, a simple “Sorry” will do and get on with it. 

The pressure is great on all of us making movies today and we work such long hours and everyone is tired — so mistakes happen. The dolly grip misses a mark, the boom is in the shot, the focus wasn’t pulled correctly, a prop missed. 

When you drop a line or don’t hit your mark, it’s normal.

Develop a conviction that you mostly produce quality work, always strive for excellence, and sometimes lose track.

Skin as thin as glass. 

That’s what you need when acting on camera. It’s both literal and figurative.

Let us see you. 

When you drop in and believe, your skin literally changes. It softens and opens. We go in with you. As you have more experience and train properly, you’ll learn to open your skin. 

The screen loves and demands this intimacy — seeing into your psyche. Allowing you out and the viewer in. 

It’s acting for camera.

Watch actors and see when their skin is as thin as glass. Watch yourself and see when you feel your face, skin, and body open up. Note when you’re tight and we can’t see as much.

Relaxing does it, but it might be more complex than just relaxing. 

To survive the movie business, you also need the opposite — a very thick skin. 

Skin as thin as glass when acting — thick skin in the business. 

A guide of opposites for an actor. 

Lunchbox. 

It’s great when you’re just going to work.

After much experience acting, the excitement and nerves change. After you’ve acted in a lot of movies, the near hysteric level can’t sustain itself.

That’s when the work turns into work.

Maybe when you’ve done a long run of a show. Days and days on a series. Lots of movies over a career. Tons of auditions.

You can get tired and even a bit bored, and when called to set, utter a small “Phew.” You’re not literally bored — just putting in another shift.

Going to work. And I think that’s when your best work really starts.

It’s back to quantity and experience. 

It’s so soothing to just pack your lunchbox, go into the factory, and say “Morning fellas, everyone OK?”

And turn on the machine.

The level you’re at is the level you’re at. 

Don’t be pressured to think that your acting should be somewhere other than where it is.

It isn’t realistic, and you need to be if you want to improve.

This doesn’t mean you don’t have aspirations. Of course you do, but you have to start from where you are now. 

Sounds obvious, doesn’t it?

The key is knowing that your work is at the proper level now. With all the assets and liabilities that that includes. You shouldn’t or couldn’t be at any other level. Accepting that is such an opening of the door for your improvement.

In analyzing where your work is at, you take two aspects into account: you, the subjective; and the industry, the objective. 

Having unrealistic expectations leads to disappointment, which you want to avoid. The movie industry has lots of disappointment already built into it. Wishing you were more advanced is just, well, wishing, and you know, “If wishes were horses . . .”

Look the thing in the eye. Call a spade a spade. Tell it like it is. That will focus you — your mind, your work. 

Know that the level you’re at now is the level you’re at.

Needed. 

You and all of us want to be needed.

It’s only human.

When you’re cast in a show, part of the good feeling is that the movie needs you. It can’t be made without you playing that role. You’re now an integral part of the whole.

You’re needed.

If you’re not booked on a show and not getting auditions, you can start to feel like you’re not needed. You’re capable and professional and ready to audition and work, but it seems as if you’re not needed.

That’s a terrible feeling.

And that feeling can divert you when doing auditions. Try to guard against that.

In fact, even when you’re not getting auditions or shooting on set, you’re needed. The movie business needs to have an army of actors ready and waiting. The system is set up that way.

Just as skilled bakers, wheat farmers, teachers, loggers — all — are trained and ready to work yet they may be part of that long-existing army — the unemployed. Seemingly not needed.

Linking how you’re needed to how others are needed will deepen your conviction to stick to your ideals and fight for what you believe in.

As you are part of the community, developing new work, training, and participating with your peers — that means you are needed. Remember that.

The village needs you to help tell their stories. 

If things were different and you always had the opportunity to fulfill that need, you’d feel better. 

Know you’re needed as an actor.

Directors.

Most directors are in the same boat as you.

They are freelance and were looking for a job when they got this one.

They do have the authority on set, but their relative status in the movie business is about the same as yours.

It’s the networks, studios, streaming companies, and executives who call the tune.

That can allow you to be sympathetic to the director’s situation. It can also allow you to do your work easier. They are colleagues, and there’s no need to give all your power to them. 

Regulars on series soon learn that they know more about their character and the show and have more status than visiting directors.

It’s part of the actual relations of TV.

Directors are under two pressures: to get the shots in quickly and to get along with the producers. One and the same thing.

If they don’t give you much direction — realize the pressure they’re under.

The few directors in the world who work on rich, realistic scripts are true creative artists and they will work with you in the best way. That condition is few and far between.

Low-budget independent film directors usually discuss a lot. The funny actor’s rule is “low budget, more talk.”

Knowing the director’s situation allows you to better fulfill your obligations.

Maximum and minimum.

What can be done in the minimum?

The painter David Hockney, in the Louisiana Channel video “I am a space freak,” tells of the time he spent looking at the Grand Canyon before he painted it. He gave maximum time to look and see. He also gave maximum time, effort, and money to paint it.

The result is a fully realized piece. A Bigger Grand Canyon.

If you have a day to prepare your audition, what kind of work will you realize?

Independent Canadian features are made in twenty, fifteen, or twelve days as are Hallmark and Christmas movies. This is minimal.

As an actor, it’s useful to know whether you’re working under maximum or minimum conditions. Questions that might be bothering you about the quality of your work and your demeanour — glass half empty, glass half full — might be better understood taking time into account.

There’s a culture today of doing things quickly.

Performing your job efficiently is different — like a bricklayer laying bricks with minimum effort, maximum result — and a skill to admire.

But many other areas of human endeavour require time to observe, consider, think, reflect, create. Is the method and atmosphere of work producing quality and excellence? That’s the question.

In the past, one-hour TV dramas took fourteen days to shoot. Today, you’ll shoot them in seven or less. That’s minimum. 

Commercials shoot a whole day for one minute of screen time. That’s maximum.

Who is dictating the time you have to do your work?

Lingua.

Tongue in Latin. The word language comes from that root. 

Acting in American movies here in Canada is like having your tongue pulled out of your head because you can’t use your native tongue.

Have to have an American accent.

It’s called the Canadian film industry. 

More than once, actors here have been humiliated on set because of their accent. It’s quite upsetting.

At the residential schools, the First Nations children were not allowed to speak their language or perform their ceremonies.

English rulers, like Cromwell, forced the Irish to speak English and killed Irish priests for teaching Gaelic — their own language.

A lot of tongues taken out of people’s mouths.

Blockbusters.

Film is a new art form.

What’s a blockbuster?

A block could be a stone; bust, a verb to break; so, breaking a stone. Would that be like cracking the nut?

We often say that when grappling with a problem.

What’s the problem here? Is the block money? Is someone trying to smash money into smithereens?

The discussion isn’t so far off, is it, when the term blockbuster is used and accepted as a kind of an art form. Everyone knows it’s a kind of movie.

Bust feels like a harsh word.

It’s also known that blockbusters are made in Hollywood. An American invention. Big. Smashing something to bits.

The Empire State Building was big. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were blown to bits. Their blocks certainly got busted.

None of these films qualify as blockbusters: The Third Man, 12 Years a Slave, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Yojimbo, Battleship Potemkin, The Seven Samurai, The Bicycle Thieves, Metropolis, Casablanca, Double Indemnity, The Grey Fox, On the Waterfront, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Maltese Falcon, Chinatown, Goin’ Down the Road, M.

The definition according to Vocabulary.com is “a Hollywood movie that’s made with a large budget and big stars. A true blockbuster is extremely popular and brings in a lot of money. Typically, a blockbuster is a fabulous summer movie that audiences line up to see the first weekend it’s released.” (My emphasis.)

There’s you the actor — and there’s the blockbuster.

Sounds like a blockbuster ain’t no film.

NFB, CBC . . .

The National Film Board of Canada was founded in 1939 “to produce and distribute and to promote the production and distribution of films designed to interpret Canada to Canadians and to other nations.”

John Grierson was the founding commissioner and had a positive influence on documentary filmmaking in Canada and around the world. His first film, Drifters (1929), the silent depiction of the harsh life of herring fishermen in the North Sea revolutionized the portrayal of working people in the cinema.

After 1945 when the anti-communist hysteria began, Grierson’s name and reputation were slandered and maligned, and he was forced out of the NFB.

During the 1940s and early 1950s, the NFB employed “travelling projectionists” who toured the country, bringing films and public discussions to rural communities. 

The NFB has won more than five thousand awards, including a heap of Oscars, Golden Bears, and Palmes d’Or. Norman McLaren was a ground-breaking animation filmmaker and won numerous awards for his films.

The NFB studio opened in 1956 in Montreal and was a state-of-the-art film production studio — the first of its kind in Canada. In 2019, the studio was closed.

Cutbacks to production began in 1965, and in 1980 film production was cut completely. 

The CBC was founded in 1936 to serve as the national public broadcaster for both radio and television.

The network produced hundreds of shows and all were made in-house. For example, the TV series King of Kensington was shot in the CBC studios and produced by CBC staff. Today, Kim’s Convenience, which aired on CBC, was filmed at Showline Studios and produced by Thunderbird Films.

The current Toronto studios opened in 1993 at a cost of $375 million and today only a third of the building is occupied by CBC. Vancouver’s building was built in 1975. 

In 1984, 1,100 jobs were cut and at that time there were 12,000 employees, and as of 2019, there are 7,500 employees.

In 2006, the English TV design department was closed, and gone are the skilled craftspeople; the carpentry, paint, metal, and special effects shops; and the unique wardrobe and prop departments.

In Montreal, at the announcement of the closing of the wardrobe department, a group of 400 artists and cultural workers signed a letter protesting the closing: “We the artists and cultural workers from the theatre community, we who in the daily practice of our art bring new and classic characters to life on stage, we who dress our actors in costumes which serve to complete the very dimension of the characters they play, we in the theatrical community, who regularly use the CBC wardrobe department, are outraged by the announcement of its closing.”

Radio drama studios closed in 2012. CBC museum closed in 2017. Canada now ranks 16th out of 18 industrial countries in funding for national broadcasting.

Speaking in the House of Commons on May 18, 1932, Prime Minister R. B. Bennett, leader of the Conservative Party said: “First of all,” he said, “this country must be assured of complete Canadian control of broadcasting from Canadian sources, free from foreign interference or influence. Without such control radio broadcasting can never become a great agency for the communications of matters of national concern and for the diffusion of national thought and ideals, and without such control it can never be the agency by which national consciousness may be fostered and sustained and national unity still further strengthened.”

What new forms for our national broadcasting needs will we develop in these changing and difficult times?

Razzle. 

Do you get dazzled by the razzle?

The Americans have been dazzling Canadians for a very long time. Economic, political, military, — and cultural razzle. 

You’re an actor and you’ve played some wonderful roles on TV series, in independent films, and in the theatre, so try to balance that worth with the worth of a role in a big American production. 

American features shooting in Canada offer virtually nothing but small roles to local actors. 

Yet the fanfare and hoopla — the razzle — prior to production paints a different and glittering picture. See if it diverts you.

The issue is not to feel second-class. 

Note your worth based on the roles you’ve played, your life’s experience, and being human. 

To believe that everything in America is better is to put you and your work down. Projects of excellence abound throughout the world, not just in Hollywood.

The exciting idea of “acting with” or “being directed by” a Hollywood name is often deflated by the reality on set where, with your small role, you actually have very little collaboration. 

Sometimes it’s even humiliating. 

Like the time my colleagues were working with the director Richard Donner and instead of using the two Canadian actors’ names while giving direction he shouted, “Get the two Canadians to enter quicker!”

Yes, it is a wonderful mark in your career to be in an Academy Award–winning movie, but it’s not the be all and end all.

It’s your space. Take your place.

Millionaires.

Do you know any millionaires in the movie business?

Of course, we all know that Ellen Pompeo earned $20 million per year and Scarlett Johansson, George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and Dwayne Johnson are millionaires. 

And the presidents of Netflix, Warner Brothers, CBS, Universal Studios, etc. are millionaires. Multimillionaires. That’s known.

What about the agents and casting directors you work with? How would you find out how much money they make?

Of course, they know exactly how much you make. To the penny.

There’s lots of money in the movie business and you know who does the work to make movies, so it might be interesting to know who makes most of the money.

Your colleagues usually don’t want to discuss their fees, even though the union has a minimum daily rate laid out in the agreement and most shows pay actors the same rate. IATSE crew workers all know exactly what each other makes as their rates are also set out in their agreements and they’re all paid the same.

On the shows you work on, which producers, directors, showrunners are millionaires? How much do they make? What is the standard rate for a casting director to cast a series?

Are any of your fellow actors millionaires? Writers, production designers, cinematographers you know — can any of them earn millions?

You know exactly how much money you earn, but what about the rest of the people in the industry?

With the minimum wage at $17 an hour, a million bucks is still a lot of money. 

Divine right of kings.

In European history, it was asserted that kings derived their authority from God and could not therefore be held accountable for their actions by any earthly authority such as a parliament.

During the War of the Roses, both Henry VI and Edward IV claimed that they ought to be king. They both argued that they were appointed by God to rule England.

Who has the right to know how the movie business works?

Have you ever wondered the budget of the film you’re working on, or if background is all ACTRA or half non-union, or how much the American actor standing next to you is earning, or what tax breaks the producers got from Ontario Creates?

Many of the details that make up the whole of the industry seem to be the private domain of — maybe — producers, casting, agents, and ACTRA.

Does it seem to you that on many questions you’re kept out of the loop?

You, and all of us, have a right as actors and citizens to be able to ask, investigate, learn, and know anything and everything.

Why not?

You might find that certain questions are spoken of in hushed tones and with eyes lowered.

The divine right of kings.

Not really your business.

That’s a disconnect, isn’t it, when you and your colleagues are the ones making the movies.

Working-class actors.

Are there fewer working-class actors today than when I was in drama school in 1972?

Reading the Guardian article by Carole Cadwalladr “Why Working-Class Actors Are a Disappearing Breed” prompted my writing on the question

Are there fewer movies today showing the life of working-class people?

Cadwalladr writes, “But it’s part of a much bigger picture. Because what has happened in acting and therefore what we see on our screens is intimately connected to what is happening in Britain. Acting, culture, identity, representation and politics are all inextricably entwined. The actors on our screens, the dramas that are commissioned, the way we view ourselves, the politicians we vote for, our ability to empathise with people from other parts of our culture, are all of a piece.”

The question “For whom?” must be asked about TV and movies as well as other areas of life. The production has been made for whom? The themes of Netflix series are for whom? The ideas in blockbusters are whose? The Academy Award–winning movies are for whom?

This is an important question for discussion as most people in the world work. 

Anna Leszkiewicz writes in her The New Statesmen article: “Last year, a report revealed that half of Britain’s most successful actors were privately educated. The Sutton Trust found that 42 per cent of Bafta winners over all time were educated independently. 67 per cent of British winners in the best leading actor, actress and director categories at the Oscars attended fee-paying schools — and just seven per cent of British Oscar winners were state educated.”

My class at the National Theatre School of Canada had seven members out of a class of sixteen from working-class families.

What’s your experience?

The time it takes. 

You hear people saying, “It takes so long to make a movie.”

Does it?

It’s actually “It takes as long as it takes.”

It’s fine if civilians say it, but watch if you’re saying it.

To say it is to not understand what it is to make a movie. Movie is an abbreviation for moving picture. To take a picture, you need a subject — you, the actor — and you need light and a camera. To get the lighting to reflect what they want to say in the scene takes time. Then the moving camera part comes in and that takes time. The blocking, the acting, stunts, etc.

It takes time. 

As an actor, learn what it takes to make a movie.

You need your time to be ready and so do all the other departments. Each taking their place; each taking their space. Collectively.

Once you accept and assimilate the process, then you free yourself to do your acting. If you don’t, it’s like putting a square peg in a round hole. You can misspend your energy being frustrated at waiting. 

When you, the individual, join the collective making the movie, a lot of that frustration goes away.

You become part of the time it takes.

The toll.

Learn to recognize and appreciate the toll it takes on you being an actor.

Certain roles are demanding emotionally — Desdemona — and they can have a real effect on you. 

A regular role on a series, a long-running play, or a lead in a feature all have their own cost. Don’t underestimate this high-level work.

The competitive nature of the business side also takes its toll. Every actor talks about the highs and lows, but to really be aware of those dangers is critical to keep living and working in the healthiest possible way.

Life for every working person takes its toll. For you as an actor, that toll is particular. 

To be an actor, you have to be sensitive.

Learn what the toll is, and take pains to develop habits that keep you in good stead.

The Life.

Actors are loved.

Actors are loved by the people.

You are part of art and culture and therefore play a key role in the life of the society.

People have always gathered together to see and hear stories — stories that reflect life.

Those stories reflect the working day, the life of the people, the weal and woe, the concerns and aspirations. 

We need this artistic interpretation of life to help us learn and grow.

As Hamlet says to the Players, “the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.”

Nature being life, and the mirror — our stories in film form.

Your significance as an actor is defined by your ability to reflect the human condition.

The media barrage of movie star gossip and drama that can occupy your mind is another thing altogether. 

Creation.

In a September, 1793 letter to publisher George Thomson, the great Scottish national poet Robert Burns writes about his process of composing poems based on music:

I consider the poetic sentiment, correspondent to my idea of the musical expression, then choose my theme, begin one stanza, when that is composed — which is generally the most difficult part of the business — I walk out, sit down now and then, look out for objects in nature around me that are in unison or harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom, humming every now and then the air with the verses I have framed. When I feel my Muse beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of my study, and there commit my effusions to paper, swinging, at intervals, on the hind-legs of my elbow chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures, as my pen goes.

Jumping on hotel beds.

You’re excited at landing a job, and upon arrival in your hotel room, you jump on the bed. 

And why shouldn’t you be excited when new work arrives?

But you have a right to work and it should be par for the course. You aren’t “blessed” to have a job. You earned it. 

The movie system will seduce you in many pernicious ways. Just the fact that the job is out of town makes it appealing; out of the country, you’ll be ecstatic; “my driver is picking me up,” etc. 

The producers shoot films where it best suits them.

In these confusing times, it’s useful to have a sober attitude. The outlook that it’s your right to have enough work to earn a proper living is grounding. 

If you’re so easily swayed by getting to stay in a hotel, then there’s less chance you’ll fight for more important things.

The movie business can entice you as an actor. Every commercial audition is said to be for a US national; every TV role might be recurring. This gets your expectations up, but then when it isn’t a US national or a recurring role, you can crash.

Adding to a vicious and tiring cycle.

As a professional, you should expect to receive job offers in a straightforward and dignified manner with no false frills added. 

The right to work was going to be included as one of the human rights in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but the United States wouldn’t allow it.

People have the right to work. 

That doesn’t necessarily elicit jumping on hotel beds. 

A peaceful pocket of time.

Observe when you’re in time and it’s peaceful.

You’ll be in thought then.

Seeing you thinking onscreen is something we want. Try to learn when you’re in time and to identify different blocks of time.

Time can be like being on a train that is carrying you along. Which train, which track.

Waiting can be peaceful. It is for me. If I go to a store with a friend and they go inside to shop, I love waiting outside. The security of knowing they’re inside; the security of knowing they’re coming back out. I wait, in peace. 

Time stands still for me.

That zone of transported time is useful to experience and to be able to reproduce on demand.

As an actor, you know about Time. Keep exploring it.

This particular time — a peaceful pocket — is just one specific time block. Something that I observed.

Which ones do you notice?

What you have. 

It’s interesting to think what you actually have.

Not what you think you should have.

You may wish you looked like a certain movie star and feel inadequate because you don’t. And dream that if only you had those looks, you would book more work. 

What do you have? What are your qualities? What is your natural personality? What skills do you have? What training have you had? What experience have you had?

Those answers, that compendium is what you are — actually are. And all of that is enough to play your roles.

Learning to release what is needed is the job. What you decide to release becomes your discretion. That decision comes from your outlook, experience, and taste.

Everyone is needed in the movies.

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

Witches

There are no witches.

But you’re like one.

When you work well, you conjure. How you and your fellow actors do that is secret. It’s difficult to do and it’s precious.

It’s like how witches work.

Appreciate your ability to channel energy and cast spells. It’s magic. And the people love you for that ability. To tell their stories.

There are others who might not appreciate it — like some studio heads, producers, directors, casting, agents. They don’t know what we do, so let them not know.

Cultured people know.

As witches were persecuted (for what? knowing something? speaking their conscience?) so you are, too, by not having a voice in the industry, being kept out of the system, not being appreciated, and always having to audition starting from zero.

Loving your ability to experiment, practise, experience, and create like a witch, drawing from your imagination and nature itself, will give you confidence in face of the harsh system you work in.

It’s difficult to make your potion.

Pool of power.

It’s enlightening the moment you realize the power you have.

Whether on set or in class, there comes a moment when you realize your power. Your pool of power. You feel you’ve reached deep inside. Deeper than you ever have.

A coach might point it out to you.

An epiphany.

Once you’re aware of it, you’ll make it your habit to draw from that pool. And you’ll feel its unlimited depth. You’ll draw deeper and deeper.

Your confidence will grow and more importantly — your conviction.

As you start a new piece of work, you’ll know you have your pool of power. Every human has it, and it is in its realization that the human factor is best released.

Enjoy your dipping ladle.

Sensitive.

I once went through a dramatic experience, and shortly afterwards I was quite anxious and asked my mentor what she thought it was. 

“Well, you’re sensitive.”

I didn’t grasp what she meant and said, “You mean like my system is weak?”

“No, that’s not it at all,” she said. “You’re sensitive and that’s why you’ve been able to create all the roles you have.”

I realized that was true.

I had never realized that before nor given recognition to it. And I certainly would never have described myself as sensitive. I would have been embarrassed to do so.

This was an epiphany. 

Stanislavski, in his book Creating a Role, writes, “The talent of an actor is sensitive, it reacts to all that is fine.”

Appreciate your sensitivity.

I now do mine. 

Humility.

One of the first actors I ever coached asked me the other day, “Do you teach proactive humility?”

I paused and thought about that . . . “Yes, I guess I do.” I hadn’t thought of those two ideas — proactive and humility — together.

I like it. I do teach that.

Dezso Magyar, former artistic director of the Canadian Film Centre and American Film Institute, once said to me, “You can’t be a good actor without humility.” I took that in right away.

I believe that.

What mitigates against you having humility? First thought that comes to my mind is the Oscars. Poor you and all us actors dreaming up and practising the acceptance speech. Hollywood by nature isn’t humble.

Having confidence and more importantly conviction is a different matter. You should build your conviction based on your experience and your thinking that supports it.

Taking your place means to be confident — as an actor, as a human being.

Humility allows you to better play those roles that are arrogant, aggressive, cocky, puffed up.

It also means you know you’re just doing a job like everyone else in the world. Particular, but a job nonetheless.

As the saying goes, “Acting isn’t brain surgery.”

You play an important part in society telling stories that reflect life. With modesty, with knowing your job is no more important than the next one, you’ll be closer to your audience and hence better appreciated.

How can you show life if you think you’re above it?

No explanation, no apology.

Your life as an actor will have many twists and turns.

Once you have analyzed a question, discussed it, and made a decision, why explain it or apologize for it? Your decision is made; now just act on it.

The actor says, “I should have stayed in town for TV work instead of doing summer theatre.”

Really?

That has you having regret for the path you took. You decided to do summer theatre and had that experience, and now you’ll move on to the next. 

You’ll have many different acting jobs in many different mediums.

Try to develop a perspective where you and your work are ongoing. None of your decisions are final or complete. 

Being a professional means solidifying and simplifying your work. Explaining and apologizing only create doubt for you and others. 

It is a lot of misspent energy.

Make your decision and carry on. Have the experience and live your life.

“I loved working with . . .”

Any two actors who have acted together have a special bond.

You’ve crossed into the imaginary world with your partner, and that is never forgotten. You both honoured the agreement to give and take. You held the unwritten thread that tied you together.

You appreciate each other.

Gushing over how much you loved working with your partner, the whole cast, the director, and everyone! is quite a different thing. Especially if they are famous.

Award shows, talk shows, movie sites, magazines, interviews, websites have actors expressing a false sense of joy and excitement about their latest project. 

The producers use actors as salespeople to promote their shows.

Kristin Scott Thomas told Decca Aitkenhead of The Guardian, “I’m often asked to do something because I’m going to be a sort of weight to their otherwise flimsy production. . . So, I’m stopping.”

Aitkenhead writes, “Actors are seldom this candid. It is an unwritten rule of the profession to speak highly of every film you’ve ever been involved in.”

In 2014, Dave Calhoun of Time Out asked Daniel Craig if he’d do another James Bond movie and he answered, “I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists. No, not at the moment. Not at all . . . We’re done.” The movie industry heavily criticized Craig for his comments.

Human beings like and need to work. When you book a role, you’re pleased. When you finish your work, you’re proud. It’s natural and positive to recognize and celebrate that with your fellow workers.

Real appreciation best expresses the quality of your love of work.

Rights.

You have the right to ask questions.

Be that of the director, ACTRA, your agent, the cinematographer, producer, or writer. Or of your fellow colleagues.

You have other rights as well. The right to health care, education, and work.

The right to conscience is important. You can have your own thoughts and you can voice them. Freedom of speech.

No one has any more rights than anyone else.

All humans have rights by virtue of being human.

Telling your mother.

Do you still call your mother when you book a role?

Sharing your success is proper. 

But as a professional, can you develop the strength to carry on without validation other than your own good work?

When you were a kid, you’d be thrilled to tell your mom anything good you’d done. You were proud. 

As we grow and mature, certain relationships change naturally. Joining the adults in your family on their own level and taking your working place alongside them is natural. Equals.

In some families, being an actor isn’t considered as worthy as being a teacher, bus driver, electrician, or engineer. You might feel pressure to show them you’re successful. 

Let them have their own views and you have yours.

Take your place.

Being ecstatic when you book a role is euphoria and her cousin is depression. Evil cousins. Better you don’t invite either of them to dinner.

Take the high road.

The movie system is a tough one, as you know, and you’re trying not to live or die with every booking.

Point isn’t never to share good news with your mother — of course not. 

Consider what doing it means.

Put yourself first.

On set and in acting class, put yourself first. 

If you look after yourself, take your space, then you’ll be a good scene partner. 

Putting yourself first is key in your relationship with the collective of film workers making the movie. Each must do their job the best they can, making the whole better.

Don’t get confused by pseudo-artistic ideas like being nice, helping others, sharing. You already do that as a person, but don’t let it divert you from playing sharply.

In acting class, your order of importance should be you first, fellow actors second, and teachers third. This outlook lets you have the experience. It will lift the cloud that can hang heavy of trying to please your fellow actors and teacher.

There is authority you must follow. The director has it, and the acting coach has it. You can both submit to the authority and put yourself first. That’s not a contradiction.

Some parts of the work are your business, and other parts are not your business. Put yourself first in the business that concerns you.

Namely — playing your character.

Not the running of the class or the shooting of the movie.

Asking the question “What’s in it for me?” is always illuminating.

“Beg, borrow, or steal.” 

Professionals are students of the game.

In football (soccer), the best young players learn about the great players of the past. They watch their most famous moves. They observe tricks and techniques of the best players playing.

They try to copy them. They imitate them. 

As long as your goal is to play truly and serve the show, then what you use to assist you shouldn’t be judged by false purism. 

All great artists learned from and copied the past masters and the current ones. Don’t think it’s impure to copy. Anything you imitate will always end up being yours anyway. 

The issue is to learn from everywhere and everyone.

“I should have done better.”

What are your expectations take after take?

Shooting a television series is done quickly over long hours, and if you’re a regular, it’ll be all you can do to remember your lines.

Those are the conditions.

Within those conditions, you’ll want to have realistic expectations, so you don’t end up disappointed after every scene you shoot.

You’ll lean in with every take and try to be as truthful as you can. You can’t force that. But try not to judge how deep you go. The next take, you’ll try again, lightly, and with as much ease as you can, meaning it. Leaning in again and again . . . until they say, “Moving on.”

Then you know you’ve done your job.

There is no pure end to acting a scene, anyway. So, don’t search for it.

Only to end up disappointed that you didn’t find it. 

What’s clear is that you prepared your scene, tried your best, and they liked it. 

That’s doing your job.

Bar talk. 

Nothing more comforting than to be in the bar with your fellow actors.

Watch what you take from the evening’s banter as truth.

You learn from experience. Testing the experience is done in acting class where discussion of the work also takes place. Theory and practice.

And it’s done on set.

Chitchat about acting, the process, auditions, this director, that casting director, etc. over beer is reassuring as you feel the commonality with your peers. Very important. It helps objectify you and the troubles you face as an actor. They face them too.

But it isn’t a forum for serious examination of acting questions or of the business. The bar atmosphere lends itself to personal prejudices and ungrounded ideas. 

Check yourself to see if you walk home after closing thinking, “Aha, that’s the key to booking work! I’ll scream in the audition room just like she said!”

Especially if she is an actor who has more credits and experience than you. That’s like teenaged boys chatting at recess in the schoolyard and “learning” about the opposite sex from the older boys. Disaster.

Sharp appraisal and professional critique based on your work are both done in class. Other lessons are learned in the audition room, and most on set where necessity of production teaches you. These situations are formal and professional, and that is where you learn.

Bar talk is good to catch up on gossip and to find out what isn’t true.

“If you read the good reviews, you have to read the bad ones.”

During Covid, you didn’t get much feedback on your auditions. If any.

The agents became the only living person who responded to your work. It’d be fair to say their comments were mostly positive.

So be it.

Agents aren’t acting coaches, critics, directors, or others used to giving professional acting feedback. Nor should they be.

How to sift through comments that are normal, like when people say “You look great,” is something to consider.

An agent’s comment could be translated to “thanks.” 

For serious feedback, you need to work with those professionals whose job it is to give actors sharp and useful critique — acting coaches.

What the boys used to say still holds true, “If you read the good reviews, you’ve got to read the bad ones.”

Be good in a bad movie.

You can be good in a bad movie.

Set the bar high for yourself and fight to keep it there.

You may think parts of the production are of low quality, but there is no need for you to lower the level of your work.

You don’t write the scripts, produce the movies, or edit them.

Your department is the acting. You’re in charge of that department and responsible for your work.

The next role you play is an opportunity to raise your bar again and strive for excellence and quality despite the fact that the general trend in Hollywood today may be of a lowering of standards. 

Keep on the high road — you’ll buck that trend. 

You aspiring to your best can be done. 

Then your life as an actor in the movie business will really become interesting, and you’ll join all those who came before you and aspired to ideals and fought for them.

And when you are in a production where there is real harmony and volition for good work, it will be precious to you. Those jobs always engender real appreciation.

Keep your head held high.

One foot in, one foot out. 

That’s a terrible place for you to be working. 

One half of your mind going one way, and the other half going the other. Causes a disconnect.

Why?

There could be lots of reasons. Perhaps you think the movie’s content is racist, sexist, divisive, or violent; maybe you’re not being paid enough; or perhaps it’s a case of the conditions on set not being up to proper standard. 

These reasons are valid in and of themselves, but you can’t let them split you down the middle so that half of you is thrilled to be in the movie while the other half hates it. 

You’ll become miserable to work with, and the crew and cast will think you’re cranky.

That’s a terrible place to be.

What can you do to have both feet in?

Dignity. 

You can always bring dignity to every role you play: good guy, bad guy, high status, low status. Giving true meaning and honour to your character’s life is the high road. Find the life reason that made your character the way they are and do what they do. It’ll give you pride in your work. 

Appreciation.

Knowing that those working with you may have the same feelings about the movie as you do, yet they work hard on set and do a good job nonetheless. That they, too, have problems that they put aside when they come on set. Being a good fellow worker and appreciating the good qualities of others is the professional way and will help you and those around you enjoy the job. 

Quality. 

Always doing your best — acting as well as you can. This job of interpreting is your life, so you should try to raise the bar of excellence with every new role you get. The pursuit of excellence is a noble one. 

Humility.

This is the hallmark of a fine actor. Modesty. Recognizing other people’s problems and worries connects you to the human race, allowing you the space to express yourself more freely. It normalizes you.

If your mind is in it, your feet will be in it.

Why argue?

Arguing and discussing are two different things.

If you’re rehearsing a play, practising in class, or blocking a scene, why are you arguing?

You have a right to give your view, as long as it moves the discussion forward or develops the work. 

Arguing is a hallmark of today’s culture. We learn it in grade school: “I’m right!” “No, I am!” “Yes, I did!” “No, you didn’t!” “Oh, yeah?” “Yeah!”

The more serious and extreme form of this is brinkmanship — High Noon.

Not a discussion, but an argument.

Develop the culture of discussion while working with your colleagues. Part of the overall development of culture in society is the way in which we solve problems together. The form that takes.

Give your view and present your case sharply, so it assists the development of work or an idea.

What does winning an argument give rise to? 

Raising the level.

Why do we coach and teach actors?

Is it for quantity or quality?

I have had the objective for many years to raise the level of acting for actors in Canada. That would be part of a nation-building project if such a project were being built.

What other goal can us teachers have? 

Our practice is guided by our outlook, and our outlook is partly made up of goals. To have perspective is to ask “Where am I going?” It’s fine to be focused on getting actor A to have a good audition or to teach skills to acting class B, but this work is part of what? Is it individual?

Or part of a collective with common goals of excellence and quality?

Even if there is no collective per se at this time, we can still have that as our aspiration. To raise the level of acting in Canada so as to help raise the level of film and theatre art. To have a goal that is on the high road of civilization.

In 1956 at the opening of the second season of The Actors Studio, Lee Strasberg said, “We somehow here find a plan which should really contribute to the theatre, so that there should not only be the constant stimulus to your individual development . . . it should then actually contribute to the theatre. . . . The individual cannot do anything.” (From Strasberg at The Actors Studio — Tape recorded sessions.)

And George Hall, former director of the acting course at Central School of Speech and Drama, said, “I believe that the fundamental reason for running a theatre school is a desire to improve the theatre, not just to provide service for a recognizable consumer group, that is, would-be actors. I also believe that one teaches well only out of a vision of the theatre and a certain amount of rage about the waste of talented people one encounters who haven’t found a way to realize their potential.” (From Masters of the Stage, edited by Eva Mekler.)

From the individual actor, to the group of actors, to the company of actors, to the community of actors, and then to the country of fellow citizens.

We who teach and coach actors should continue the discussion on the work. We should ask how the work can best be done under these current conditions. We should share our experiences, our techniques, our practices. We should discuss the content of plays and screenplays. We should embrace the pursuit of ideals.

And we should try to avoid competing by comparing numbers of students attending our classes and what famous actors we coached.

What legacy do we want to leave behind?

Bored. 

Lots of characters are bored.

People get bored. You get bored. I get bored.

Some scenes, the two characters are just passing time. That’s their action. Their objective is to be happy. They get happy by hearing the sound of their own voices. 

They’re bored.

Iconic types in procedurals get bored doing the same job day after day and week after week. So do the actors who play those roles. Saying the same kind of lines episode after episode.

It can be useful and isn’t pejorative.

It’s useful to you as an actor to have boredom as part of the base you’re working from. Boredom creates a hum in your brain that can settle you, calm you, or sometimes get you rattled. All useful qualities to add to your actions in the scene.

Boredom is a great antidote to doing too much.

Just keep going. Take it easy.

Showing up is everything.

If you are training, have an agent, do auditions, act in movies and plays — you’re going.

That’s the opposite of stopped.

It means you’re walking down the road and not sitting by the side of the road. 

By walking down the road — participating — the solution to your problems will reveal itself. 

The old saying goes “You can’t help a man sitting by the side of the road.”

If you’re participating, you’re not a bystander. That’s enough. Why overwhelm yourself by wanting to do so much more? 

Now because you’re going — take it easy.

Just leave it.

If you’re attacking a problem and can’t budge it — try just leaving it.

Giving it time.

“Sleep on it.” That’s what we used to say back home.

Opposites create interesting possibilities. Seems passive, but it’s active.

Let it breathe and let your mind — which you like — do its work. The mind will work, and if there is a problem to be solved, it’s your mind that is going to do the solving.

The director says, “Moving on,” but you’re not happy with the scene. Just leave it and go on to the next scene. That’s how we make TV and movies. When the director is happy, that’s good enough — leave it.

Same in acting class. The coach gives you an exercise, you find it difficult — do it and leave it — come to it again next class.

If the issue involves another person — an agent, a director, a fellow actor, casting — then you can also give them time and space. Time to settle down. Reconsider, think, forget, and maybe realize or apologize.

When you injure yourself, you often just leave it to heal. The body will heal as it is always going back to stasis, balance, equilibrium. Let the active ingredient of time heal what’s bothering you.

An active way to solve a question is to leave it.

Peaks and valleys. 

Euphoria creates the peaks, and depression the valleys.

Two sides of a coin.

Booking a role — euphoria. Not booking it — depression. Don’t be deceived by the “normalcy” of that behaviour.

Try to develop an outlook that recognizes the vagaries of your actor’s life.

Making it your habit.

Humility helps. 

Having a humble approach helps prevent you from going too high. Having a realistic approach helps prevent you from going too low.

If you cut off the top of the peak, you can put that into the valley. 

Evening out your landscape.

Three strikes and you’re out. 

Having a three-stage approach allows you to be prepared to say no. Useful when faced with typical upsetting situations. 

Situations where you’re put on the spot, caught off guard, or humiliated. Under today’s pressure, people often put others down to make themselves feel good. It’s a tiring pursuit because nothing good ever comes of it.

As an actor, you may find yourself in recurring situations where you’re the brunt of these putdowns. A three-step learned response can help keep you stable. 

The family dinner over a holiday could be such a situation. 

Every year, your uncle asks you what movies you’ve been in — egging you on as always. For many reasons, you might not like his question but haven’t figured out how to deal with it.

You might want to blurt out “Leave me alone!” but that would disrupt the dinner and make you look like the bad guy. Or you might try to slough it off with “Whatever.” But that leaves you open to further questioning. 

If your uncle enjoys putting you on the spot and proving how stupid it is that you’re an actor, then he’s not going to give up easily. When someone wants blood, they’ll keep going until they get it.

A three-step response might go something like this:

Uncle: “So, what movies have you been in lately?”

You: “My work is going well, and I like being an actor just like you like being a dentist.”

(This is a positive answer that is also true so you’re not out on a limb saying something that you can’t stand behind. It also includes him, showing that you both work and like your work.) 

Uncle: “Ya, sure, but what Hollywood movies can we see you in?” 

(He won’t let up.)

You: “I’m fine.” 

(This short response should give him a signal that you don’t want to pursue this discussion. If you say it simply and give him a look that says, “That’s enough,” most uncles will get it.) 

Uncle: “You’ve been acting all these years and I’ve never seen you in a movie!”

(He didn’t get it so that’s his third strike and now you’re going to strike him out.)

You: “I’ve made it clear I don’t like your questions. Let’s leave it and enjoy our dinner! Thanks.”

(Your final statement may include “Hey, stop it,” “That’s enough,” “Shut up,” “Leave me alone,” or simply “I don’t like your questions.”) 

It could be two steps or four and done in any way that suits you. Point is: having a plan gives you confidence to say no. 

Clearing your mind. 

Actors, high-elevation steelworkers, and surgeons all need to clear their minds to do their work. 

When they begin working, they go into made-up time and space. They become the role, steel, or brain. 

In his book When Breath Becomes Air, neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi describes time while operating:

Funny thing about time in OR, whether you race frenetically or proceed steadily, is that you have no sense of it passing. If boredom is, as Heidegger argued, the awareness of time passing, then surgery felt like the opposite: the intense focus made the arms of the clock seem arbitrarily placed. Two hours could feel like a minute. Once the final stitch was placed and the wound was dressed, normal time suddenly restarted.

Normal time restarted. That’s when they call cut. 

When the director calls action, you pass into made-up time and space. You have to. You make yourself believe it. You pretend to live in a time and space separate from those behind the camera. 

It’s acting. 

What wonderful abilities you have.

Clarity with thought.

On hearing truisms and maxims early on in your career, you learn the phrase. 

Often, you go round repeating it at opportune moments without giving it a thought. The assumption is that you heard it, it was explained to you, you get it, and now it’s yours. 

Done.

Over years of experience, it may end up that one day while experiencing something practical you reflect on it.

At that moment, a light goes on and you think, “Oh, that’s what that means.” The first learning of something, because it’s new, is shallow. The depth of a time-tested idea comes through practice of that idea.

It’s the natural development of things.

A learned narrative must be reconsidered. Simple phrases like “Less is more” must be looked at over and over again in the heat of acting. There the meaning will reveal itself.

Without getting overwhelmed, one must rethink and revisit the guidelines, laws, adages to see more fully what they mean and how they came about. It’s ongoing and never-ending. The words of wisdom can stand that seeking and scratching. 

It’s not just a question of age. 

As a young actor, you can develop this trait of thinking things through. Considering things in an objective manner, so you find out what the thing is and not what you think it is.

Often, on first hearing a jewel of a phrase, you instantly feel, “Ah, I get that!” Fine. 

But try to make it your professional practice to be thinking about questions and not just repeating what everyone else is saying.

Ease and grace. 

As an actor, where are you headed?

Lots of destinations are offered to the professional actor — fame, wealth, awards.

To work with ease and grace is what you do when you’re at your best. It is one of the goals that is practised on the high road of civilization. 

The work itself contains its own reward system that you, working well, will encounter. This is at least as valuable and definitely more instructive than the external validations.

That reward manifests itself in the deepening of your conviction. That is long-lasting. A breakthrough in your work is qualitative. Booking work — very important — is quantitative and the recognition you’ll receive from the industry usually doesn’t build your conviction.

Practising with this idea in mind — ease and grace — will give rise to it being your habit. The masters mostly work with ease and grace. It’s the state of those top directors, writers, cinematographers, designers that you’ve worked with.

Meaning: to focus on the work and your view of it.

It’s drawing from your pool of power readily, willing to reveal, fulfilling your professional obligations, and always leaning in to truth and beauty.

And doing it all with ease.

It’s liking what you’re doing. It’s a lightness of touch. It’s dreaming. It’s beauty.

Gently leaning. Conviction without forced effort.

In response to this entry, an actor wrote, “Reminded me of Muhammad Ali, ‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.’”

When the human being thinks and acts with ease and grace, questions get resolved.

I worked with . . .

Often this is used to put yourself up.

Because you feel down.

To validate yourself through Hollywood.

Another way to look at it is the continuation of the movie history and you being part of it.

Your respect for those good actors. Those successful actors. Showing real appreciation. That connection makes you part of the whole.

That is a positive way to express it.

Hoping your fellow actor will be impressed by the fact that you worked with so-and-so is a dead-end.

The thing.

Always be going to the thing.

A joke can be a useful lesson to you as an actor because it always goes to a punchline. That’s the thing. 

In scenes, the character is always going to one thing. You can call it the objective or what you will. If there is a transition, then that thing changes. Be clear what the thing is. You can’t play until you’re clear on what you want and how you’re going to get it. 

It’s usually something singular and simple.

We often think a thing is something, but that doesn’t mean that’s what it is. By investigation, you find out what the thing is, not what you think it is.

The same in the business side of your actor’s life.

If a producer says he’d really like you to be in the movie, that doesn’t mean you will be. They often say things like that because they can. Signing a contract means you’re in the movie. 

Develop your ability to define things and analyze things whether it’s the text, the business, or your life. 

Not knowing what a thing is leads to confusion.

Disconnect.

Snap.

That’s the sound of a branch being snapped in two, which echoes a disconnect.

Let’s see where disconnects occur.

You might say, as many actors in Toronto do, “I’m working with Movie Star X.” Yes, you are, you’re on the same project, but the examination of the idea of that and the reality of that might reveal something else. 

Usually, actors here have small roles in American movies, and that means your working time with the star could be short or virtually nonexistent. Hollywood stars rarely discuss things with day players. 

No, it’s not that they aren’t “nice”; it’s that they are too busy, and it isn’t Hollywood movie culture.

An example of this is the Canadian actor who has a recurring role in a big U.S. series shooting here and says that when it comes time to do detailed work on a scene, the director takes the two American leads aside to discuss it, leaving him on the outs.

That’s a disconnect. Between idea — working with the movie star and reality — and what actually happens.

If you have worked over many years and shot lots of film, movies, TV, and commercials, and worked extensively in the theatre, you might think you’ll be automatically given jobs based on your résumé. The disconnect is that you aren’t given jobs based on your résumé. You still have to audition.

In society, there is a basic disconnect where we live collectively and socially, yet mostly we have to fend for ourselves — individually — disconnected from the whole.

Interesting to consider disconnect in your work and in your life. 

Breathing in elevators.

When you’re in an elevator with other people, try to breathe fully.

It will make a sound.

That’s why people often hold their breath in an elevator. Breathing fully while in an elevator is one of many opportunities for you to practise your acting in public.

You should always do this outside work with dignity and respect for those going about their lives.

The practice becomes sharp because it’s in public and that puts pressure on you. Real people will be really looking at you.

An old practice trick is to use an accent. Once I was on a date in a bar using a German accent and, unbeknownst to me, the barman was German and he starting speaking to me in German. It wasn’t life-threatening, but things got hot pretty quickly. I switched to English, and all was fine.

Physicalities such as limping, blindness, twitches, deafness — all interesting. A completely different haircut worn in public can really have an effect on you as will wearing clothes you don’t normally wear. Men dressing as women and vice versa. 

Always being aware not to cross a line and end up being socially irresponsible.

Getting someone to look at you or to look away is another great exercise. Depending on what type you usually play, pick an iconic look of that type. High status — you might hold eye contact to try to make the other person look away. Flirting — you might try to get the other person to blush. Controlling — you might see if you can get someone who has passed you to turn around and look back.

Practising your acting out in the world can be edgy, and it can provide some heightened experiences. That can strengthen your acting centre. It’s an extreme experience because you have to keep it going.

Press the ground-floor button and keep breathing.

Tricks of the trade.

The young actor asks the master coach if she has a trick that will make him a better Shakespearean actor.

She’s horrified. And rightly so.

“No trick will make you a good actor. Only hard work will,” she responds. Our young actor was looking for — what I call — a quick fix.

When she recounted this story, I blushed inside because I often use the word trick in my teaching and writing. I sought out the Tips & Insights entries where I had used the word trick and quickly deleted them.

One night at 4:00 a.m., as it happens, I was reconsidering the idea of trick.

When coming about in a ketch, the skipper says to the new sailor, “Here’s a trick I learned that makes it easier to reef.”

The experienced footballer says to the young player, “A good trick when dribbling by a defender is to lean left and push the ball right.”

Michael Caine offers, “When you’re in a close-up, a good trick to bring your eye closer to the frame is to look at the other actor’s eye closest to the lens.”

The dictionary defines tricks of the trade as “special ingenious techniques used in a profession or craft; a clever method used by people who are experienced in a particular type of work or activity.”

It’s good our young actor asks questions, but when the question is the result of the effect the pervading culture has had on his thinking, then it’s up to the master to tell him so.

(I reinserted the word trick in my entries where it was appropriate.)

Lying.

The ruling elite are good at lying.

Every ten-year-old schoolboy knows that. 

Actors must be good at it too. Plenty of it’s done on TV and in the movies.

Our familiar characters in procedurals — cops, doctors, lawyers — lie nonstop, twist the truth, cover up, or give false evidence. 

Journalists have turned lying into a profession.

Lying to your partner about having an affair, spreading gossip, or even lying about lying is in the movies. 

Some things you’ll be asked to do as an actor will be difficult. You might not be a natural liar.

To get work, you must learn how to do them even if it goes against your grain.

Remember the key to lying while acting is to play it as if it’s true.

Stop, look, and listen. 

When you’re out and about, stop and look at the people passing by.

Play that age-old actor’s game of guessing who everyone is. What job each person does. Guess their age, if they’re married, nationality, income. Notice their bodies, how they walk, hold their head, and general bearing. Hair and makeup. What they wear. What it all means.

It’s observation.

Watch TV with the sound off. Notice how the actors stand, where they look, moving or still, where they are in the frame, blinking or no blinking. Note the iconic masks of the different types. The gestures. How they walk.

The great TV sitcom director James Burrows listens to his actors more than he watches. He is quoted as saying, “I walk up and down behind the seats during rehearsal, and if there is too long a pause or the intonation isn’t right, I yell stop.”

Take Burrow’s practice and watch TV with the picture off. Learn the tones of typical shows, listen if you think the actors are truthful, hear the language, the music of the speech, enunciated or slurred, how the different actors’ voices make up the whole.

Learn to work in smaller and smaller parts.

Stop, look, and listen.

Come to terms with your conscience. 

The grade three teacher said, “You’re only fooling yourself, Johnny.”

If you set out to do something — be an actor, go to an audition, act in an indie film, help a colleague do a self-tape — you have to have a clear conscience.

Think if you’re doing what you want or doing what’s trendy.

In the morning when you wake up — that’s the time to come to terms with your conscience. Only you can do that.

Talk is cheap.

The harsh winds of life and the movie industry both will wipe you out unless you’ve really thought it through.

How you relate to your agent. How you do your prep. How you conduct yourself with your colleagues. How you critique auditions. How you see the future.

Learn the difference between having a clear conscience and a cloudy one.

It requires thinking. Often help from a mentor or coach to discuss the issues objectively helps organize your mind and clarify your thinking.

It can make you a better actor.

Live and — not but.

Whether you use the word and or but makes quite a difference.

If you’re asked, “Are you working?” and you reply, “Yes, but it’s only a small role.” That’s very different from replying, “Yes, and it’s going well.”

Your self-talk is important to you as a professional. What you say reflects your outlook. Using and instead of but can have a positive effect on you. And others.

Try to avoid a culture of regret where everything you did is recounted as “I did this, but . . .”

Your experiences could be written this way: “I began acting and then I trained and then did summer theatre and then I had a recurring role on a series and then I trained again and then I went to Stratford and then I did Summer Works and then I made a short film and then I acted in Hollywood and then I got a Canada Council grant and . . .”

Or in constant disappointment, it would be written this way: “I wanted to stay in town for TV work, but I did summer theatre instead and then I was at Stratford but only had small roles, and I then got a Canada Council grant but only half of what I asked for and then . . .”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines and as “connecting . . . implying great duration or great extent . . . to indicate that they are being added together . . . implying succession.”

Learn to see your work and life as connected, added together, one of succession, duration, and extent. That’s what your work and life is. 

Using but gives the impression of apology and that whatever you’re doing is never enough. But begins the apology or explanation of what and why you are doing something rather than simply stating what it is that you’re doing.

If you’re asked, you can elaborate, but why shed doubt in your own mind and that of others?

Your actor’s life is difficult enough, so see if presenting yourself in an ongoing way cuts away some weight, leaving you a little lighter to carry on. 

Balance.

A colleague tells me they are trying to find balance.

If they didn’t have balance, they’d fall over. Literally that means they wouldn’t have food in the fridge or clean sheets on the bed.

But they do.

They’re functioning and living well as they deal with the life in front of them. That takes balance.

The figure skater is seldom equally on two feet, yet they hardly fall down. They have balance whether on one skate, spinning around, or leaping through the air.

It’s interesting to think why finding balance is talked about so much.

Informed. 

An important step in your professional development is being informed.

Only with the knowledge of how the movie business works can you fully participate in it and give your voice.

The financial side is often blurry.

You know how much you get paid, and it’s useful to find out where the rest of the money comes from and goes to.

You and everyone who works to make movies creates value. Remember that so you know that you have worth as an actor, auditioning, shooting, being part of the community.

That value is also manifested in money.

The union agreements are there to be perused so you know the basic pay for actors, electricians, directors, cinematographers. There is also information available on how a movie is financed, what the average fee is for casting directors, how much studios earn in a year.

For you to take your place, you need to know how the system works.

Some actors grow up with a parent who is a successful actor or screenwriter, and they learn the business at their mother’s knee. That’s an advantage.

Develop your advantage by asking the question often considered heresy: “The money?”

Your agent and the casting director have an advantage in that they know exactly how much you make. You might be at a disadvantage if you don’t know how much they make.

If ACTRA is in negotiations with the producers, then being informed as to what is on the table will enable you to think more clearly as to whether to accept their offer or not.

Are you informed as to how much the W Network pays for the Christmas movie you worked on that was shot in twelve days in Sudbury?

Saying “It’s your space. Take your place” includes knowing what’s going on. 

“Yahoo! Whoopee!” — “Whoa the horses!”

Riding a horse at full gallop you’re wont to cry out, “Yahoo! Whoopee!”

As in, “I landed a big role in a big movie. It’s amazing. I’m amazing.”

That’s euphoria. Where you can believe “This is my life forever” and it can only lead one way. Down. 

Down to depression. 

They’re linked — euphoria and depression. Opposite sides of the same coin. 

Try to learn to be sober-minded about your success. Watch the sagacity of the common actor’s description of life—“The ups and downs.”

Natural highs are good. They are part of life just as the natural low is. These ebbs and flows must be rooted to your life in the real world.

Euphoria is a state where, drugged-like, you leave this real world and enter one in your own mind.

Try to keep your feet on the ground in success and in difficulty. 

“Whoa the horses!” will stop your galloping horse from running away with you.

Student of the game.

At the 2010 Crossroads Guitar Festival, the great B. B. King plays “The Thrill Is Gone” and in a row sit Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, Jimmy Vaughn, Sheryl Crow, ZZ Top, Albert Lee, Jeff Beck, Steve Winwood, all masters in their own right

They are playing with and following the master. 

And those great players are also students of the game.

When Wayne Rooney first scored a goal in the Premier League, he already knew all the best strikers in the world, had watched their goals, and studied their moves.

All professionals watch and learn from the best. Imitate what’s worthwhile. Emulate their best qualities. See what makes them the best.

Learn the moves of actors who are your type. Get to know the iconic portrayals.

Talk to the older actors when on set or after an audition.

Recognize and appreciate the effort and sacrifice that your actor peers have made. Marie Dressler was a Broadway star and an accomplished actress. She participated in the 1919 Actors’ Equity strike, and the producers made her pay for that by not hiring her.

Paul Robeson suffered worse humiliation and relegation. Many others paved the way and fought for rights that you have now.

Learn the history of your fellow actors.

What can I do?

Acting is done with other people. Maybe you have asked yourself what you can do when you’re by yourself.

When I was living in the suburbs, about an hour from the Toronto Reference Library at Yonge and Bloor Streets, I came in once a week on my “Shakespeare self-study program.”

I’ve always lived having little programs and often timed them with the seasons.

John Barton had done a series of Shakespeare workshops filmed by ITV in London and then published a book entitled Playing Shakespeare. There are nine chapters and nine VHS videos.

I’d finish working as an electrician on a construction site, have dinner with my family, and then drive to the library and watch a one-hour video on acting Shakespeare with twenty-one actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company.

I liked it. It was my own program. Within my means.

Later, as an acting teacher delivering my on-camera course for the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, John Barton came and did a one-day workshop and I got to watch him work.

A nice circle of activity in my life.

Things you can do when not with others: watch films, observe people — go to court or the hospital — read acting books, exercise, sing, write, look into how movies are made, learn about Stratford or ACTRA, do vocal exercises, learn speeches, join actors’ playreading groups.

Do it within your means and only if you like it. Personal programs keep you active and informed.

. . . maybe those VHS cassettes are still at the Toronto Ref.

Boy to man. 

The actor in class is a nice Ontario boy, but he’s playing a character who’s a man.

There’s a difference between a boy and a man. Between a girl and a woman. As an actor, you need to know if your character is behaving like one or the other. 

Both are useful.

Ole Gunnar Solskjær, the former manager of Manchester United football club, describes a talented young player who is now playing for the first team in the Premier League by saying, “He’s playing with men now against other men.”

There has to come a time when you stand on your own two feet. When you can act typical TV situations like saying no, teaching, threatening, killing, facing the truth. And act them truthfully.

To professionalize is to mature, grow up, become adult. Both in a scene and in the business. 

It can also mean letting go of old narratives.

You can’t hold a gun in a scene and at the same time apologize for it. Cops and robbers on TV don’t apologize. Neither do lawyers or doctors.

Of course, even if you’re an old actor, you can have boy- or girl-like behaviours. Blushing, uncertain, silly. That can be charming.

But the adage still stands: never send a girl to do a woman’s job.

Big D to little d.

As an actor, you’re told what to do.

You learn that from day one. 

“Faster, slower. Louder, softer. Walk from the door to the table, pick up the gun, turn and point it towards the door.”

Directions.

And it’s the director who gives them. That’s their title and their job.

They have their job, and you have yours. Just as craft has theirs; electrics, grips, hair, and the drivers theirs. Without the drivers, we couldn’t make the film.

Part of how we’re raised is to want the Director’s approval. To know they like your work. To know they like you. It can take up a lot of your energy. This need to be validated by the Director.

It’s a normal stage you go through.

As you get more experience and your conviction grows, the D of Director will become a d for director. 

The director becomes a colleague. A fellow worker on set doing their job while you do yours.

That’s your bar lifting as you become more professional.

Yes, the director will still give directions — that’s their job. And you’ll still fulfill their directions — that’s your job.

But the case changes.

It’s in the masters.

“I don’t really have anything new to offer. I’m just playing now till I drop. I can try something new . . . but mostly I’ve resolved into a sort of habit form of playing. I play things that are familiar to me.” — Eric Clapton, Royal Albert Hall interview, 2017

It’s always interesting to hear what the experienced players have to say about their process and their journey.

The roles I play now are in me already. I can basically play an adjective, a type, and it’s real and connected as I’ve played it before. It’s mine. I don’t always need to do character work or research. I’ve played that note, I know it, and like it as an old friend. 

When you’ve done it for a lifetime, the groove is familiar. Ease and grace. In touch with the unconscious.

“All the roles I’ve done are connected. There’s a thread joining them all.” — Sam Elliott, Foundation, Screen Actors Guild.

Starting can still be difficult. Painters, actors, writers — even after a lifetime of experience — find it difficult to start. Each new script is different, the cast, director, cinematographer.

And yet familiar.

A long-time actor colleague relates it this way: 

I rely, as always, on my own flawed intelligence, instinct, and sense of human nature to provide me with a unique “take” on a role, then it’s a matter of trial and error to find an effective way to manifest that take. I worry constantly that I’m blind to something or am missing the point entirely. This is a difficult way to work . . . yet it’s the only way I know . . . but I’m no longer as afraid of failure as I once was.

From time to time, it’s useful to compare how you work to those who have done it for a lifetime. 

Talk to and look at the masters. 

The thread.

Your life as an actor is like a thread.

You make the thread, you pull the thread, you follow the thread.

You are the thread.

Thread: “a continuing element; a group of filaments twisted together formed by spinning and twisting fibers into a continuous strand” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).

Herbert Marshall. 

Herbert Marshall was an actor who was wounded in World War I and had his right leg amputated.

According to IMDb, Marshall’s loss of his leg was “a fact not well-known to many moviegoers because it was hardly noticeable on screen, as long as he wasn’t asked to do anything too physical.”

From the 1920s to the 1960s, he was in many British and American films and played opposite such female stars as Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Miriam Hopkins, Merle Oberon, and Sylvia Sidney.

As a veteran actor, he appeared in over 100 movies and television shows.

Actors have a real facility to adapt.

On IMDb, it says, “He used a very deliberate square-shouldered and guided walk, largely unnoticeable, to cover up his disability.”

Rubbing of shoulders.

The excellent acting teacher Arif Hasnain called passing on knowledge “the rubbing of shoulders.”

The phrase is sometimes used in the context of mingling with the rich, but that’s not what Arif meant. He didn’t care for the rich. 

People who know something well teach it to those who want to learn: the bricklayer, the apprentice; the political person, the new activist; the hunter, the young.

So it is with actors. The experienced actors pass on to the emerging actors. This is the way humanity develops. 

Being an acting teacher is often described as “giving back,” but there’s more to it than that. It is their duty and obligation to fulfill the right and privilege they have to be a teacher. 

It should be part of the ongoing nature of life itself as the master teaches the student. And the student has to fulfill their obligations.

The passing on of knowledge is crucial to progress. To go from incoherence to coherence, you must be guided, criticized, and assisted. You can’t do much by yourself.

It’s what Arif did.

Participate and rub shoulders.

Palate cleanser.

If you’re working and your brain jams, take a break.

Learn to stop.

And find mechanisms that can relax you quickly if you’re on set shooting. Or in acting class. Those short reset pauses.

Doing something different or opposite from what is stumping you can be useful. For example, if you’re stumbling over an accent, try doing Thai dancer finger exercises.

Like a palate cleanser. 

Google says, “The right palate cleanser can help reset your sensory perception, stimulates the appetite, or remove any lingering aftertastes.” Sounds like what you need when your scene isn’t going well.

Baseball pitchers do it pitch after pitch. They look for the sign from the catcher, and once they get it, they — palate cleanse — breathe out and pitch. Basketball players do it before every free throw; football players before a penalty kick.

Develop this habit so it suits you.

The between courses analogy could apply to acting as in-between scenes or between takes. You go, and you pause. 

The stop is key as it allows you to go again.

The next time your taste buds feel unsavoury — cleanse your palate.

Movie’s time.

As a movie actor, you are part of the art form of this time.

Now.

The movies, or all media that has moving images, are a product of the industrial revolution and now of the electronic age. 

Movies are only a bit more than a hundred years old. The Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, made the world’s first film, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, in 1895.

What does it mean for you to be an integral part of the leading art form of the day? What responsibility do you have? How do you see the moving picture at this time in this place under these conditions?

Interesting to think about it. 

Being at the forefront.

How is the form serving humanity? Who controls the form? Who puts the ideas into the form? In whose hands is it? What role can it play as art serving the needs of society?

The discussion as to what avenues lie open to you to participate in the development and role that the moving picture plays in society is an important one. 

The truth is — cinema is here. It’s a fact, and looking at things as they are is always a good place to begin the discussion.

Cinema is of the now — mobile devices, cameras, computers, the web, video — all showing the human being in motion and in colour. 

You act in front of equipment that is modernizing at such a fast rate. Your voice and body are being captured by mind-boggling methods.

That’s a first in human history.

Statues, paintings, architecture, songs, poems, and plays also replicate life but differently than the motion picture. 

As an actor, you have a front-row seat to observe and be a participant.

Fend for yourself.

It’s odd to think that you have to fend for yourself, especially when all the work you’re part of is done collectively.

This can create a disconnect and will leave you with another problem to consider.

But it’s the way society functions — people living and working socially, yet fending for themselves individually.

You have an actors’ union, an industry made up of writers, technicians, editors, and producers, and you have agents and casting directors controlling the flow of work. So much social activity around your actor’s life and yet there you’ll be . . . on your own.

It’s odd but real. 

And it’s a problem.

“I’m a good actor.”

If you are, then say it.

What does good mean? There isn’t a pure definition of a “good actor,” but some facts support the idea.

Such as you’ve trained, you’ve got an agent, you worked for three seasons at the Stratford Festival, did five roles on TV, are in the Second City company — or any combination of those.

You’re past the entry level. You’re a professional now.

Most of those 10,000 hours are in.

If you keep getting auditions and landing jobs, you’re good. Tell people you are. It isn’t boasting nor is it unartistic. It’s a fact, and you’re giving recognition to it.

Part of your progress professionalizing is raising the bar. Letting go of old narratives that no longer apply and adopting new ones that do. 

A carpenter who has worked for ten years will easily say, “Yup, I’m a good carpenter.” He’s not saying he’s the best carpenter. Neither are you. You’re simply saying, “I’m good at my job.”

Saying it makes a qualitative difference. To you and those who hear you.

It has a ring to it. 

When you first try to say it, pick an easy place to do it. You might even find it funny on your tongue saying it to yourself.

They say the first step in being an actor is to say, “I am an actor.” Some truth in that.

Same holds here. 

Say it out loud.

What is the heart. 

The heart is the storehouse of all those who are there for you when you need them . . . it is outside of us . . . more than us . . .

Authority.

In the movie business, you, as an actor, don’t have the authority.

The authority comes from the producers. “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”

How do you keep your quality, dignity, and high level of excellence? 

There are very few movie stars who can dictate what a movie is about and how it’s made. The production companies even control the movie stars.

The question of authority is very much on the agenda today. In the political sphere, who has the authority? To whom do you look to for authority? In some instances, it’s the leader of the country or a religious leader such as an imam, rabbi, or priest, or it could be your parents, even someone you idolize in entertainment, sports, science, or elsewhere, or it could be your agent or manager. 

Within the film community, where do you find authority? From the American Film Institute, Entertainment Tonight, Screen Actors Guild, Canadian Film Centre, Toronto International Film Festival, IMDb, Variety magazine, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television, and Radio Artists?

On movie sets, you still have authority coming from the director and through a system of authority that is still pretty much in place. The first AD has a specific authority, etc.

That’s calming. 

When on set, you know who will give you orders. There’s no chaos. Even if you know that the showrunner told the director what change they wanted, at least it’s still the director who gives you, the actor, the direction. 

That’s following norms. An example of authority in place.

The same applies in acting class. There, it’s the acting coach who has the authority. Again, this allows for a calmness as all the participants know that the proceedings will be carried out in an orderly fashion and follow professional actor training protocol. 

When the authority is clear — the works flows.

Understanding.

Understanding requires participation.

Practise first and then your brain will catch up with the idea. The idea serves the practice.

When a scene goes well, try not to remember what you did; just keep practising well. Over a period of time, you’ll have assimilations. Your new habits.

Long repetition of proper practice develops habit.

Practising well includes consciousness (the brain working well) and having the experience instead of trying to understand. 

That is key.

Within the word actor is the word act. And it’s in this act of finding out that you learn. 

You can’t understand before you’ve had the experience.

Confrontation versus discussion.

For example, the TV series Suits has a confrontational style to it, which is quintessentially American in the mode of Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders marauding through Cuba in 1898.

That style still exists from then till now.

That icon of aggression is one you need to know to act in TV and movies.

The film High Noon, written by Carl Foreman and starring Gary Cooper, has brinkmanship in its climatic scene. Propagates that killing — or war — is both moral and inevitable.

While in other TV genres, characters discuss.

There is no underlying or final threat of death inherent in that writing. The characters are thinking it through and talking it through. 

Discussing is intellectual — mental. Confrontation is physical.

Love stories, relationship shows, political dramas — the characters all think and talk through the problems. Talking heads.

There are two typical ways of dealing with a problem — confrontation or discussion. That’s reflected in the movies.

These two methods of problem-solving can also manifest themselves in the actual making of a movie. 

Recognize and celebrate. 

It’s important to recognize success and to celebrate both your work and the work of your colleagues. 

Life is made up of many beginnings, middles, and ends. At the end of a project, you should take a moment to commemorate the work you’ve done. 

Otherwise, life will become an endless race. You’ll run out of breath. Give yourself opportunities to breathe.

They talk about the rat race — there’s a colourful image you don’t want to be part of.

Recognition requires consciousness, an awareness of the work you and your fellow actors are doing. 

People in all endeavours work and produce the material goods of the society. You need to be aware of the importance of that work.

When the work is completed, you celebrate the accomplishment, but celebrate does not always mean balloons and brass bands. It can be any modest marking of the successful completion of your work.

Marking the end of a project allows you to begin the next one.

For instance, if you say to yourself after an audition “Job done,” then that is recognition enough.

Those that run the movie industry have everything at their disposal to celebrate in their way, and the Oscars are a good example of this. 

If you are a normal working actor, seeing the Oscars can cause you confusion as to how you should celebrate. You certainly can’t match the Oscars in size and scope. Yet you work in the movies and the Oscars are about the movies. 

Consider how you can recognize and celebrate your work and success.

Permission.

In acting class, the other day, students said that they were glad to have permission to cry, swear, shout, or insult.

I’m not so sure about permission. When it comes to acting.

Is willingness the opposite of permission?

All actors must be willing. Willing to try what the director or coach suggests.

The permission to try should be a given — on day one. The day you say you’re an actor.

What does it mean to be professional? Part of the meaning is that permission is already and always given. 

Is there a veil of reluctance in the society today? A veil that the young actor feels can only be lifted by the authority. The authority giving permission to lift it.

Authority exists but not to give or take away the actor’s work. The authority may alter the work, direct it, stop it, start it, but no permission is ever required to do it.

Authority can create harmonious conditions where the actor feels relaxed and better able to do it.

The same holds true on the business side. The agent-actor relationship requires no permission. It requires each party fulfilling their side of the agreement.

Being professional.

When you are in the actors’ union and you sign a contract to play a role, you have an obligation and a duty. As well as rights and privileges. They must be fulfilled — no permission needed.

The popular phrase of giving oneself permission is an interesting one.

Overwhelmed. 

It’s easy to get overwhelmed. 

As the world gets more and more chaotic, so does the movie industry. More competitive, faster, lower pay, harsher, and tougher.

You have goals and want to improve, dream in colour, work hard, push yourself to the limit, and test your brain. 

But do check yourself and see when you’re over the edge and overwhelmed.

Auditions are given out late in the day and could be due the next morning. You have to respond to your agent immediately to confirm your audition. The sides can’t be printed or a screenshot taken because of confidentiality. You have to sign an NDA. You’re working at a job that ends at 2:00 a.m.

Wow. All that’s overwhelming.

The hysteria of a film festival, the launch of a new series, a red-carpet interview can all be overwhelming. 

So can not booking work for a long time. 

Part of your actor’s life is finding time and space where you can work at your maximum under conditions that are minimal. Watch carefully how and where you best respond to being creative. The skill is to keep the beauty you’re capable of and to tap into it under pressure.

See when you can leave things that are too much for you and get back to them when you can. 

Being professional means working and living at your own pace — within today’s conditions.

Time.

Is a question you’ve considered often and will continue to do so.

Pick up the pace. Pick up your cues. Speak quicker. Feel the rhythm of the scene. Take a beat. 

A pause.

Shooting a commercial, you’re under strict time guidelines. You might be asked to do a reaction in 4.5 seconds, and continuity will be timing you with a stopwatch. Acting in precise time to the millisecond.

Audition time. Call time. Time you’re wrapped.

One of the many actor’s questions you ask. The time of day, the time the story is set in, how old is your character, how much time does the story cover, time between scenes.

Time between lines. Speed of your character’s mind. Other characters’ minds. Time passing in the story. Pace of the film.

The time when you start after action is called. Time after cut. 

“That actor’s got good timing.”

Literal time. Figurative time. 

And Shakespeare writes these four different lines: 

Let every man be master of his time.

Nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defence.

We are Time’s subject, and Time bids be gone.

The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right. 

There are hundreds of expressions using time. Here’s a few: A race against time. Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time. A stitch in time. Time and tide wait for no man. In the nick of time. Time brings all things to pass. Time is money. Everything in its own time. It’s high time. Third time’s a charm.

Time might answer many questions.

Opposites.

As an actor, you need skin as thin as glass in front of the camera and the opposite in the movie business where it has to be thick as steel. 

Finding an opposite can help you see what the thing is and what it isn’t.

Asking questions allows an answer, which in turn allows the opposite answer.

Opposites can unearth your imagination.

When writers ask the question “What if?” they’re looking to provoke the opposite. 

Raising the opposite can be useful at the beginning of your work when assumptions might be made that haven’t been given enough consideration.

What is the opposite challenges you to defend your position.

Story is filled with opposites. As is life. Young and old; birth and death; love and hate; good and evil; rich and poor; female and male; language, nationality, religion, etc.

When we say drama has conflict — opposition is inherent in the conflict.

Aristotle, in his Poetics, defines peripeteia as “a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity.”

Discussion.

What is discussion?

It’s what human beings do to both make things and develop thinking. 

There are two basic kinds of discussion. One: to make a plan to do something. Two: to move the thinking forward on a particular question.

One is practical, and the other is ideological.

The first kind of discussion should produce a plan for action. For instance, if you need to build a fence, then the discussion will focus on finding solutions for the particular problems that arise while building that fence. These discussions have concrete goals. 

These are the discussions you have with directors while trying to solve problems that arise while shooting a scene. Those discussions have an immediate aim, and that is to solve the problem in front of you so you can shoot the scene.

The other form of discussion doesn’t lead to a concrete plan but rather develops thinking on questions. When you discuss acting questions with your peers or acting coach, that is the discussion of ideas. Even if there is a particular topic being discussed, the aim isn’t necessarily to come up with the answer.

What you do come up with is more light having been shed on the idea in question. These discussions of ideas carry on the age-old human tradition of sharing and developing thinking. 

If you begin a discussion and your mind is confused, the resulting discussion often clears the confusion and creates order in your mind. You feel better afterwards. 

In both instances of discussion, there is no argument. 

Arguing and discussing are different. In a discussion, no one is trying to win, because there is no competition. The subject under discussion takes precedence over the individual’s narrow or petty aim. 

A director barking at you from video village is not a discussion. You complaining in the actors’ bar isn’t discussion. A casting director telling you to do it faster isn’t discussion. You demanding something self-serving isn’t discussion.

When you discuss with others using your mind and the gift of language, you will always give rise to something of note — something new.

The best actors all know how to discuss. 

The practice of proper discussion — whether solving a problem or developing an idea — will help your mind develop and serve you to be a better actor.

Consciousness.

Let’s begin with Stanislavski’s idea of unconscious creativity through conscious technique.

To have this brief entry on consciousness is to potentially underestimate the importance of the idea. 

The point is to highlight consciousness and what it means to you. Stanislavski’s quote raises two aspects to it.

The practical and objective work in analyzing scripts and preparing your work — the conscious technique. That conscious work comes as a result of your training on how to analyze text, prepare a role, identify genres, recognize TV icons, and know what the producers need. 

You can follow any one of a number of methods of work to fulfill this part of your conscious technique work.

Your training and practice of these approaches are what make it conscious. It goes in your mind. You’ve assimilated the techniques. And when those assimilations are made, they lead to the freeing of the unconscious creativity. 

“You do your preparation and then forget about it.” But it’s never actually forgotten as it is in you.

The successful football coach Louis van Gaal talks about process as starting at the bottom then going to the unconscious and incapable and then to the conscious and capable and finally the unconscious and capable. 

Stanislavsky’s quote put paid the argument — technical actors versus natural actors — he did so by linking the two.

Cutting through the veil.

The veil is what you need to cut through to move forward.

It could represent anything.

It’s that elusive and real step that you can’t yet take. To say no to a certain direction, to go deep to find an emotion, to feel like a participant, to celebrate your work.

A veil is something that stops you from learning the truth about a situation. That stops you from seeing what something is.

The ideas in the veil can come from those who control the movie industry. “The producers don’t have any money — they can only pay you scale.” “Of course, the Hollywood actors will be paid three times what you get paid.”

The veil is made up of the ideas you’ve been taught and learned.

Say you had a problem and felt humiliated and afterwards tell your colleague about it, saying how you wanted to speak up but didn’t know how. It was the veil that held you back.

The veil can be cut.

Through experience and proper practice, you can learn how to cut through the veil in your acting, your business side, and your life as an actor.

Cutting it once sharpens your knife to cut it again.

In 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois, in his revolutionary book The Souls of Black Folk, writes about the moment he knew what it meant to be Black in America.

I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England . . . In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards — ten cents a package — and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card — refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned on me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others . . . shut out from their world by a vast veil.

Learn about your veils and how to cut through them.

The list.

The facts of your acting life make up the list.

When you feel down, learn to refer to it.

What could be on the list? 

Well, you exercise, try to eat well; you have an agent; you audition; you act in plays, movies, TV series, shorts, webisodes, summer theatre; you take acting class; you’ve gone to theatre school; and you’re known and respected. You pay your rent, taxes, and phone bill.

That’s a list.

The list of points that make up your acting life is what your acting life is. As opposed to how you feel it is.

The list allows you to juxtapose the objective reality to your subjective view. What’s in your head versus what’s in the world. It balances the scales.

You might feel down and justifiably so from being humiliated as an actor, missing out on a role, struggling to make ends meet, and more, but the list still remains.

You have a right to your feelings, and you should never apologize for them. But observe yourself when you can’t seem to get past them.

The list buttresses you from being overwhelmed by your feelings and can help to keep you going. You’re not trying to boost your confidence with false ideas — you’re citing what’s true. 

The list.

The list should also include the film and TV industry as it is. The power of the studio owners, producers, casting directors, and agents, and the difficulty you have in participating in the decision-making. The listing of these objective factors will help deflate the idea that you individually are the cause of the difficulties.

When you think about something — your acting career, for example — objective reality must be part of that thinking.

So, next time your fellow actor asks you “How’s it going?” you can say “Fine.” Because, according to the list — it is.

Check your list.

Life.

Far from putting our lives on hold and hoping the old will return in due course, we must live our lives to the fullest under all conditions and circumstances. Life is the object of our living and what we achieve by it. It is ours for the taking.

The future.

Human beings always look to the future.

On a practical note, you have the future to consider every time you play a scene or go to an audition. Part of your preparation will be seeing yourself at the end of the work. How will the audition go? How will the scene go? How will you feel afterwards? What do you see?

That’s looking into the future. 

Visualizing is key, but you must do it sharply so you don’t slide over, avoid, or deny what you see. 

Try to learn to look at things as they are. 

Seeing yourself going forward obviously includes the state of the industry at this time. Your future takes place from where the industry is today and from where it was in the past — all affecting your future.

As well as the external influences, your individual outlook will affect what you see. 

Having aspirations is vital for all humans. What gives rise to your aspirations? Old ideas like “follow your dreams” and “you can do whatever you want” could be confusing. 

Find the parables, mantras, truths, watchwords, and guidelines that help you see the future in clearer and more doable terms — for you.

You want success and a bright future. 

Try to base what can be in practical terms because “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”