The acting life

There really are extreme highs and extreme lows involved in being an actor.

When you work on a job that fulfils you artistically and if you’re lucky financially as well, the world seems like the sun is shining on you at all times.

Confidence is high, acting muscles are nicely honed and you feel like anything is possible.

On the flip side however, there are the dark times, when work and even auditions are scarce, and the world feels like it’s crumbling around you.

The ups will always outweigh the downs. Even if you only get a hit, sporadically, from the drug of acting – it can keep you going for a long time.

It’s important as an actor, or I believe any freelance artistic type, that we find something else that we can get enjoyment from and pay the bills.

Getting stuck in a job that bores you, with people who don’t understand what we do, can be extremely detrimental. Although sometimes the jobs might have to be a bit dull but as long as they are flexible with auditions etc.

Finding outlets for our artistic needs is also an absolute must. As well as taking class regularly I often get together with a group of friends to read a play, usually Shakespeare and usually with a slap up roast dinner thrown in.

Little things like this help us to keep focused and never stop feeling like an actor, ever!

And then when the work comes and the highs hit we feel ready and complete and grateful to be in this wonderful business, full of wonderful people and wonderful experiences.

Acting

I love being an actor. Even the darkest times when you feel you will never work again are completely worth it when you get to flex your acting muscles. In fact the down times are often the most valuable life experiences that help fuel character choices and inform us about humanity, which is of course what we are trying to portray.

Rehearsals are easily my favourite part of the process of being in a play. The feeling of being completely submerged in an artistic environment is second to none.

Although it does come with it’s natural stresses and anxieties.
– Day 1 – first day at school. Always terrifying! No matter how many times you have done one, it’s always the same; Nervy, excited, scared, enthralled!
– The penultimate week – suddenly it all becomes a bit too real with the first performance just around the corner.
– First preview – make or break!
– Press night – now other people get to tell you their opinions – best to be taken with a pinch of salt but not always easy to do.

However, the intensive work is exactly the kind of remedy all actors need to keep them sane. Not since college does one get to simply live and breathe acting all day everyday, apart from during the rehearsal period for a new play.

Back in the day a lot of our current favourite actors got to hone their craft in repertory theatre, rehearsing one play during the day whilst performing another at night. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that we are slightly diminished in our development as actors without such formative work.

Actors just want to act, the mundanity of making money often gets in the way as does the industry which holds the juxtaposition between artistic and business minds, but fundamentally Actors just want to act.