I started going to acting class a month ago. 3 times a week I’ve been preparing, breaking down scripts, memorizing lines, understanding character and making choices. All before class. Then I spend 9 hours a week in class auditioning on camera, being critiqued, breaking down the script more, and finding out what I did wrong.
Before I started this class, and in the first week or so, I was fairly confident I had good instincts and made good, unique choices with the material I was given. But now? I feel like a bad actor. My instincts aren’t so good. The choices I make are wrong. Then that creeping, quiet voice rears its ugly head again and speaks the age old lie: you’ve been fooling yourself all along and everyone has been lying to you all your life- you do not have talent.
Asshole. Why do we do this to ourselves? In one sense, it’s good to be self aware, and humble and not assume we have all the answers. But why do we jump on this wheel again and again even though we know it to be false? Do people in other professions make themselves crazy like this? I wouldn’t know since I haven’t had a real world job in a decade.
When that doubt creeps in and you wonder if you should even be attempting this dream, what do you do? Personally, since I’m a believer, I have a sneaky suspicion it’s Satan planting those thoughts in my head. He loves nothing more than to have you either a. think far more of yourself than you should or b. think far less That’s how he works. Since I logically know this to be a lie re: I have no talent, then why would I believe it? No one hired me out of pity. No one called me back on a job because it was the right thing to do. Business doesn’t work that way. So I must be content with the truth rather than the lie.
And always be striving to keep it a lie.
thethriftyactor 