Photo Source: Jesse Balgley
Actors are fed a lot of utter nonsense when it comes to developing their careers. The one thing that I desperately want all actors to know is that their personalities are their secret weapons and are that truly special sauce they can add to their scene work, character work, and auditions in order to create performances that are truly memorable. Too often, I see actors being sold the same tiresome (and just plain wrong) ideas that they need to strip away their personalities and build a character upon a blank canvas. Without actors being fearless and gracious enough to dig into their personalities to develop and enhance characters, we would never have some of the more memorable roles that Nicholson, Dunaway, Hackman, and Hepburn generously gave the screen. I constantly see actors getting suckered into someone selling them their “niche” or “type.” Get in the habit of rejecting those archaic concepts, as they only serve to box you in and suffocate your originality.
This article was originally posted on Backstage