Acting is easier than you might think

The Words of Wisdom this week are Acting is easier than you might think - but you can go on learning about it all your life.

How so? Well, acting is the most accessible of the arts. It's a development of play, which is how we learn from a very early age, imitating the behaviour of others. It comes into our lives automatically, before we even know it. It's for that reason that improvisation, drama based on life rather than literature, is the best grounding for a would be actor's training..

Other arts, painting or playing a musical instrument, require more development and do not come so easily. Writing, in particular, demands plenty of life experience.

So what is acting? It means going into character, pretending to be someone you're not, feeling and speaking like someone else. And that's it.

Well, it's not quite as simple as that. Acting may be easy but that doesn't mean that everyone does it well. When people act badly it's generally for one of two reasons. Either there's a lack of confidence, so that they stiffen up and become wooden, or else they may be trying to impose a theory on what should be a natural process. They're acting in their head but not in their heart.

And you can go on learning about it all your life. You can develop your technique and knowledge of how human beings express themselves in speech and body language. You can explore and experiment and this can go on for ever.

But if you're an actor you still have to learn the script and turn up on time.

Acting is a proper job

It is said that professionals are those who can do it when they don’t feel like it, while amateurs are those who can’t do it even when they do feel like it. Without necessarily agreeing with this, I do believe that everything in my classes should be aimed towards achieving the highest professional standard. I am aware that not everyone who comes is an actor or aiming to be one, but there is no substitute for doing something as well as you possibly can. So today’s Words of Wisdom are Acting is a proper job. Like sport, the arts are something which a lot of people love doing and many people aspire to. I’ve been involved in one or both for practically all my life and it has all been immensely rewarding. Because so many people want to do things in the arts, or sport, they are very hard to succeed at. But are such enjoyable pursuits somehow childish? Are they, maybe, not a proper job, like those done by the serious faced people one sees on the tube trains, going to work in an office or factory? The answer is yes. Entertaining people brings joy and meaning into many people’s lives. It is a valuable endeavour and no-one should feel guilty for being paid for doing something they love.

On the other hand, no-one has a right to be employed as an actor, however hard they may have trained. One sometimes hears actors say that they have a right to follow their chosen profession. No such right exists. There are plenty of people who have trained as doctors, accountants, architects or lawyers who cannot find a job in those callings. It’s a competitive and unfair world and luck and contacts count for a lot. So actors have very little power over their destiny: they are in an overcrowded and insecure field, with no career structure, and they take a gamble with their lives. All they can do is work, study and train hard, gain experience and keep their professional friendships in good repair. And acting is a proper job.

Acting is more like football than it is like chess

First the Words of Wisdom: Acting is more like football than it is like chess. Much is made of the complexity of the game of chess: how there are millions of possibilities for the first few moves, so that no game is ever likely to be exactly repeated. Chess is regarded as an intellectual pursuit, whilst football is often said to be a diversion for the less intelligent.

But look at the facts. There are twenty ways that white can play the first move in a chess game: sixteen for the pawns and four for the knights. There are twenty ways that black can reply and the game continues in a similar way.

Compare this with football. Think of the myriad ways a ball can be played: kicked or headed, in what direction, how hard, with what elevation and spin. Which, of the other 21 players on the pitch will play it next, and where? And what about the complications of fouls, corner kicks, the offside rule and all the rest of it? It immediately becomes obvious that football is a far more complex game than chess.

Unlike chess, where a position can be exhaustively analysed, acting, like football, defies precise analysis. Both involve mind, body and spirit and excite passion in both players – same word, you see - and spectators. Computer programs have been written that can play chess at grandmaster level, but a robot version of Lionel Messi is still awaited. As is a computerised Scarlett Johansson.

So, we conclude: Acting is more like football than it is like chess. Acting is not a science and can never be reduced to a formula. So may your favourite team win, or at least play well.

Don't 'act' when you're acting

And so to the Words of Wisdom. They are ‘Don’t ‘act’ when you’re acting.’ It’s about the difference between artificiality and directness. The people in the audience haven’t come to see actors acting; they’ve come to see a play. They don’t want to hear people saying lines; the want to listen to the words. They don’t want to hear you reciting Shakespeare; they want to bridge the gap of 400 years and hear the play as if it was being performed for the first time. As an actor, don’t intrude between the writer and the audience. Paradoxically, the more you make yourself disappear inside the character and the situation, the more you will be admired after the event.

Treat the audience as equals; shun the mindset of cultural superiority so evident in, for example, TV costume dramas; we, the audience, don’t want to see two actors playing the parts of two tramps; we want to see two tramps. Don’t ‘act’ when you’re acting.