Take ownership of your dialogue

And the Words of Wisdom this week are: Take ownership of your dialogue. The words you are given were written by a writer, but they are not the writer’s words, they belong to the character you are playing. You are not delivering lines written by a stranger. You are creating a character, derived in the first instance from the words the character has been given and any description or direction, and then delivering those words as your character’s own. Adopt the vocabulary, the words and the phrasing and above all the emotions revealed to you, and deliver them as if no-one thought of them or created them until they emanated from your mind and came out through your mouth. Take ownership of your dialogue.

Take one step at a time, but go on taking steps

The Words of Wisdom this week have application far beyond the bounds of acting. They are: Take one step at a time, but go on taking steps. This is the idea of incremental improvement and it applies as much to athletics or mathematics as it does to acting. It runs counter to two damaging beliefs: one, that if you are not very good at something you can never get better at it, and the other, that it is possible to be instantly successful at something and that it only requires some hidden talent to be ‘discovered’ and that hard work is not involved. Always focus on the next step and make it a measurable and achievable target. That way you can monitor your progress and you will not be put off by the difficulty of what you are ultimately aiming for. And you have to take that first step: get involved and take that first step. No-one ever got anywhere by thinking how nice it would be if they got to where they would like to be. Then take the next step. And persist. One of the main reasons people don’t succeed at things is because they give up too easily. Make a plan, but don’t stick rigidly to it. Vary it in the light of experience: there is a military maxim ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy.’ And never consider yourself to be fully trained. You can go on educating yourself as an actor for your whole life. And remember that if you content yourself with standing still you will go backwards. Take one step at a time, but go on taking steps.