The Great Acting Blog: “Dedication Means Independence”

The Great Acting Blog: “Dedication Means Independence”

Whether your career will be brilliant or not is not under your control. Whether you will be rich and famous isn’t either. But being dedicated to craft is. If you come to acting just to take, this dedication will seem incomprehensible to you. You will think the dedicated are fools, wasting their time because nobody will notice the finer points anyway. However, the difference between being committed to craft and not, is the difference between producing art and producing slops.

Dedication may not help you get more work (there’s a moral in that), you may not become richer, but that isn’t the point of it. The reward for all the effort lies in your own view of yourself: one of respect rather than cynicism, of confidence rather than fear, of independence rather than subservience. You become your own judge and jury as oppose to clinging to an outside view.

This kind of dedication is not an easy proposition. We’re living in a culture which reveres those who get the maximum lolly for the minimum effort. Any attempt at art or philosophy is seen as self-indulgence. The point is however, this dedication, this elevating of your work to the status of art, gives you the strength to hold your ground and withstand the maelstrom.

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