The Great Acting Blog: “The Nature Of Ambition”

The Great Acting Blog: “The Nature Of Ambition”

Never become known for one thing, never make your work all about doing a trick, like the actor known for doing a Scottish accent so he gets called in whenever there’s a Scottish character. Some would call that “branding” but I call it reductive.  Your performances should be accepted as a whole, and integrated into the overall production. Good, clean work. Develop by giving great overall performances, truthful and intense. If all they want you to do is tricks, politely decline. Your work is unmistakably yours anyway, it is you, and you don’t need to narrow it down anymore than that.

Nor do you want to rely on “getting lucky”. No. Develop a career by setting goals and striving to accomplish those goals, making them slightly tougher as you go along. Seize control of as many of the steps as possible, and so construct a career, a body of work, a life, over time. Progress means earning the right to a steady increase in ambition.

No flukes and no tricks, but a controlled, deliberate, envisioned, articulated, continuous improvement. That should be the nature of your ambition.

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