The Great Acting Blog: “What Are You Trying To Achieve?”

The Great Acting Blog: “What Are You Trying To Achieve?”

Somebody said we should measure improvement by the increase in volume of work we put out – ergo, if our volume is getting less and less then we are declining. Others have said that they don’t measure improvement at all, that for them, acting isn’t about that, and for others still they look at the development of their craft for signs of improvement.

Let’s have a quick look at the career of an actor with a long and obvious career path, Jack Nicholson.

According to IMDB, Nicholson has 75 entries as an actor, his first in 1956 and his most recent in 2010. It is generally acknowledged that his big break came in 1969 with Easy Rider, and that his golden run was during the 1970s, I’d say 1970 to 1975 infact. During that period came: The King Of Marvin Gardens, The Last Detail, Chinatown, and One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. Overall, he made 12 films in those years, four of those were in 1975. In the next 36 years, he made 33 films in total, but rarely if ever matching the artistic  potency of that mid-70s period. However, his later films included enormous blockbusters such as Batman, which were seen by more people than his 1970s  films, and made more money.

I suppose the vast majority of actors would be thrilled to have enjoyed any one of the periods of Nicholson’s career. The point is though, how you measure your improvement depends on what you’re trying to achieve. If artistic development is your thing, then popularity and money are less important. If it’s volume of output, then you will be less pre-occupied with craft.

I would hazard a guess though, that Jack Nicholson was primarily concerned with his art, then everything else followed from there. And he hasn’t done too badly, has he?

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