An Actor’s Story About Fear | The Great Acting Blog

I once knew an actor who was very inspiring. He was the first actor I ever met who seemed properly dedicated. He was intensely focussed on his work, read avidly, and he was exciting to be around because you wanted to see what he was going to do next. He was well on his way to becoming a great artist. Then some years ago a steady decline began. Firstly, he started to view his work as a job only, something to pay bills – he chased after work he didn’t really want and when he got it, he hated doing it. It gave him a short term financial boost, but in the long term it had a corrosive effect on his mindset. He lost respect for his work, and just slapped it out. Finally, I saw him in a play and he looked completely disinterested on stage, it was almost as though he was checking his watch to see when he could get the hell out of there. Then he got married and started a family, and this obviously altered his focus still further. And now, he works in an office and does the occasional bit of amateur acting.

When I started writing this blogpost, I thought it was going to be about the perils of making poor career and lifestyle choices. But now it occurs to me that this actor’s story is perhaps about fear. That is, fear of becoming an artist, of crossing that threshold, fear of completing that journey. Perhaps this once great actor made the choices he did intentionally to trash his chances of becoming an artist.

Perhaps, in the end, we need to want to become an artist so badly that we will let nothing stop us, we will overcome every obstacle placed before us, including our own fear.

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