The Great Acting Blog: “Fear Of Failure”

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Commitment is a tricky thing. At the moment just before we need to commit, our minds suggest all kinds of alternatives as preferable to the thing we are about to commit to. One of the reasons commitment is so hard, is because we are putting our good opinion of ourselves on the line: if it all goes wrong then there are no excuses, and it hurts. Note how distraught elite sportspeople get when,  despite giving absolutely everything, they lose a big match. Rarely do we see them shrug during such a moment, they would only shrug if they  didn’t care, and hadn’t spent themselves. However, when we fear failure, we don’t give  a proper effort or we don’t try at all, so as to avoid the pain failure may bring. The trouble with this approach is, the failure becomes self-fulfilling, because our lack of effort ensured, from the outset, that we would fail.

Creative endeavours are rarely, if ever, as cut and dry as the sports field, and, in acting, the symptoms of fear of failure take very, very subtle forms, so subtle infact, that sometimes they may even be mistaken for great acting. What I’m talking about here is undercutting the scene with a cutesy bit of humour, or with some “characterization”, or a bit of emotion, or even something oh-so ironic. This usually happens when something unforeseen moves the actor internally, something rears itself which had not been part of the actor’s cosy, little plan for playing the scene. What was this terrible unforeseen horror? Why, it was the truth of the moment of course. The courageous actor, doesn’t flinch from that moment, instead, he grapples with it no matter how unnerved by it he may be, he sticks to his task ruthlessly, and does the best he can. The phoney actor denies the truth of the moment, he tries to defuse the potential of the unplanned, he tries to suffocate it,  for he must always be seen to be in control, superior to the scene, superior to the audience, and cannot bear anything which threatens that control, threatens that feeling of superiority. He tries to masque the truth with a lie, he tries to render the truth imperceptible. But this phoney bit of behaviour, often extorts a moment of admiration from the audience, and well it might, for that was it’s original intention, that is, the actor uses a bit of cleverness to distract the audience from the fact that he is not flawless.This actor is scared, scared of criticism,  scared of being hurt, and protects himself with empty trickery. The truthful actor is like the sportsman, he gives everything even though he knows that by the end, exhausted and drenched in sweat, he may still come up short.

The truthful actor commits fully despite his fear. This is called courage.