The Great Acting Blog: “Follow The Truth Within Yourself”
An actor’s greatest gift is their sense of truth because it will guide him toward his highest goal, that is a truthful performance. This sense will create pangs of tension within him whenever his work becomes false, however it is up to the actor himself to heed these internal signals and act on them. Great actors refuse to compromise their personal truth, they love it, and work relentlessly to eliminate falsity, they just wont accept it, that’s what drives them on. Bad actors of course, ignore the signals or just don’t care, or they haven’t bothered to cultivate a love of truth within themselves and so are not sensitive to falsity. However, this truth, allied with superb technique, elevates acting into an art form.
Our sense of truth guides us in our work but it can also guide us in our lives as well. This is especially true when we’re confronted by unfathomably complex questions. Deciding on our next set of goals for example, where the next few years of our lives are at stake. Sometimes nothing seems right, we lose our clarity of thought, we become complicated and tense, we feel as though we’re treading water. It can take months to find the answers, but it’s important to preserver rather than making rash decisions and rash commitments in order to relieve the pressure. We must keep digging, like a pig searching for truffles. We must keep asking ourselves questions, articulating, trying to understand what our correct, next move should be, trying to find the right configuration. And this is where our sense of truth helps us, just like it does in our work: it will prevent us from taking the wrong path by keeping us in a state of perplexity until we stumble upon the right path, and then everything simplifies, we lose the tension, we gain clarity and act with conviction – these are the internal signals informing us that we should proceed.
Follow the sense of truth you feel within yourself. It will guide you in your work and in your life.
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