The Great Acting Blog: “How Much Will That Lie Cost?”

The Great Acting Blog: “How Much Will That Lie Cost?”

It is often said that actors must do years of bad work before they can do anything good. As though they must give up their soul in order to enjoy some paradisal future. It’s a dangerous game for the actor to play and requires him to place enormous trust in the hands of the person he plays the game with. It might seem as though the actor has little choice, seeing as he is faced with a tidal wave of competition from his peers – in this situation, any opportunity may seem worthwhile, no matter the cost.

The cost however, may prove to be far, far greater than the actor ever could have imagined. It may cost him his youth, his idealism, it may cost him the joy that exercising his craft gives him. And for what? The possibility that he may get the opportunity to do good work in the future – “keep shovelling shit now, and once I’ve made enough money out of your dreams, I might give you a slice of cake at some unspecified point in the future.”

Of course, this rule of having to do bad work today is completely imaginary, designed as it is to control and manipulate the actor. To believe in the rule is comforting because it relieves us of responsibility and justifies mediocrity. It requires strength and courage and knowing what you want in order to ignore the sirens and seize control of the moment. To go for what we truly want today and to not defer it is frightening because we might not get it and that hurts. It’s much, much more comfortable to keep putting it off and putting it off because then we never need face up to the truth, we can use this ideal “future” to explain away an unsatisfactory present. But how much will that lie cost?

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