The Great Acting Blog: “The Insecure Actor”

The Great Acting Blog: “The Insecure Actor”

I was stunned recently when a colleague of mine, whom I had had a very good relationship with until this point, casually slighted me in public. At first, I was in disbelief because the slight apparently came out of nowhere, and then my survival instinct kicked in as I undertsood the slight to be an attack, and so defended myself. Why did my colleague jeopardise the well being of a hitherto frutiful professional relationship in this way? Because he is insecure about the value of himself and his own work, and his spontaneous insult was merely a symptom of this deeper, underlying fear. The insult itself, the slight, was merely an attempt to bring this value deficit to balance (if only for a fleeting moment). Moreover, it implies a lack of seriousness on their part: a lack of seriousness about themselves, their career, and about our relationship, for what else can this casual sabotage of a professional connection mean? Personally, I would never jeopardise a personal or professional relationship for such a meagre, transient reward.

There can be healthy competition between actors, the sort which invigorates and inspires, which drives you on to ever greater heights of excellence, and then there is the other sort as described above, which masquerades as the competitive spirit, but is infact the opposite – it is anti-competitive, an attempt to scag everybody, dragging everyone down into misery, sapping the true creative spirit, and in the process excusing oneself from the need to be better.

Stick to the healthy competition and get rid of the unhealthy.

If the actor does infact want to get rid of the unhealthy, then he needs to take responsibility for his work and life – get to grips with the technical aspects of acting, and develop sound philosophy, this in turn creates independence, which means understanding the value of you and your work. It all stems from having a proper grip on the fundamentals of acting. Once this is in place, the actor may become more generous toward his colleagues, seeing that everyone tries to do the best they can, enjoying and being inspired by the success of others’ rather than being threatened by it. Understand that your own personal well being is linked to the well being of the production as a whole, understand that the art and craft of acting is far, far greater than any single individual and that you are there to serve it and not for it to serve you. Treat people in the way you yourself wish to be treated. You do not have to be best friends with the rest of the cast, but an environment of trust, mutual respect, and co-operation, is a happily creative environment, which, co-incidentally, leads to stronger work.