Prague Playhouse

Being Opinionated: Good For Your Acting

August 26th, 2008 at 09:41am brian

A lot of people talk about how “talented” an actor is, a lot of people starting out acting worry if they have enough “talent” to be successful. But what is talent? Talent seems to be a mixture of how emotionally available you are together with how open you are to showing it, together with a certain sense of vulnerablitiy. Brando talked about measuring talent by thinking about a piano keyboard of emotions. If an actor with no talent can only play a few keys on the keyboard, whereas a hugely talented actor has a large range of emotional range.

Setting talent aside to focus on the craft of acting, how does anyone find out what makes them emotional? When a student is starting out acting, how can they actively enlarge that range of button issues? Being opinionated is key to this. Not only is an actor’s opinion directly linked to how they feel about something (their emotional range), their opinion, or “take” on any given subject is what will set them apart from other actors that may have the same physical characteristics. So, to increase your emotional range, start by really tuning in to your opionions about things.

This isn’t easy to do at first as society rightly trains us all to not show our opinions and go with the flow. Political Corectness is death to an actor’s opinion (and therefor “talent”). As Meisner said: Fuck Polite. Everyone has likes and dislikes that are specific to them, that they really care about when given the freedom. And when given the freedom to really own those opinions, they can produce really strong emotions as they come up against someone who has a differing view of the subject. Apathy, indiference, irony, sarcasm, jadedness, going with the flow, not wanting to make waves, worrying about what other people think. All have a place in everyday life. They all have a reason for being. But for an actor who is just starting down the path of “living truthfully” they will kill that truth really fast.

Actors must seek out their own truthful opinions about things, everything. Those opinions will push them onto the path of emotional openness and fullness, which people view as “talent”. The more opinionated you are, the more varied your opinions are and the freer you are with those opinions, the more “talent” people will say you have. So work on your opinions. Often they’re the only thing that separates you from the thousands of actors who look just like you and have more experience and a better resume.

As always your thoughs and comments (ie. opinions about this post!) are welcome!

Acting