In a commercial promoting her online Masterclass on acting, Helen Mirren casually walked on set, camera following her as she made her way to a chair and sat down, she then exclaimed, “That is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
It seems like a strange comment, coming from a lauded actress who’s won 50+ awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actress. But she’s referring to the fact that of all the qualities it takes to be a great actor, the most challenging one is just to be completely natural.
Authenticity – the quality that makes us purely and uniquely who we are – is in high demand in acting and voice-acting.
I recently sat in on a lecture with a top casting director, focused on how actors can book more work. The CD’s message throughout the entire seventy five minutes was very specific: the secret to getting cast more is to bring your authentic self to every script. Authenticity in our acting makes us real, believable and relatable. It’s the quality that pulls the audience in – that compels them to watch us and to listen to what we have to say.
But how do we bring ourselves to a script we can’t relate to, with words we would never actually say?
For many of us, this notion of authenticity seems counterintuitive, especially if we are playing a character very different from who we are. The fact is we share many of the same personality traits with other people. Our task is to find those things we have in common with our character and focus on building from there. In order to find those similarities, we first need to know who we are and how we feel in the given circumstance of the script.
Instead of skimming the words and quickly deciding what voice you are going to use, dig in and ask yourself: what am I saying here, why am I saying it, and do I care about it? When you ask yourself these three questions, you are working toward making the story yours. It puts you on the path to authenticity.
The great acting coach Sanford Meisner recognized the tendency in his students to just read the words on the page, and urged, “Don’t go bigger, dig deeper!”
It takes a lot of soul-searching to ask ourselves how we feel about every element of a script. At first you may feel resistant or even push back at the need for such in-depth analysis. You may even start to unearth feelings you buried long ago. Let them rise to the surface, and use them in your work.
We can’t grow in our acting if we keep shielding ourselves from awkward or painful feelings. It’s also good to seek out situations that feel risky, which make you vulnerable. Improv classes are a great way to work on our authenticity, because they train us to react intuitively.
We need to get out of our heads, because, more often than not there are a lot of nonsensical, negative thoughts taking up space. The audience wants to know how you feel, not what you think.
Acting coach Michael Laskin, author of The Authentic Actor the Art and Business of Being Yourself, says that talent alone is not enough. What is more important to the actor’s success is”…a strong personal presence, a compelling identity.”
Revealing your authentic self is a lifelong journey, with lots of bumps along the way. But I assure you, the deeper you dig, the more real your work will become, and the more likely you will leave a lasting impression at your auditions.
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