Dear Aspiring Actor,

Here's a funny thing about acting.

The More You Try To Do It, The Worse It Gets

I watch people act for the first time all the time, and you can see exactly what's going on.

They've read the script and worked it all out: angry in this bit, heartbroken in the next, the bad guy after that, and now they've come in to show me the lot.

And the moment they start showing it, they push, working away at it and straining after the feeling, so what comes out is an impression of an emotion rather than the thing itself.

They'll show you exactly what angry looks like without ever having felt a flicker of it.

And everybody can tell.

The audience might not be able to put a finger on why, but they always know when something isn't real.

What's Getting In The Way Is Interference

That's really all it is.

The actor steps in and tries to run the whole thing, deciding how a line should sound before they've even said it, and putting on a gesture before there's any real feeling underneath to earn it.

And these are clever, capable people, only trying to do it well, which is exactly where the trouble starts.

They've spent a lifetime making things work by gripping them tighter, and now they're doing the same to a scene, which is why they never quite catch themselves at it.

I had a student called Glenn who'd spent years working on luxury yachts before he ever came near a stage.

When he started, he was watching himself the entire time, monitoring every gesture and every movement, checking how he was coming across.

He couldn't see that he was doing it, which is the whole trouble with interference.

It was only when that monitoring fell away that his work began to deepen, and he felt the change in himself the moment it happened.

Non-Interference Is The Other Way Around

And it's harder than it sounds, because what I'm really asking of them is to stop doing the very thing they always thought acting was.

There was a teacher at the Moscow Art Theatre called Vakhtangov, and he said something I've never forgotten: the actor has to forget himself and live, unconsciously, in the work.

And that's the whole difficulty, because the character isn't managing any of it, are they.

They've no idea how they're coming across, they're just living their life, while the actor's back there working away at the voice and the body and the face.

And the second the actor starts arranging how they look, they've left the scene.

So The First Thing I Do Is Take Stuff Away

And that surprises people, because they've come in wanting more: more technique, more tricks, something to lay on top.

I go the other way entirely, and what's left is the thing most actors have never actually felt.

And when it happens, you can feel it in the room: the actor stops performing and starts living, and they know it themselves before anyone says a word.

This Is The Ground Floor

Everything sits on top of this.

It's the first thing I teach, and there are stages above it that I'll come to, ways of provoking that feeling and building it up into something an audience can't look away from.

But none of that is any use until this part is solid, because if it isn't true underneath, everything built on top of it is just making the lie louder.

I'll show you where it all leads on the broadcast.