You’re sitting in a cafe, minding your own business, when a famous director comes up to you and says “You’re exactly who I need in my next movie!”
Could you do it? Assuming you have the time to take the role, do you have the acting chops?
Me - doubtful. Apart from occasionally acting like an adult (HAH!!) I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do it. Especially the part about rehearsals and multiple takes, having to make everything you say seem like the first time you say it. Doing a play would be even worse. And, of course, convincing facial expressions and all the other physical stuff that need to look natural, not wooden and rehearsed.
When I was a kid, acting seemed like an ideal job - you pretend to be someone else for a while and you get paid. But apart from what I mentioned already, add publicity tours and interviews where you’re asked the same questions over and over again. And if you’re famous enough, you can’t go anywhere without paparazzi or fans invading your private life.
Lucky for me, I never had to find out. I know I couldn’t do it. How about you?
Well, waaayyyy back in high school I had a drama class I took as one of my ‘requirement’ classes. The class got together in pairs or triplets, chose scenes from movies or plays, practiced them and performed them to the rest of the class. I was teamed up with two girls, and we did two scenes of the Noel Coward comedy ‘Blithe Spirit’. Our comedy timing was impeccable; we had the class LOLing.
So, based solely on that classroom experience, I’m quite confident that I would be a solid candidate for EGOT status, should I have chosen to pursue that path.
Aside from a couple minor roles in elementary school, the best I have to offer is years of playing Dungeons & Dragons and similar roleplaying games. Which either makes me 5% better than the average nobody or maybe 5% worse due to bad habits to unlearn.
When I was 14 going on 15 I played the lead in the school production of The Importance of Being Earnest and when I was about 35 going on 36 I won a ‘best performance’ certificate for an interactive murder mystery night. These are the only two acting credits to my name but clearly I have the chops so yes, Oscars and fame await, I just need that one opportunity to knock.
Then again, if my partner asks me did I eat the last chocolate biscuit and I say no, she never believes me, despite my sincere-faced protestations, so maybe not…
Saying I never had to find out is a tad inaccurate. In 10th grade, I auditioned for a part in the spring musical (Oliver!) And even as I read the lines, I knew I was stinking up the stage. Didn’t even bother to go back and see the cast list. Those who were cast, however, were great.
I’m a competent actor on stage, but acting in film is harder and there’s technicalities involved I have no experience with. Much harder than it looks. I do not believe I could execute film acting at an acceptable level in a professional production.
After years of training and experience, I would express it a little differently: acting is actually very easy, because you shouldn’t be doing anything special. Just adjust your given circumstances, and then be, and behave as, a normal person in those circumstances. Exactly like you are and do every day.
But doing it knowing people are looking at you, for some reason, throws in a huge wrench, and self-consciousness gets in the way of just being a normal person.
Or, the way I like to put it, acting is so easy that it becomes impossibly difficult.
I have done community theater for more than 10 years now, both straight plays and musicals. If I do say so myself, I’m considered to be fairly good, and directors seem to want to cast me.
I’ve also been in a movie. A short (21 minute) science fiction film which, to the best of my knowledge, has had exactly one public showing, at a regional SF convention. It’s not especially good, although I don’t think its problems were my fault.
That’s not to say I could act professionally, but being onstage in front of an audience, hitting marks, memorizing lines, etc., is not difficult for me. As I said, many of the shows I’ve done have been musicals. I can belt out a tune well enough, and have a pretty good higher register, but nobody is ever going to offer me a record contract.
No. I’m a good mimic, but a poor actor. I learned this doing theater when I was a teenager.
Growing up on Monty Python, I was the go-to guy if there was a character with a British accent. I made something of a career of that during high school. But I have no ability to interpret motivations, character traits and mannerisms the way a real actor does.
It also sounds like a terrible gig. Having to inhabit somebody else, very possibly someone abhorrent. Look what it did to people like James Gandolfini, although it’s hard to say how much of that was fame versus the difficulties inherent to acting.
I’ve done professional theater, although mostly opera, which is a different beast. I was reviewed once in a role which was primarily dialogue. I was described as “a treat”. Also noted for my “artsy long hair” which I have since chopped off. No word on whether that has made me less of a treat.
I have not done film, which as noted is a different beast.
Depends on the personality and attitude I’d be expected to embody. You want a verbose smart-ass who thinks he’s clever and cute thumbing his nose at authority? A serious pompous lecturer? A fervent idealist or true-believing zealot with a vision and a head full of weird concepts? Yeah, sign me on. But if you want a belligerent monosyllabic fight-picker who pounces on others’ vulnerabilites, or an upright-citizen everyman with a lot of self-doubts plaguing him, or a vampy slinky physical egotist who mocks and winks and behaves outrageously, I’m going to have a much harder time channeling that and pulling it off believably.
Based on my experience of my wife and I having done a scene for our granddaughter’s student film when she was in high school, I’m going to say no, I absolutely cannot act.
Acting is one of those things that I think would be really fun to do, but I think I would be very bad at it. So I would say yes to the guy, and take my chances.
