Using Your High Sensitivity Personality As an Actor

Using Your High Sensitivity Personality As an Actor is a guest post by Douglas Eby
Everyone has some sensitivity to inner experiences and emotions, to the moods of others, and to many other sensations. But highly sensitive people have unusually strong awareness and reactions.

Artists, including actors, are often highly sensitive and use this personality trait to be more creative and effective.

But since the trait can also lead to being overwhelmed, you need to take care of yourself. It can show up in many ways, and actors have different ways of dealing with their high sensitivity.

Renee Zellweger says when she expresses something, it’s through the filter of her character, so she never feels exposed. She thinks of making movies as “private experiences” and avoids thinking about disappointing people.

Many other actors have identified themselves as highly sensitive, including Ellen Muth; Heath Ledger; Amy Brenneman; Mandy Moore; Alison Pill; Naomi Watts, and Brittany Murphy, who once commented, “I’m a very oversensitive, vulnerable person. You have to be to do this for a living.”

Read more

Amy Poehler chats with Charlie Rose

Amy Poehler sat down with Charlie Rose to talk about her new show, Parks and Recreation, her days on Saturday Night Live and how everything changed once she started doing Weekend Update.

At the 7:50 mark, she starts talking about how she got into comedy and how she thinks improvising is the best training for an actor. “It allows you to be ready for anything”, she says.

10 Questions To Ask Yourself When Building A Character

What makes an actor truly great? Dee Cannon from The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts should know. In this fantastic article below, she gives 10 questions that actors need to ask themselves in order to create a character.

1. Who am I?

2. Where am I?

3. When is it?

4. Where have I just come from?

5. What do I want?

6. Why do I want it?

7. Why do I want it now?

8. What will happen if I don’t get it now?

9. How will I get what I want by doing what?

10. What must I overcome?

Those are the 10 questions but read the full article as she goes in depth with each one.

From the Guarian UK

Quote from Tim Blake Nelson

I found this quote in an article on Tim Blake Nelson and wanted to share it.

“I tend to make strong choices as a character actor because I’m usually playing dimwits or wackos.”

For the full article, click here.

Have you heard of "The Way"?

The Way or, “dream work”, is an acting technique using Jungian psychology in which actors study and play the characters in their dreams; they mine their unconscious for clues to understanding their character.

The technique grew out of Method acting, and it is now being taught in New York in Los Angeles.

In the past 10 years has spread into actors studios and classrooms across the country, taking its place among the ever expanding techniques of actor training and in the long-running debate over what leads to the most authentic performances.

Kate Walsh and Harvey Keitel are frequent practitioners.

Kate Walsh: “When you’re hooking into your unconscious or working on a dream, you’re connected in a real way that you are not manufacturing or trying to force.”

Harvey Keitel: “I see a place for this in all the acting schools across the country once they come to know about it. I see a place for this in all the acting schools across the country once they come to know about it. Actors are always searching for ways to get close to the psychology, the life, the experience of the characters they are creating. And we investigate all these situations, looking high and low for the experience that will bring us closer to this mysterious character we’re trying to create, we’re trying to know, to understand and to be. The dream work brought to the actor another tool — we stage our dreams, we put them on their feet.”

From NYTimes.com:

Acting teachers using dream work instruct their students to use dreams to help them connect their own personal struggles with the struggles of the characters they are playing. An actor preparing to play Blanche DuBois in “A Streetcar Named Desire” might write a letter to herself asking her “inner self” to reveal in a dream how her own emotional experiences may be similar to those of the tortured Blanche.

Jung’s theories were first adapted for actor training in the early 1980s by Sandra Seacat, an actress and acting coach, who went on to work with Ms. Ryan, Mr. Keitel and many others. “They are really living the part,” said Ms. Seacat, 72, who continues to coach in New York and Los Angeles. “I believe that the artist is a wounded healer, that they are healing wounds of their own, and when they do that truthfully they heal the audience.”

Dream work has much in common with the Method, the approach to acting championed by Lee Strasberg, who taught his interpretation of Konstantin Stanislavski’s “naturalism” for the stage.

The difference is that while the Method also seeks to draw on the unconscious, it involves actors reaching back into their life experiences and real memories, both happy and traumatic, to evoke emotion in their roles, rather than taking inspiration from their dreams.

This is a great article that you really should read.

Jenna Fischer’s Advice To Actors

I want to thank a reader who sent me this.

Jenna Fischer‘s story could be any one of ours. Struggling to get an agent, finding money for headshots and classes and trying our best to rustle up work.

This is a long read but well worth your time. She talks about how she got to where she is today, great advice and even tells you the name of her acting coach. Read more

Mickey Rourke talks by a urinal

Mickey Rourke gives some excellent advice on making it as an actor… all while standing next to a urinal. Oddly enough, it doesn’t take away from his message.

Richard Jenkins's worst advice

Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins was recently asked the question:

What’s the worst advice you’ve ever received?

“Most advice you get is not very good. That’s the truth. I was told I had to live in L.A. Then I had to live in New York. I had to do this. I had to do that. I have found that no two actors have the same story.”

Video: Frank Langella on the soul of a character

The great Frank Langella talk about how the creation of a character’s soul makes for a much more interesting character.

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