You are SO Much More Than an Actor

You’re laser-focused on getting your acting career off the ground: kudos to you and your hard work!

However, remaining singly focused on acting can easily lead to one or more of the following issues:

1. If you’re not seeing a pay-off, you’ll go slightly crazy with frustration.

2. You could alienate your friends and/or family by never being available to them.

3. You’ll get a little bored by the repetition and forget why you wanted to do this in the first place.

Your craft is important. Being in class, studying, working whenever you can… all of these things will help lead to your success. But if that’s ALL you do, (besides your less-exciting day job,) it’s too easy to become stagnate and resentful.

You are a human being with other interests and desires. You have friends and family who bring out different sides of you and make you appreciate different things about your life. So don’t forget to experience all of that! Take a trip, join a softball team, visit your parents, read a novel, learn a language, write that screenplay… do whatever makes you feel good.

The beauty of doing activities outside of acting is that they will often serve to remind you why you love your chosen career path. And being with people who don’t work in the industry will not only keep you grounded, but will also serve as excellent character studies. On top of these benefits, your life experiences will also make you a more well-rounded actor: you’ll be able to pull emotions and memories from your real life and bring them to your characters.

So take a second and think about this:

“If I weren’t acting, I would be doing _________________.”

Whatever it is (binge-watching THE WEST WING, traveling to South America, learning Italian, photographing your loved ones, etc.) GO AND DO IT. If it’s something that requires research before action, then start your information dive NOW. There’s no need to take a break from acting while you do this, so just know that you’re not derailing your momentum. Just take a moment and prioritize something else, for a change.

You’ll be delighted with the results.