Glasgow Acting Coach on… How to Avoid Faking It

Okay okay you say, since you hate faking and love truthful acting so much, how the hell do I avoid faking it?

Actually, it’s quite simple, it’s a mental shift in the actor’s perspective that helps us to see things clearly. I was working with an actor today and it started to become very clear to me the different between states and action. When someone is angry, they are in a state of anger which is projected by the things that they do. Their emotional state is caused and maintained by their actions (and reactions to whatever made them angry in the first place). We know they are angry by the things that they do, the actions that they take, the tactics they use, and again – the things that they do.

When an actor is learning to act, they often get stuck in the trap of trying to reproduce emotional states. It is the mistake of playing the result rather than stimulating the truth through truthful action. Of course, any good director or acting coach knows this, yet still many insist on the production of a result or state rather than helping the actor to find it themselves. Over the years, this creates a self-confidence crisis in actors who were consistently having to fake emotional states in order to please their teachers and directors.

The key to avoiding faking it, is to remember that you canNOT will yourself into a state. I know the NLP voodooists would claim that you can, but to my mind, you can only turn the temperature up or down on a state, you cannot conjur one at whim. We’re not talking about emotional truth, emotional truth already exists without you seeking it. Acting is action and not emotion. Emotion is crazy state, uncontrollable and wild. If your character is angry, sad, horny or whatever, you have to look at what horny, sad and angry people DO.

This is the key to avoiding faking it. Find a coach that will help you learn this on a 1-2-1 basis. It takes someone else, someone you can trust to tell you when you’re faking it.