The Myth of the Instinctive Actor
Many times in my career have I worked with or taught those actors that consider themselves to be instinctive actors. They are a fascinating, but I wish I could say it was positive, because what is positive is their self-delusion. There are very few things in life that are instinctive and the job of the professional actor is not an instinctive one. Well, that’s not entirely true. The actor who works instinctively often brings a certain natural intuitive authenticity to their work. That’s acceptable because the living truthfully part of acting is something that we all do instinctively. The problem comes when the actor believes that they can deal with a script instinctively. They convince themselves that by the number of years they’ve spent performing, they’ve developed instinctive skills. As if a person with sufficient time in the hospital would instinctively know how to treat someone complaining of pain in their chest. Of course no one would dare do that in the world of medicine. But in the world of the arts that’s where the old lie about talent comes back… the myth that some people just instinctively have the talents of the actor. Bull. There are no instinctive skills, we learn them all.
We behave authentically by nature, that’s our instinct. The problem is that when faced with the demands of the stage or camera, very few of us are at ease enough to be instinctive. We might just convince ourselves that some people through experience become comfortable in front of others, or on camera, but we cannot convince ourselves that any actor finds dealing with a script an instinctive process. We’re not born with the script in our hands and most of us read scripts like they’re storybooks and that skill is not useful to an actor, as a script must be gleaned for the actable parts of it. This is by no means an instinctive process. Script must be understood in ways that need skills and knowledge. These must be learned, and then they may later become intuitive, rather than instinctive. Script work is hard and the main reason why so many games and exercises exist which divert the actor’s attention from the real job of the actor, to bring the script to life for an audience. This is not an instinctive thing, it cannot be, because we always need to dig deeper than the words suggest, or are human beings as simple as the words they use? By no means.
The instinctive actor is a myth, it is related to the talented actor, those gifted by the heavens. They have a false sense of security in skills they do not possess. Their hit and miss approach has garnered some positive feedback, so they presume it works. But it’s guess work, it’s busking, it’s animating something without actually connecting to it.
This actor whines and moans and bitches about how hard acting is, whilst secretly knowing that they have faked pretty much everything they’ve ever done. They don’t believe in technique because it would challenge their ‘successful’ approach and when they come up against resistance, they complain, because instinctive actors prefer not to break a sweat. They are scared of learning an approach that might help them because they’re afraid it might steal the little luck they’ve had and expose their deficiencies. I understand this. But you can still change, you can still give up this useless myth and train hard to become the best, most authentic actor you can be.
You can learn, you can build on whatever good instincts you have. But you have to be willing to do that. Most, I’m afraid, are not.