Skill

Acting is a craft based on a set of skills. These skills are learnable. Many fine people will tell you that they are not learnable, to them, you either have it or you don’t. That’s their experience of the world, but it isn’t true.

On the contrary the acquisition of skills is scientifically measurable, and science has shown that skill is not necessarily innate, but grown in the brain. According to Daniel Coyle “Skill is insulation that wraps neural circuits and grows according to certain signals”.

The mastery of expertise takes about ten years of deliberate, deep practice. That’s an active process of interrogation with the learning you are doing. Its about 10,000 hours.

Most people give up before they reach this mark. So give up, because if you’re going to grow that skill it’s going to be a struggle.

Then again, if you’re compelled to it and you’re not afraid of intelligent graft, you can grow the skills that you need.

I was told more than once that I was dangerous and irresponsible to suggest this to young, aspiring people. But why is it only failed actors and gutless academics that tell me that? Are they trying to save the aspirants from the pain of failure? I doubt it, they just want their own failure to be accepted as fate and not choice.

If you want to be an actor, you will be, but only if you couple desire with action, only if you are willing to learn and many do not want to learn, they just want to be up on the big screen.

Happy to spend your first ten tears learning the craft through graft? Then you’ll make it.