Can you learn to be a good actor, or are you just born with it?
You can both learn to be a good actor and you can be born with it. You can be born with abilities that give you a head start in acting training. You can also use training to improve the abilities you have.
We’ll go over the details below by addressing your talent and learned skills separately.
You Were Born With Talent
First of all, what does that even mean?
Are you talented because you can easily pretend to feel a variety of emotions? Are you talented because you can make unique, interesting choices? Or maybe you can memorize lines very quickly?
For the sake of this conversation, let’s just assume talent is an ability to pretend really well. You can easily pretend that you’re in various situations, maybe hanging off a boat, about to die, falling in love, you get the idea.
Wouldn’t training make you even better?
For a second, let’s not think about acting. Instead, let’s think about track and field. Someone who has the genetic gifts to be born with a body that’s ideal for sprinting doesn’t necessarily get a gold medal at the Olympics. There’s not a single Olympic sprinter, who’s born with a natural ability that didn’t train tirelessly to refine their skill. From that perspective, we can think of natural ability as giving you a head start.
You Learn Your Acting Skills
You might not necessarily have the best natural abilities or instincts, but can you learn? The answer to that is sort of, and maybe and it depends on your motivation.
Will Smith has been quoted as saying he wasn’t the best actor when he started, but he was the hardest working. So, what does that actually mean? To be hardworking?
Peter O’Toole was interviewed on the Late Late Show. They were discussing preparation, and Charlie Rose made an off-hand remark about just learning the lines.
What came out of that slight remark, was a fascinating exploration of the hard work actors have to do. The deep and intense study! You can see the interview here:
So, while studying might not make you the best actor in the room, it can absolutely make you a good actor. Good enough to book the part, and isn’t that what we’re after?
Let’s take this concept of studying and break it down in an example.
Pretend you are in a scene where you are standing out on a ledge debating whether or not to jump. A naturally gifted actor might just be able to imagine and emotionally put themselves in that situation, but we would have to work at it.
First, you’d start by studying and learning your lines, but just being able to say your lines is not enough. Hours need to be spent memorizing everyone else’s lines, researching depression, maybe see a therapist, seeing if you can access that emotional state. You could practice in locations where you feel uncomfortable and vulnerable, going up to high places and looking down, and those are just some ideas. You would also need to create a backstory, understand the character’s motivations and create a history for you and everyone else in the scene.
These are just some examples of what we mean when we talk about hard work.
The person with the natural ability might not have to do all these things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will audition or perform better than you.
All of this being said, there’s a question that we haven’t asked yet, and it is arguably more important than the one we’ve been discussing so far.
What about interest and motivation?
How do interest and motivation affect your ability?
I have this saying; You’re only really good at the things you enjoy.
If you enjoy something, you’ll spend a ton of time on it. A naturally gifted actor who is lazy might not become successful. Whereas an actor with very little ability but a great deal of motivation to work hard, read scripts and train could become very successful.
Now let me put the mirror on myself for a moment.
I’m a middle of the road actor. I have some decent abilities, but I was by no means ready for film and television until after years of training. Even with that training, I find my number one obstacle is gaining the motivation to read through scripts. I know it’s important to not just read the script, but understand it, think about it and explore it. Yet quite often, I find this to be a struggle, and rather than reading the script, I might just scan it or just read the scenes before and after the one I’m in.
I was once on set for a very popular TV show. One of the other actors I was doing a scene with approached me because they wanted to talk about the scene and rehearse. They sat down and asked me what backstory I had developed and why our scene was important?
I’m embarrassed to say that I had no idea how to answer their questions. On that day, they were the better actor, no matter what their abilities, skills, or experiences had been. They had worked harder and had shown up more prepared.
So dear actor, the moral of the story is. Hard work can beat talent, so get ready to start working.
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