You Are Enough

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

"I think the actor who usually gets the part will be someone who walks in and does it as if they were walking on the set, somebody said "Action" and they did it. Making it their own and making it real...A great deal of the reason why one person will continually get a job and someone else won't is very often not how talented someone is, but that they grasp what the director and producer are doing that day, which is trying to hire several people for specific roles, and not that they're waiting for someone to come in and blow them away...lots of times your part doesn't call for you to come in and blow somebody away. They want somebody natural, somebody who has good chemistry with the rest of the cast and somebody who makes it real."

-- Cathy Henderson, Casting Director, quoted in Acting Is Everything by Judy Kerr

So, the quote above hit home for me, because I think I still have an issue with trying to "act". I haven't quite learned how to make it completely real through my choices. There's still a strong habit of "This is how I should be feeling when I say this line. This is how I should sound and act because this is how I should be feeling." I still need to work on making choices, for better or for worse. I will be very glad when I've picked out my digital video camera and can start working with it. The quote reminds me of what I am striving for, where I need to take my skills as an actor.

~Trust yourself. You are enough.~ Heard from numerous actors on Inside The Actors Studio, and from all of my teachers at The Acting Corps.

In the meantime, my 8x10s arrived, and they look awful. They're too unprofessional for me to use. Because I lost my photo editing software when my computer crashed last November, I wasn't able to format my photos correctly. So the final 8x10s came out cropped WAAAAAAY too close (literally a quarter of an inch from the top of my head and the bottom of my chin), plus I tried to add my name to the photo using the cheapy paint program that comes with Windows, and it looks like a cheap sticker in the bottom corner of the photo. Somehow, the cropping et al didn't look so bad in the printing preview on Shutterfly, so I went ahead and order the pics. Luckily I'm only out $20. (Five 8x10 photos--not lithos--at $4 each.) I decided to go with the small number because it's more affordable that way, and I can put the majority of my gift $$ towards the video camera. But hopefully sometime this week, I can drive to my sister's house in Riverside and use her roommate's Adobe Photoshop to make my headshots more presentable, and order a new batch. I guess I should have done that the first time around. Blah.

Anyhow, I also wanted to write about a couple of notable acting moments from some recent episodes of my favorite TV shows. And its all about the leading men this week. WARNING: Episode Spoilers Alert (if you haven't seen these episodes yet.)

Medium: "The Woman Behind the Wheel" (or something like that) The episode where Allison wakes up as someone else in her body. Jake Webber was phenomenal through-out the episode, but the end when he finally realizes Allison is really back again, as unexpectedly as she left, all his pent up emotions break loose but he still struggles to hold them in. Outwardly, the reaction is minimal, but inwardly it is HUGE. A very powerful, touching moment because of it's subtlety, and the actor's complete honesty in the moment.

Grey's Anatomy: "Drowning On Dry Land" -- Part 2 of the three episode Ferry Boat disaster. Patrick Dempsey took my breath away in this one as his worry for Meredith grows while he searches for her at the disaster site, and then when the little girl points to the water, his reaction as he realizes she's fallen in--Wow! Again, very subtle outward reaction, but inwardly it's a tornado. And the power of that moment comes again from the actor's complete honesty in his reaction. And that's just the beginning of the episode!

Bravo, gentlemen! Very nicely done!

And, actually, everyone in the Grey's episode was awesomely honest with their reactions, through-out the entire episode. And on Medium, I was very impressed with Patricia Arquette as well, for keeping her total honesty even as a completely different character. Which as I write that sounds very patronizing, because isn't that what we as actors are supposed to be able to do, react honestly as different characters? And really the only difference between her as Allison and her as the other woman was her quality of her voice. But perhaps I was impressed with this is because I haven't been impressed with Arquette before, despite the fact that she won an Emmy last year, despite the fact that she is so incredibly emotionally honest in every episode. I guess I'm not entirely convinced that's she reacting off the other actors. I think she's very good at creating the honest emotional responsonses that are expected for the circumstances, what one "should" feel, how one "should" act. Just my thoughts and musings based on what I can see. I could be wrong.

I've also recently been "introduced" to Chris Cooper by my Mom's best friend (the friend we visited in Cambria a couple of weekends ago). I'd seen him in a couple of movies, and now that he's been brought to my attention via the movie Seabiscuit, I've started to admire his work. He's a very un-self-concisous actor, focused outwardly on the other actors, on his objective, 100%. He does not appear to be self-aware at all, worried about how his performance "should" look, if he's saying a line the "right" way.

"...They want somebody natural...somebody who makes it real."