I've come to a realization just now, about exactly why I've been dragging my feet in really getting down to work on my acting career. (Besides the fact that my dizziness issue still isn't fully resolved and I still can't drive.)
I am afraid. But for me, it's not a fear of failure nor is it a fear of success. What I am afraid of is not being able to take care of myself in a healthy, loving way. Of having to deny myself in so many ways (in every way) so that the show can go on. I've been doing that all my life, denying myself, that's co-dependency. I don't want to do it anymore. I haven't wanted to do it anymore for such a long time.
It seems to me, from everything I've learned about the business so far, that it is required and demanded that you put yourself, your own needs, your own feelings, on the back-burner during production. Twelve to fourteen hour days, five or six days a week. Need more sleep? Too bad, down a Red Bull, get on set and deliver. Need to take a break and breathe? Too bad, you're needed on set right now. Got an important family occasion coming up? Too bad, it's in the middle of the production schedule, you've got to skip it. (I don't know if that last kind of demand is still true or not, but I'm haunted by the scene in a Judy Garland biographical mini-series in which her dad dies, but she's scheduled to perform on a radio show, so she never got the opportunity to say goodbye to him.) Got the flu? Throw up in a trash can, down as much medicine as you can so that you don't collapse, and get to make up so you don't look sick, because production is waiting for you and paying thousands of dollars per minute.
Got plans with your friend coming in from out of town, who you haven't seen in five years? Cancel them, you've got an audition in twenty minutes. Race through forty-five minutes of rush hour traffic to get to that audition in twenty minutes. Think you finally have a day off to relax and breathe? The phone rings and you're off and running again.
It really feels to me like you have to give up all control of your own life to really make it in this business. You live your life at their beck and call. And I hate that idea.
It also seems to me that there are a lot of huge egos in the business (both actors and production VIP) that demand respect without having earned it, or worse, demand butt kissing just because they have an ego. It seems to me that there are a lot of fake, manipulative people in the business. And I fear having to act the same in order to fit in and be accepted.
Are you a round peg? Too bad, you need to fit yourself into this square hole if you want to work.
I dread having to create another facade, making myself be much more extroverted than I actually am to get people's attention, making myself be somebody else, making myself be who they want me to be in order to get work. Which is thoroughly exhausting.
Bob Fraser has told me just being myself and being confident works, but maybe that's why this part still scares me -- I still don't know who I actually am, really, and I haven't yet learned how to let go of the co-dependent habit of making myself be who I think others want me to be, of needing to feel liked in order to feel safe.
So, subconsciously I've created the image that being an actor is this horrible nightmare, one that cannot be balanced out (for me anyways) by all the wonderful experiences that working as an actor in movies or TV can bring, all the things that attracted me to being an actor in the first place.
And so I'm torn between this deep, burning desire that I can feel in every fiber of my being to do this, to be an actor, to live the adventure... and this horrible nightmare I'm afraid of that prevents me from making any real forward progress.
How much truth is in my nightmare? I don't really know. Much of it may be based in stereotypes of the business. But stereotypes start with a grain of truth. Much of it is based on what I've learned about the business from other actors who are at a higher, more successful level than I am. Some of it I learned from movies about making movies or being in the business that I've been told by credible sources were accurate representations of what the business is like.
I'm still rolling around the idea of creating my own production company -- maybe that's the best way for me to reach my dreams without so much of the nightmare. Set up productions that follow my own values instead of the money machine's. And/or maybe I should stick to Indie films instead of trying to forge a career in mainstream Hollywood.
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