Why are you an actor?
A friend asked a question on facebook; 'Actor friends, why are you an actor?'
First, I thought, well, I'm an actor because who else is going to guide you through the highs and lows of human existence? And then I thought, I'm an actor because I want to experience what life is like through other people's eyes. And then I thought, neither of those things is exactly right, though neither of them are exactly wrong, either. And THEN I thought, shit, this isn't going to fit in a facebook comment.
I'm an actor because if I can change one person's day or mind or if I can spark one meaningful, deep conversation or examination of self, then I've done my job. I've given myself an impossible task - or at least, an impossible to know if I've succeeded task. I'm an actor because I love the thrill before I step onstage in my gut, the fluttery moments as the lights go dark and the hum of the audience silences. I'm an actor because I long to step out of my own existence, long to visit other people and worlds and universes, like in books but so so so much better because I'm actually there. I'm an actor because I'm good at it. I love what acting is, and what actors can do. We take and are taken on impossible journeys and wild rides and sorrowful losses and we hold up or are held up to the mirror of human experience. Acting is deeply empathetic, and at heart I care far too much and far too deeply about people to be able to live in this world without an outlet; some way to escape being me for a little while. I'm an actor because the silent conversation between an audience and actors onstage is literally breathtaking, moments of shining suspended stillness and moments where the blood rushing in your ears is all you can hear and you forget who you are and you forget you're on a stage and you forget you're not speaking your own words, you forget that it's not all real. Those are the moments I live for. As an actor, it is akin to an ecstatic religious experience. As an audience member, those moments are when the strongest katharsis happens - you, too, have forgotten this isn't real, that you're sitting in a seat in a dark room watching an actor - in that moment, everything is real.
That's why I act. To experience those moments myself, and to share them with as many people as possible.