Get Sixty Seconds Out of Every Minute
Sean Astin's There and Back Again to be precise. Not because I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan--I'm not (some of the movies were pretty good and I like the hobbit village of curly haired people). But because I picked it up in the store and realized he was writing about his entire acting career, and it's always cool to get inside another actor's head about things like auditioning and insecurity. So I bought a copy. And I've found some paragraphs that ring true that I want to remember.
I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the book so there will be further posts about this, but for now...
"Acting is hard. Not hard in the way that firefighting or law enforcement is hard. But it is hard. Even on the best of days it's emotionally exhausting. There's a stunning openness to it, a vulnerability that comes with stripping your soul bare in front of a group of strangers..."
"In so many ways, acting is an intensely weird, narcissistic endeavor. It requires immense self-involvement, the belief that people want to watch you perform, play. It's like athletics without the competition. And as in sports, there is an assumption, a pact between performer and spectator, that the actor not only will give his best, but also, in most cases, will look his best. it seems part of the contract. While it sounds silly and shallow to suggest that most folks don't go to the movies to watch unattractive people, it's also probably true."
I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the book so there will be further posts about this, but for now...
"Acting is hard. Not hard in the way that firefighting or law enforcement is hard. But it is hard. Even on the best of days it's emotionally exhausting. There's a stunning openness to it, a vulnerability that comes with stripping your soul bare in front of a group of strangers..."
"In so many ways, acting is an intensely weird, narcissistic endeavor. It requires immense self-involvement, the belief that people want to watch you perform, play. It's like athletics without the competition. And as in sports, there is an assumption, a pact between performer and spectator, that the actor not only will give his best, but also, in most cases, will look his best. it seems part of the contract. While it sounds silly and shallow to suggest that most folks don't go to the movies to watch unattractive people, it's also probably true."