WHAT I HATE ABOUT ACTING

Nothing is more powerful

Than an actor who has admitted what they truly want

And the easiest way to do that

Is by admitting what you hate

Here are three things I hated about acting

For a long, long time

I hated acting when it felt meaningless

I hated acting when I felt poor

And I hated acting when I felt stuck from releasing my self expression when the stakes were highest

So what did I really want as an actor?

I wanted acting to feel meaningful, wealthy and free flowing

Clear

So let’s help professional actors

Build meaningful, wealthy & free flowing careers

There are three core pillars we want to focus on

ONE: ALIGNED YOU

The aligned version of you

Your externals aligned with your internals

Nothing more exhausting than trying to build a career and make decisions from a place of SHOULD

The industry says:

“Figure out who you should be, then become that”

Yuck

Lets do something else instead

Notice what makes your body feel alive and follow that, without knowing where it will take you

(What an honest adventure)

I remember a wonderful mentor of mine telling me

“Mike, the easiest energy, is yours”

So let’s get aligned

Three key areas

A) Energy - Are you working with your energy, or against it? Are you working with your personality? With your strengths? And are you aligned with the season that you’re actually in, rather than pretending you’re somewhere other than where you are?

B) Confidence - Not the pop psych version (whispering affirmations in the mirror). “Confidence” comes from the Latin word “confidere” which translates to “to trust oneself fully”. Yum. Two key areas of trust we want to examine here. Performance trust (skills & evidence) & Self confidence (Accepting & believing). And remember, nothings kills confidence faster than expectations.

C) Rules - Right now there are a whole bunch of imaginary rules you’re playing by as an actor. Some might work for you, some might not. One of my favourite things to do with professional artists, is to get curious about the rules that they are unconsciously playing by which don’t actually work for them or their body, helping them pick up a brick, and then throwing it at the fuckin thing. Then replacing it with better ones - ones which work for who they are and how they truly want to do things.

TWO: SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS

There are systems that work (terrible idea)

There are systems that work for you (better idea)

There are systems that work for you for now (best idea)

If your systems and process for your craft feel heavy, pushy, or stuck

They aren't sustainable

And what we want

Are sustainable systems

So you can have fun and be useful as an artist for decades to come

So lets look at three key areas

A) Skills - Are you being a good little actor and doing the work you should? Or are you making intelligent adaptive progress by using what works for you for now? The goal is not pushy pretty perfect work. The goal is free flowing self expression. So what do we need to do, or not do, in order to get there?

B) Auditions - Why the fuck would you keep auditioning if you hate it so much? Let’s look at all the little details that make auditioning exhausting, and go throw them in the bin. An actor who loves the process of auditioning will keep going. I was helping one of Australia’s most successful actors with a call back he had with an Oscar winning director the next day. He was learning his lines for the first time as he was getting paid to go for the call back. “Wait, you didn’t learn your lines for the first round of auditions?” I asked him. “Mike, why would I ever learn lines if I wasn’t getting paid to do that, I can’t bear learning lines”. I have never learned lines if I wasn’t getting paid to since. Talk about throwing a brick!

C) Joyful Jobs - Why the hell do all that work, make all the sacrifices for so many years, to then not enjoy the job itself? We want to love the work, find our people on set, piss ourselves laughing and find wonderful play in making art together. For so many years, being on set felt like being constipated on the toilet. Then one day, I was shooting a three hander scene in New Zealand with Himesh Patel & Eve Hewson. We couldn’t get through a single take without the sheep bleeding in the background. No one had dry eyes for the entire filming of that scene. But when the goal shifts from extrinsic (oscars, red carpets) to intrinsic (play) we start to fly as artists. And an artist who’s having fun playing, is a bloody dangerous artist.

THREE: ENERGISING RELATIONSHIPS

Who are we spending our days with on this journey?

We are all going to die in the decades to come

So may as well do this thing with people our bodies resonate with

Three key groups of people we want to take a look at here:

A) Colleagues - the readers, studios, fellow actors we surround ourselves with. Why would you keep showing up to tape if you don’t like who youre doing it with or how you’re doing it. Motion in the ocean, baby! Let’s find people we love playing with.

B) Growth - The mentors, coaches, teachers, examples we are looking toward for help & guidance. I see the majority of actors listening to advice they hate from people their body feels heavy around. A crucial part of our career is growth, and whose advice we take is drastically important when it comes to sustainability. Why keep going if you keep pushing in a direction that doesn’t work for you, just because some teacher who’s never done the kind of work you want to be doing told you “If you wanna be an actor, you have to suffer”.

C) Gatekeepers - Yup. Agents & casting directors get these labels thrown on to them. Believe me, no one wants you to win more than casting directors and agents. Let’s put these two relationships under the microscope and start working WITH our colleagues, not FOR them. We are all on the same side, trying to tell meaningful stories to help society breathe a little easier when the sun goes down.

There you go!

Three core pillars | Nine key areas

My advice?

Get three coloured pens

Red, Orange and Green

Look at those nine areas and mark each one with the colour that you feels accurate to where it’s at:

Green - Healthy & expansive

Orange - Isn’t really moving anywhere

Red - Exhausting & heavy

Then out of the ones you mark with a Red pen

Ask yourself

Which one is most important for me to work on over the next 6 weeks? To help me build a meaningful, wealthy & free flowing career?

(PS - email me that area and ill try make my next article on solving that one for you!)

God I love actors

And love seeing them do meaningful work

I love seeing them wealthy

And I love seeing their free flowing self expression

Alright

If this has been helpful & you’d like some help implementing the plan to transform your career, either email me back or just find me on insta (@actorsblueprint) and DM me with the word “BLUE”

Love

Sheasby