Learning to Act: acting skills are life skills

Don't work on your "acting skills" if you want to expand your talent.  Work on life skills, namely listening and responding in a more authentic, less polite, less accommodating way.  It’s pretty tough to be authentic as an actor without being authentic as a person.  Our cultural standards for authenticity (with Politics on the far right end of the scale and Art on the far left end) have sunk so low, that we may have lost sight of them all together.   

There is no Standard of Truth in politics of course, which is why it’s called “politics” in the first place. Abraham Lincoln is probably still the touchstone against which all others are measured, but he may actually have been a lying bastard who’s been seen through rosier and rosier colored glasses as the years have gone by.  (Don’t forget he only freed the slaves in the Confederacy at first.) Look at the “legacy” of Ronald Reagan.  That clueless asshole was a haircut in a suit, and he’s now being “remembered” as one of our greatest presidents. 

On the Art, Truth, and Beauty end of the scale there are plenty of artists who have achieved near perfection in their work, and who serve as touchstones for us all.  For actors, look at Sean Penn’s performance in “Milk”.  Watch Faye Dunaway in “Chinatown”, or Geraldine Page in “A Trip to Bountiful”. Look at Jackson Pollack’s “Number 8” if you want a touchstone for passion and freedom of expression with paint.   

Now if what you really want is to be a celebrity (who maybe works as an actor), that's fine, go for it, but don't pretend to yourself that you’re striving for authenticity by substituting networking and ass kissing for an education in the greater understanding of the human mind, heart, and soul. That particular kind of self-deception is everywhere, and it kills your ability to discover honest behavior whether you notice you’re doing it or not.  You’re screwed either way. If you know you’re doing it you’re neglecting your own care and feeding, and if you dont--if kissing the ass has become second nature--you’re sticking pins in the voodoo doll of your own authentic self without knowing it. 

To be authentic as an artist or a person, one must accept fear, discomfort, confusion, loss of control etc.  All the things we instinctively avoid or try to minimize in our daily lives as “regular” folk.  Artists are not regular folk.  Actors certainly are not, not the good ones, not the ones who can make us see and understand something about ourselves that was previously hidden from view.  The very nature of art and authenticity are inextricably linked, and when they’re forced apart, we get commerce which poses as art, or at best, commerce as entertainment.   

Reread “The Emporer’s New Clothes” if you really want to set yourself a useful course of study as an actor.  It’s a great touchstone for how and where to begin the journey.