Once upon a time, I was an aspiring actress. That is a lie, but I still pretended like I won an Oscar when I was going to acting school.
It all started when I watched Kingsman. That movie changed my life because the second it finished I decided I wanted to be an actress. Like, I really wanted to become an actress.
I would channel Jake Gyllenhaal (who is my all-time favourite actor) and do everything that was required of me during classes, just so I could become a star one day. Hey, I was dreaming big.Â
I learned a lot during those two years and I want to share these lessons with you. Honestly, I truly believe that going to an acting school or doing improvisation (which is what we did) can change your life.
I’ve learnt so much that I still use today.
Here are 3 lessons acting school taught me:
- Trusting your partner is everything.
Every week we would do exercises where we would walk around the room with our eyes closed, or we would stare at each other’s eyes for 30 minutes straight. The point was to trust your partner when it came to acting, so we practised these things to later perform better.
- Your mind is an idea-creating machine.
The teacher would put us in pairs and give us a topic, but everything else depended on us. We had to come up with names, the dialogue and how we will act out the scene. It was fun but also challenging at the start.
I was not sure I could come up with a great idea to create a scene around, but the more I practised, the easier it got. You see, our minds are idea-creating machines and when we give them a task they will provide us with a solution.Â
- Acting is a really difficult job.Â
I vividly remember one of the last scenes I had to act out, that scared me for a while. I and this much older man were supposed to be married, and he had to act as if he had cancer. Naturally, I had to be gentle and caring with him.
Touching someone I didn’t know that well, and being affectionate (like a wife would be) towards a stranger was extremely hard. I broke down during the scene and cried my heart out.
Acting expects from you absolute dedication and complete vulnerability. I was not prepared to give it that.
As someone who suffers from social anxiety, this was the real test. Am I willing to go through this mental obstacle to achieve something that mattered to me?
It wasn’t easy but I persevered and won in the end. The reason why I eventually quit was that I just didn’t feel like I was growing anymore. We kept doing the same thing over and over and over again for a year and a half.Â
The time had come for me to move on, plus, I didn’t want to be an actress anymore.Â
But I still took with me those three lessons and they, as said before, changed my life for the better. I am much more confident now, and I have an easier time speaking in front of people.
Tanja
