MAKING YOUR ACTING CAREER A REALITY by Neil Schell     05-15-07 I just love quoting Billy Bob Thornton when he said, "The hardest thing about acting is not acting." I saw him say this on one of those biography programs on T.V. It's an interesting statement. And one I have found to be very true. If not acting is the hardest thing about acting, then it would make sense that you should just be acting as much as you can. That way you make your acting career not so hard. How can one do this? By working on your acting everyday. If you want a full time acting career, obviously that kind of a career means you will be acting everyday. It will become your job. Or, if you look back at my first newsletter in this series, it is your job now. So it only makes sense that if you start putting acting into your schedule everyday, you are initiating the very thing you want. And not only that, you eliminate some of that "hard" stuff that Billy Bob is talking about - the "not acting" stuff - because you are now acting. How does one do this? You just make the time everyday and work on your acting. If you have been taking my workshops as of late, you know exactly what you can do on your own to improve your acting on a daily basis. If you haven't, just pick up a scene or a monologue and start practicing, speaking out loud, every day. Don't just read a scene, or a monologue, or a play, choose a character and verbalize their lines out loud. When anyone puts something new into their busy lives that they haven't been doing on a regular basis, a very interesting phenomenon occurs. Some of those things that you have been doing with your 24-hour day are going to be shortened or even eliminated. You are actively making acting a reality in your day-to-day life. You are making a conscious choice to act. Why? Because the hardest thing about acting is not acting. So you act. Everyday. Let's look at it this way. You KNOW you want to act, to be an actor. Once you know that (or finally admit it), it never leaves you. That means it's a stable thing in your life, even though at this stage it could just be a dream, or an idea or a "feeling." So by working on your acting everyday you are now putting in to your schedule a very stable and strong daily activity toward what you know to be true for you and your life. When you put something stable into your life, some of the confusing things disappear. That's a good thing. But don't follow the confusions. Don't buy into them. Just keep with what you know is a stable thing in your life - knowing that you are an actor and that you therefore are going to act everyday to ease the pain of not acting. Confusions that rear their heads once you start putting in your new daily schedule of acting come in many forms. Some examples are statements from others like, "Acting is such a selfish activity." Or, "How can you just drop out of the bowling league?" Or, "I want to spend more time with you again." Or, or, or…. Other examples could be you suddenly get a bigger and better job offer that has absolutely nothing to do with acting and it requires even more of your time and you sit there looking at this confusion while someone waves money in front of your face. Maybe these kinds of situations have already come up for you when you starting to put more acting into your life and maybe you veered off the path. If so, you really know what Billy Bob is talking about when he said, "The hardest thing about acting is not acting." So to rid yourself o the pain of not acting, start acting everyday. Right now. Right this minute, pick up a scene you have lying around your home and start reading one of the characters line out loud. Right now. You'll feel the pain dissipate immediately. Until the next newsletter… Neil PS Feel 'free' to write to me at  anytime. I will answer. PROFESSIONALS HAVE COACHES, AMATEURS DON'T