10 Tips for Making Bold Choices in Acting
What it means to make acting choices
(By AM Staff)
(Photo: Klaus Nielsen | Pexels)
Your character is screaming at her father who abandoned her when she was a child.
The script gives you some of the details about their relationship. It reveals that her father left the family when she was a little girl and that she remained heartbroken about it throughout the rest of her life. What the script does not tell you is why she was heartbroken.
That’s where you, as an actor, have to make a choice. Is she heartbroken because she saw her dad as her protector? Is she heartbroken because he was her best friend? Is she heartbroken because she hated her mother and depended on her father to keep her mother in check?
That is what it means to make choices in acting. It’s the choosing of certain details about your character’s life that cannot be found in the script.
The stronger the choice, the higher the stakes, and the more defined your character will be.
Remember these points when making character choices:
1. It’s your job, as an actor, to build the inner life of your character. The choices you make about your character determines that.
2. It’s ok to make the “wrong” character choice, as long as you make a STRONG character choice.
3. Strong choices help you get cast more often. Fortune favors the bold. Casting favors the bold character choice.4. Strong choices help you stand out. To a casting director, auditions can sometimes sound like repetitive clutter. Actors tend to be more successful when they make interesting choices that break through the clutter.
4. Bold choices help make the scene more enjoyable to watch. When an actor doesn’t make strong choices, the scene usually falls flat.
5. But don’t go too far. Make bold character choices. But your choices must make sense within the scene, or it won’t work.
6. Don’t make bold choices solely for the purpose of standing out. Actors should make bold choices in their audition because they’ve been inspired to do so by the material. Never make choices merely to stand out.
7. Don’t be afraid to make the less obvious choice in your audition; the choice that all the other actors are too afraid to try.
8. Always prepare more than one character choice for your auditions. Having multiple character choices allows you to use your best choice first, while being fully prepared for redirects by the casting director.
9. Always define your character’s objective as a burning desire to achieve a particular end.
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