Human beings are endlessly interesting and working with actors means you get a lot of chances to put them in different situations. Actors may often come over as supremely confident and in control but truth be told they are just like the rest of us, unsure of themselves at times, vulnerable and prone to self-doubt. I see all this as healthy as that’s the human condition. These days we use the expression imposter syndrome to cover that feeling we have that we don’t know what we’re talking about and one day soon this is all going to be found out.
I like that we question ourselves because we’re often on a tightrope in life, where we don’t know the outcome and fear what will happen. We have to learn to front it out, and sometimes fake it till we make it and grasp the courage to go for it. I was talking to a mum outside the school the other day. She had promised to go into class and talk about her country of origin, Africa. Boy was she nervous about it. This is a lady who the week before had addressed a conference of lecturers. I told her it would be no problem because she had a magical ingredient – she was talking about how chocolate was made and giving them all hot chocolate. But it didn’t stop her irrational fear of – what happens if it all goes wrong? We are all capable of giving ourselves the horrors.
We can see this in the way people present themselves. Some are very humble and focus on what they do. It’s NOT about them. Others can be in your face telling you how great they are, what they can do and what they’ve got. It’s ALL about them.
As a general rule, I think people who tell you how great they are aren’t. Their energy is all going into trying to impress you whereas the people who just focus on doing the job don’t have any time to impress they are too busy focusing on what’s important. I like a bit of humility.
How’s he going to link this to performing? I think the more opportunity young people get to cross that line, go for it and be at ease with themselves in front of other people by playing a character or feeling then the better it is for them as people. Adulthood might be that bit easier. Put simply they learn to be brave and cope with what’s in front of them – and we could all do with a bit of that.
