Acting Is My Life

In my over fifty years of teaching acting, I have heard this statement a lot. I don't think anyone who uttered it in my presence ever became a professional actor or actress. It is usually young females who say this,but of course they have no idea what professinal acting is really like. For a real professional actor, acting is their life. They give up nearly everything in order to concentrate on acting. They forgo personal realationships, material possessions that most of us consider necessities, and they live in abject poverty while trying to break into the profession. When acting is their life, nothing else matters and they get on with it. Most people who eventually become professional actors do not have to ask what to do next. They just keep acting and looking for acting opportunties until they get an agent and learn how to advance in the business. They invest their lives in the process of becoming actors. It is a long and difficult road to travel. For some of us lucky few for whom acting is our lives, the path has not been difficult. We just kept acting until we stumbled upon the first professional employment and kept acting all our lives in whatever situations, amateur, semi-professinal or professional that we could participate in. That made acting our lives.