OT - How difficult is it to be an actor?

[JPhillips]

As a professional actor/director/designer let me add a few things.

Making a lot of money and being a really good actor are not necessarily corollated. To get cast in the big TV show or movie you need to have a look with acting skill sometimes coming in second. Think of the 7'3" guy in basketball. If you have the height they assume you can play, same thing with a lot of big budget Hollywood. The real test is if people work repeatedly. The people who are working in their forties and fifties are the ones with real talent. Those people, Diniro, Streep, Penn, Hepburn, I think we can agree have skills that the vast majority of us don't.

You are also limiting acting to a narrow type. To be a musical theatre actor you need to be an accomplished singer and dancer. In India a great sanskrit performer has to learn thousands of hand/face combinations perfectly. A Balinese shadow puppet performer has to inprovise in four or five languages, hold multiple puppets in each hand and play percussion with his feet. This leads to the unanswerable question of what an actor does. Defining this will answer your question to some degree.

I'm willing to concede that some very rich and famous actors don't have a lot of skill, but at the same time I think its much harder to come off real on camera than you think. I'm willing to give you and nine others here a year of training and I bet no more than two or three of you could pull off an episode of ER in a starring role. That's still better than professional athletes, but to say any intelligent person can pull it off is a stretch.

I also think the ability to sustain a career is important. Is Rick Ankeil a great pitcher because he had one good year? Keeping it up over years is the mark of a great professional in any career, acting is no different.

[Bee]

Originally posted by Celeval
It's been a long day. You responded to my bit about giving the man off the street three months to work on a script; that's what I was going off of.

Ah...I didn't even notice the 3 month thing in your original quote, I was looking at the one day for a scene comment.

I think an intelligent person would need some training in one form or another, but I think they could do a solid job with the right script and if they were cast in the right part. I think that's where acting is different than the other professions that Quiksand mentioned.

[Bee]

Originally posted by JPhillips

The real test is if people work repeatedly. The people who are working in their forties and fifties are the ones with real talent. Those people, Diniro, Streep, Penn, Hepburn,

Stallone, Schwarznegger,

[JPhillips]

Bee: And for what they do they do it well. Could you play out the roles that they do at their age? Could you do T3 in your fifties? They may not have much of a range, and I wouldn't cast them in almost any play I can think of, but for what they get paid to do, they do it damn well.

This brings me to another point. Remember the fame and the fortune acquired by these people comes through a very democratic process. The people vote that these stars are the ones they want to see through tv remotes and movie tickets. They may or may not be great actors, but they have some skills that a lot of us are willing to pay to watch. That's really what the Hollywood system comes down to. The actors are just another product that people either buy or don't.

[Celeval]

Originally posted by Bee
I think an intelligent person would need some training in one form or another, but I think they could do a solid job with the right script and if they were cast in the right part. I think that's where acting is different than the other professions that Quiksand mentioned.

Acting : Hitting a baseball ::
Doing a solid job with the right script and right part : Hitting a 65-mph changeup that you know is coming

Neither can be done cold, either can be done after a lot of practice. Neither is representative of the profession in general.

[Bee]

Originally posted by Celeval
Acting : Hitting a baseball ::
Doing a solid job with the right script and right part : Hitting a 65-mph changeup that you know is coming

Neither can be done cold, either can be done after a lot of practice. Neither is representative of the profession in general.

I don't really think that analogy is accurate. I could make a living doing a solid job with the right script and right part (as demonstrated by many actors), there's no way I could make a living only being able to hit a 65 MPH changeup.

Maybe you should compare it to blocking Warren Sapp coming up the middle when you know he's pass rushing.

[QuikSand]

Onion Studios

No, I'm not serious. Made me think of this aged-old thread. Didn't like feeling ambushed at the time, but I've made my peace with it. Still would agree that in my mind acting is fundamentally different from, say, painting.

[Solecismic]

I was asked to record some clips for an upcoming documentary. So I wrote a few bits of dialogue, then set out to record them. It was remarkable how hard it was to read/semi-memorize these bits and make them look somewhat "natural" on camera. Being able to put yourself into a context is a lot harder than it seems, and if you can't do it, it looks terrible. There are plenty of examples in mediocre movies. Unfortunately, the director recently decided to stick with footage he shot himself, so my brush with fame will have to wait until another day.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

It was remarkable how hard it was to read/semi-memorize these bits and make them look somewhat "natural" on camera. Being able to put yourself into a context is a lot harder than it seems, and if you can't do it, it looks terrible.

There's quite a few things in life that way, reading from a teleprompter is another. (That's why I've never given Obama grief about that particular thing, it's a learned skill)