Acting Your Hidden Talent

There is a secret to drastically enhancing your acting success. This secret is a hidden talent that you have in your possession. It’s your own behavior, behavior that you don’t want people to see.

Your most potent character elements are often the things you do naturally and off guard. And because these real, personal behaviors can be embarrassing you avoid showing them in public. But these are the ingredients that make a character fly off the page.

Real behavior is an essential ingredient that can make a character come alive. Behavior can be conscious or unconscious, overt or covert, voluntary or involuntary. You’ll need to learn to focus your attention on your unconscious or instinctive and often involuntary actions and reactions. Reactions like: your look of disgust at someone’s appearance, your convulsion to a slimy bug, the stunned stare when your lines go up.

Hidden cameras reveal how people really feel or behave during unguarded moments. These exposed behaviors are so personal they resonate with anyone who’s watching. Actors, who allow their unrestrained behaviors and feelings to be their character’s behavior, arouse behaviors and feelings in the audience. These actors are rightly called talented.

What is talent? Talent once meant inclination, disposition, will and/or desire. Today’s dictionaries define it as; something one does well, a natural ability. There is nothing more natural than your natural inclination, your unrestricted temperament, which flows from you without effort and without regard for its acceptability.

Do you get frustrated easily? Make sure your characters do too. Do you do a little dance when you’re excited? Let your characters dance. Are you too emotional? Emotional characters impact an audience.

Once, while rehearsing a play, one particular actor known for being annoying everywhere but in the scene protested that the rehearsal was slow and “taking the life out of me.” The director told the actor to run the scene again, right away. The actor did the scene again but this time while caught up in his intense annoyance the character and the scene came to life.

Any behavior you have, like these above, is your natural inclination. You don’t have to think about doing whatever it is you just do it. This is your disposition or really, your pre-disposition, the pre-existing reaction that you automatically default to in given circumstances. If these behaviors embarrass you, then embarrass yourself.

Good actors, ones who can reveal their spontaneous personal behaviors know they should only employ them when they are acting. But sometimes, these behaviors will unfortunately spill over into to their daily life. This, however, is not a reason to omit these behaviors from your characters. Examples would include irrational anger, uncalled for grief.

The undeniable truth about your instinctive actions and reactions is the intention behind them. You can feel them. They are palpable. The meaning is crystal clear. This is how great actors lift the words off the page and make audiences cheer.

How can you become one of these actors? Admit your emotional or behavioral qualities that well up in you. Especially those that you know affect others. Then blend these elements into the character you are working on. If you have allowed your personal traits to come through, the audience will be affected.

Stop being anonymous. Stop saying the lines with indicated emotion. Do something revealing or unique. There is nothing more unique than your instinctive behavior. These actions and reactions are the missing ingredients in creating a riveting character. Your guarded qualities will make the material come alive and impress any audience.

Get known – get successful.