The time I tried acting
I’ve always had a dream, a dream of being an actor. As a kid and as I grew I watched so many movies, from the ’50s to the 2000s. I absolutely loved movies of all kinds and would go to IMDB and review every single one I watched. I had big dreams of being a great actor though I hadn’t actually done any acting and knew getting into the business is very difficult. One day I googled acting lessons and came across a studio, Pinewood Studios, a famous studio in England that had helped film some of the James Bond movies and Harry Potter movies too. It’s been about 4 years since I went to these classes so I’ll tell you everything I remember. It took about two hours to get to the studio from where I lived and I remember looking at the place in awe, this was a huge studio, it had famous actors come and film here. I walked in and looked around, I thought where do I actually go?
I found a few people hanging around and asked “Are you here for the acting lessons?” or something along those lines and they were. We waited until our teacher a blonde woman in her 30’s welcomed us and let us in, we walked up some stairs to the room where our acting lessons would take place. The lessons were once a week and for 3 hours long and it lasted 5 weeks. One lesson we did was body language and posture as this is important in acting and we did an exercise where we copied each other's posture. When people copied my posture they complained of it being uncomfortable, damn my posture was that bad I guess? One lesson we got given the task of a monologue and I was really nervous it took me ages to find one and when I did, on the day I felt like it was a bad one. I did it and felt pretty good about it though.
Level 1 was pretty basic stuff for new actors and once I did that I did level 2. Also 3 hours for 5 weeks. In Level 2 we ended up finishing it off by filming an actual scene, I wore a nice shirt and got a haircut and just made an effort for this scene as I was going to get filmed, I met my teacher and she said “You clean up well” Not sure if that meant I looked scruffy or just that I looked even more classy then she’s ever seen me? I practiced my lines quite a bit but still was nervous as I’ve never filmed a scene before and when it came time we walked into the room with a table and lights and a big camera pointed at us. We actually ended up doing it in one take and me and my scene partner were so happy.
I ended up watching the scene which was sent to me and my heart sank, I sucked really bad. I had no emotion in my voice and it felt flat and awkward. My family even said maybe acting isn’t for you after watching it. I’m not a terribly emotional person and I feel for an actor that you have to be or at least be more emotional than me. I am quite a calm stoic guy at times though of course, I get angry and sad like anyone else but I just thought that acting isn’t my path. Did I really want to put money, time, and effort into it? No, I did not. I tried it and I’m glad I did but acting isn’t for me and not something I’d pursue again. I do think it’s good to try things and at least I know now that acting isn’t something I want to do rather than forever wonder about it. I have other things I want to try now like writing.
