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Tips for Beginners Who Are SERIOUS about Acting

Arrive Early - there is no reward other than gaining a good habit.  This good habit however will be appreciated by all teachers, directors, producers, choreographers, and musical directors that you ever meet.  Learn it early in your career.  Nothing demonstrates your lack of respect for these people like being late.

Always Be Prepared – Come prepared, bring your script, bring pen/pencil and note pad, the excuses you make always sound like poor excuses, even if they are genuine reasons.  Be prepared.

It’s not a DREAM- It’s not a dream you have to become an actor, you’re beyond dreams now. Dreams are intangible and cannot be touched, therefore they cannot be achieved.  So, stop thinking of it as a dream, and see it as your target, your goal in the near future.  Then work out the steps to get there and start taking them.  Many small baby steps make one big giant step.

It’s Easier to Give Up than get Better – this is highly challenging environment and profession and at times, you may be challenged to the point of wanting to give up.  Those who give up can never succeed.  Those who refuse to give up can defeat the odds. Those who give up, will harp on in life about how they could have been an actor.  When someone gives up on becoming an actor after the first few rejections, they didn’t want it.  If you don’t get into drama school on your first attempt, and you decide to go off and do something safe, well, again, you didn’t want it.

Learn to Listen To Criticism: No one and I mean NO ONE wants to hear criticism.  We just want to hear how good we were, of course.  HOWEVER, the only way to progress is to listen very carefully to the feedback and criticism and respond to it positively by putting it into action.  If someone says that you need to organize yourself better, that’s what you need to do. If you trust the people offering criticism, then trust the criticism, they only have one goal, to maximize your chance of improving. Don’t you want that too?

Casting Isn’t Fair- Whether you like it or not, you may never play a lead role in your life, you may also never own a Ferrari, date a rockstar or sleep with a supermodel.  Life ain’t fair, get over it and get on with making the most of the opportunities that you do get, rather than dwelling on what you don’t.
Work out what’s in your control  – The Stoical philosopher Epictetus teaches to seek out what is in out control and what isn’t.  Graft as hard as you can to change the things that you can control, forget the things you can’t.  Don’t waste your time on the things outwith your control, but be sure to honour those things you can control.

Mark Westbrook is an Acting Coach, his studio is in Glasgow, Scotland.