Why? Why Acting?!

 

My last post got me thinking, that doesn't happen very often.  Why do people choose to pursue an acting career?

Seriously, it usually leaves actors poor and working 5 jobs just to get by. So, really though, why?  Deep down inside what went wrong with these people, including myself.  Let's explore.

 I'm going back to high school, because that's when I knew that I was going to pursue an acting career.  Back then, I had this atrocious urge to make sure that I was liked by everybody!  All of the groups of people that you find in your typical, large high school.  I made sure my friends liked me, the most popular kids, the athletes, the total dorks, and my most favorite, the skater boys.  Had to be liked by everyone, EVERYONE! I personally think that I was pretty successful at that  :)  Here's me being liked by everyone.

I glued eyeballs all over my dress!

I'm the one with the crazy face again...

Are you seeing a pattern here?  Most pictures of me from high school looked like that, me making a crazy face...

One thing I knew, was that I was never going to be the pretty girl, or the most athletic, or the skinny girl, or the smartest girl, or the fucking tallest girl, so I went for the the fun, carefree funny girl.  I must have pulled that off pretty well because you know how they have those awards that they pass out at the end of your senior year, not the honor role, I'm talking, the other kinds.

 Well, I took home.....

 Best Personality

 Best Sense of Humor

 Funniest

 Most Likely to Become Famous

 and a few others.

Those awards seem to have mysteriously disappeared not shortly after I brought them home.  Personally, I always thought my sister flushed them.  She disliked me back then.

 NOW, let's get this straight, I'm not bragging.  This is what we have so far:

1)  Felt the need to be liked by everyone.

2)  Outgoing personality.  Unless I get around other super loud and obnoxious actors, then I shut down, but that's another post!

3)  Attention!  Attention from others feels pretty damn good.  When you're telling a story that you think is pretty funny and you look over and see that you have an audience that is responding to what it is you're doing, in a good way, feels pretty great.   It feeds the fuel inside of an actor, it's like a drug that makes you keep wanting to get more and more of it.

I think if you add those things together with the fact that my mother hadn't told me she loved me until I was 19 years old, pretty much sums it up.   It took me being dropped off by my parents in Brooklyn, NY, all by my lonesome, to have the "L" word slip out.  Boy am I glad that my dad told me he loved me, or I'd be a stripper right now.

Don't start feeling all bad for me, "Oh my god, you poor thing, your mother never told you she loved you."   Mom (I call her Silvia, even though that's not her name)  showed me in different ways, like screaming at me, and being really overprotective.  No, really though, she was a great mom, she did her best, but seemed to have been dealing with some issues of her own.

 By the way, I turned out fantastic, LOVE is a word I use freely.

 My conclusion is that I think actors pursue acting  because they have a deep seeded need to be loved.  I think that it also goes hand in hand with actors having some serious insecurities about themselves.  We, the actors think acceptance, love, and constant reassurance from others can solve, or fix our little insecurities.   But in turn, it's most likely not helping and quite possibly making them worse because we put ourselves out there to be fully exposed and criticized by others. 

 I guess I can't speak for all actors, I don't even know if it's true for myself, but maybe now is the one good time for other actors to chime in.  If your reading, why the hell did you pursue acting?!  Because I know you didn't do it for the money, honey.

Thanks for listening!