Tuesday, June 24, 2008

DIVA - Being Diligent Part 1

Diligent
adj. Marked by persevering, painstaking effort

Diligence
n.
1. Earnest and persistent application to an undertaking; steady effort; assiduity.
2. Attentive care; heedfulness.

The word says it all be it in noun or adjective form. It is also the foremost important part of being an actor. To be an actor, one has to be prepared to go through a life long learning process.
That means, to put in a great deal of effort in learning. It's not enough to be good in doing something because everyone is good, one has got to be great. The secret for being diligent is simply not to give up during the learning process. There is no short cut unless one decides to quit acting.

One of my acting coach once told me, the minute you have keen interest in something, that is the minute you start to develop a talent for it.

To learn acting is like a chef learning culinary skills. Everyone and anyone can cook. The minute you make half boil egg for breakfast means you can cook and can start to call yourself "The Great Chef" in your very own kitchen. Yes, only in your very own kitchen. LoL

The question is, how many times have you overcook or under-cook your half boil egg before you perfect the skill of getting it right? So the story moves on to one fine day you became so good at half boil egg, you decided to make scramble egg and the whole process of trial and error begins again and again and then again. You then became so good with cooking eggs in 101 different ways, you move on to making sandwiches or baking bread for breakfast. Suddenly on one morning out of the blue, you decided that you were wasting too much time making your own breakfast and decided to order in. That's the day you stop being a chef. The same goes with acting.

So what's there to learn as an actor besides acting? For example let's just say when a scene requires an actor to be a chef , an actor has to know at least the correct way to hold the knife or wok in order to make the scene work. Of course, an actor does not need to murder someone before acting as a murderer in a scene. It's also important for an actor to know when to draw a line.

One may ask why does an actor got to learn all these skills beside acting? You see, as actors we audition for roles just like anyone who goes for job interview. In many cases, actors may lose their chance to be cast in a film/Tv series because he/she does not have the "special skill" such as rock climbing, horse riding, or swimming required for the role. Yes, in a few special cases the actor will be sent to classes for whatever special skill that is required for the role but this is rare although it happens. Once I lost a role because I can't drive a car. The other time I was lucky to be sent for special dance lessons required by the role of geisha when I was casted in "Dance Of A Modern Marriage".

As there are one million things to learn as an actor such as the acting, singing, voice training, accents, dancing, martial arts, foreign languages and etc etc, the hardest part is to keep one's interest in learning. The moment one starts to lose interest in something, the usual "excuses" will be:

A) I have no time.
B) It's boring.
C) This is too difficult.

This is the time when the "Intelligent" part comes in. Come back soon for DIVA- Being Intelligent Part 2.


I'm still in the process of learning to be Diligent in everything I do. Just like how one can't drive or operate a vehicle simply by learning the basic or advance theory, one has also got to learn the practical part before getting the driver's license too. Which means to say, I'm now learning to put into practice of what I had learn in theory.

So where do I get these "ideas/theories" about acting from? Acting books, acting coaches, autobiographies of great actors/ great acting teachers and many veteran actors I met on set.

All the above are my daily struggles and my learning process in general as an actress and I'm glad to share my 2 cents POV here with you.

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