In many ways this past year was one of the hardest I’ve had since deciding to make acting my profession. I don’t say this for pity and, in some ways, it’s not even true. But it felt like the hardest and I’ve realized how important my feelings can be when I look to measure the year from a business perspective. Art and commerce go hand in hand and both need to be valued….but that’s a subject for another post.
2014 was the year I took some of the biggest risks of my career thus far. Both financially and creatively, to be honest, they mostly didn’t pay off. I tried some new things and also allowed myself to look at all of the different ways I could be creative, support my career, and take action et cetera et cetera. Now I did learn a lot, which is the upside of failure and the reason it’s so useful but, ultimately, I got to the end of the year and was a bit lost. Acting is the thing I do to live but it’s also a large part of who I am and how I relate to the world and it wasn’t fun anymore. That was a hard thing to admit to myself and to the people who love and support me but I did. Allowing myself to admit it, out loud, to people who weren’t going to immediately suggest I move to career Plan B or whatever was the best thing I could have done.
I’m part of an amazing community led by the incredible Bonnie Gillespie and as we were having our last SMFA All Access group coaching call of the year, I asked for help. And as Bon started talking, she basically made the analogy of a marriage where the honeymoon period was over and now to keep the relationship alive and satisfying, there was going to have to be work to keep falling in love over and over again. And it just clicked…I had to make acting sexy for myself. Again.
So as 2014 wound down (and with perfect timing Helenna contacted me about writing for Ms. In the Biz, thus providing me with a very public way to document my journey as well as hold me accountable)…I committed to making 2015 the year of making acting sexy for me. And that distinction of “for me” is huge; it’s everything in fact. I have to work on what about acting turns me on…how it pushes my creative buttons as well as how do I translate that into a healthy appreciation for the many sides of this business because I came to LA for the business of acting. You can act anywhere…you go to LA because you want to succeed in the business where your colleagues and competitors are the best in the world, both artistically and commercially. I’ve always known that that’s what I wanted and have been down for that but I needed to make sure as I approached this year of sexy that I could incorporate it.
Sex is an apt analogy for acting; so many of the truisms about one are the exact same for the other. Confidence is key, honesty and vulnerability are a must to go to a deeper level and yes, you can do it alone or with a partner. But the focus for me and the one I hope will speak to others should be the focus of what makes acting personally sexy. In many ways, I have to re-learn what turns me on about acting and one of the first things I did was get naked. Ironically, I mean this both figuratively and literally.
Taking your clothes off, for yourself or a lover, is incredibly intimate and majorly sexy. But often, the focus is so much on if it’s sexy for the other person rather than if it turns you on. And that was my first lesson…stripping myself bare to allow for intimacy and remind myself not of why I love to act but of why I love my acting. It sounds narcissistic but try it. In my current feeling less than sexy state, I found it incredibly hard to be that vulnerable. Look in the mirror and find what about yourself turns you on…it’s scary and then it’s empowering. And I started to feel sexier towards my acting almost immediately. And then, not even the end of the first week of January, I was offered a role where I was going to be able to put this into practice but that’s a story for my next column.
In the meantime, get naked, allow yourself to be vulnerable and remember what Bryan Cranston said in his 2014 Emmy speech: “I’d like to dedicate this award to [those]who thought that maybe settling for mediocrity was a good idea because it was safe. Don’t do it. Take a chance. Take a risk. Find that passion. Rekindle it. Fall in love all over again. It’s really worth it.”