Creativity & Freedom for the Professional Actor
The Foundation for Acting Success
By Josh Ubaldi
Success has often been described as ‘the freedom to become whoever you want to be.’ This statement is doubly true for an actor, who gets to shed her own identity, and inhabit that of a totally fictional character.
It’s no wonder then that we consider professional, working actors to be so successful and so “lucky” to be in the creative profession they have chosen. This sense of freedom goes far deeper, though. It molds the foundation of every actor’s business success.
What would it really mean to be free enough to become whoever you want? Imagine being free from expectations, limitations and hesitations. To some this might sound incredibly freeing. To others, it might sound intensely structure-less and without any security, read: terrifying.
Most individuals who choose acting as a profession certainly come closer to the former, even if huge parts of them still experience the insecurities of the latter. The foundation for consistent, joyful, daily acting success certainly lies in maintaining the essence of that freedom, joined with a creative structure that offsets the pitfalls of paralyzing insecurity.
In my years of working with actors, I’ve noticed two primary qualities that drive their deepest needs: creativity and freedom. While each individual actor has his own set of unique personal needs, these two keep him married to this non-linear profession, and all the traditional sacrifices that are tied to it.
They are, by nature, the essence of the success definition: freedom, explicitly, and creativity at heart of ‘whoever you want to be.’ Once school or college is finished and a career decided upon, the lionshare of the population spend so little time examining the fulfillment of their true essence. Actors, on the other hand, tend to keep this reality very lively.
Not only do they need to make choices for the characters they will become in their work, they must also make constant choices to practically stay in their profession until they achieve a financial stability through their work. If you haven’t yet realized that this daily brings up the question of ‘who am I?’ think again. Most actors squander far too much energy asking themselves questions like ‘Am I a waiter or an actor?’ ‘Am I am admin assistant/ personal assistant or an actor?’ ‘Am I a dog walker or an actor?’
This is the reality of making financial ends meet and staying in a profession that has few explicit business guidelines for successful enterprise, which is the my basis as a business coach for actors. I experience actors struggling day in and day out. Alarmingly, they by default often live the same year over and over, in the hope of getting big breaks, and being chosen for the next shooting star. Worst of all, they let other people’s definitions of success and business dictate their choices, until we work together to free them from other people’s paradigms and into their own success strategies.
The desire to create, or have creative expression, is intrinsic to all humans. Again, most people find great, daily iterations of this: relationships, children, cooking, crafts, sports, etc. For an actor, it is more fundamental, more visceral. The need to create an entire persona, with one’s entire person, is an overwhelming need. The pure infinity of choices available to every person, latent in every new character they play, is intoxicating to the actor. It’s a rush of both adrenaline and emotional/spiritual connection that lacks parallel in most professions.
When this creative need is joined with a need for freedom, the road ahead gets foggy. The freedom might be the freedom to find the next great part, or the freedom from responsibility to make ends meet, or the freedom from bad relationships. These situations make up the business aspects of the foundation.
While creativity must be given free reign for great acting craft, long-term freedom is built upon solid business decisions. A working structure that each actor creates for himself will allow him both the freedom he desires to create, as well as the security to do more, fail more, and achieve more. Actors who build a solid business structure fail bigger and better than they did before, and get bigger payoffs that go deeper than before.
So many actors misinterpret the freedom for time and space to create, as a lack of structure. In practice, most of them by default invest an unbalanced amount of time on both money jobs and pleasant distractions or self-medicating. They simply don’t go far enough to ask themselves better questions to work within their acting business on marketing, sales, accounting and strategic planning.
The real magic is conjured when actors apply some creatively-driven, basic business strategies to their daily practices. This simple structure results in more jobs, better jobs, more team members, and more powerful relationships. Herein lies the real freedom they seek. Best of all, when they structure their business practices to be as fully creative as their craft work, they also get a hugely deeper satisfaction. When actors fully employ, instead of struggle against, their greatest needs, both are fulfilled in one fell swoop.
Josh Ubaldi is a Business Coach for actors and creative businesses. He is based in Los Angeles. Josh is the owner of Build Acting Success and the Successful Actor’s Guide at BuildActing.com
