In Australia, we have a history of community. By that, I mean we tend to have an egalitarian view of the world. We call it “The Fair Go”. When this is interwoven into the fabric of theatre or screen, it can’t help but be present. I’m not saying it’s obvious – far from it. What’s peculiar in the work this country produces is the way it doesn’t present itself. It’s hidden from plain view. You sense it rather than see or hear it. But it’s there alright.

Australian Actors can’t help this. We can’t even stop it if we tried because it’s who we are. It’s in our eyes, in our breath, in our stance. Australian Actors are to the 21st Century what Russian Actors were at the start 0f the 20th Century. We have another phrase that is accurate to this kind of Actor. “Fair Dinkum”. This means we’re honest – that we’re not wasting your time. We do it like we mean it. If you’re an Actor in Australia and you’re not “fair dinkum” you’ll last about 2.3 seconds.

I’m really grateful that I’m an Australian Actor. It’s not because of a sense of nationalism. Actually I abhore that bulldust. I believe it was  Samuel Johnson who said ” Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”. I concur with this sentiment.

I mean the Australian Actor in philosophy. Raw, Real, Urgent, Tender. Honest. We do it for real. We do it for life.

Fair Dinkum.

Acting is half shame, half glory. Shame at exhibiting yourself, glory when you can forget yourself – Sir John Gielgud

I’m looking for the truth. The audience doesn’t ome to see you, they come to see themselves – Julianne Moore

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being – Oscar Wilde

A lot of young actors will do a scene and then run off and look at themselves. I don’t believe in that at all – Charlotte Rampling

Find in yourself those human things which are universal – Sanford Meisner

I love strange choices. I’m always interested in people who depart from what is expected of them and go into new territory – Cate Blanchett

Honesty isn’t enough for me. That becomes very boring. If you can convince people what you’re doing is real and it’s also bigger than life — that’s exciting – Gene Hackman

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. You become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions – Aristotle

When [actors] are talking, they are servants of the dramatist. It is what they can show the audience when they are not talking that reveals the fine actor – Cedric Hardwicke

Acting is a question of absorbing other people’s personalities and adding some of your own experience – Jean-Paul Sartre

One of the things I like about my profession, and that I find healthy, is that one constantly has to break oneself to pieces – Liv Ullmann

An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so he must be willing to accept all experiences that life can offer – Marlon Brando

For fast acting relief, try slowing down – Lily Tomlin

I love acting – truly my favourite people are actors – Sean Penn

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made – George Burns

We must overcome the notion that we must be regular…it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre – Uta Hagan

Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult – Lord Laurence Olivier

Acting isn’t really a creative profession. It’s an interpretative one – Paul Newman

Acting is an expression of a neurotic impulse – Marlon Brando

The better the actor the more stupid he is – Truman Capote

The talent is in the choices – Robert De Niro

Acting is a very personal process. It has to do with expressing your own personality, and discovering the character you’re playing through your own experience – so we’re all different – Sir Ian McKellen

Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation – Bette Davis

I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time – Orson Welles

Look, I’m not odd. I’m just trying to be an actor; not a movie star, an actor – Montgomery Clift

I only do this because I’m having fun. The day I stop having fun, I’ll just walk away – Heath Ledger

I won’t quit until I get run over by a truck, a producer or a critic – Jack Lemmon

For me, acting is not an all-consuming thing, except for the moment when I am actually doing it – William Holden

Acting – what an ugly word! If it were merely a question of acting, I feel that I could never have done it, and could never do it again – Elenora Duse

The actor cannot afford to look only to his own life for all his material nor pull strictly from his own experience to find his acting choices and feelings – Stella Adler

If you want to work on your acting, work on yourself – Anton Chekhov

Okay, I’ll bite… what are these things? Oh, & Happy New Year to you. As you say, I have my lines down, what else do I need? I’ll meet other Actors and maybe size them up while I ask them mundane and boring questions like “What have you been up to?” to which I’ll receive equally mundane and boring answers. I’ll go into make-up – no, first I’ll go into wardrobe, then make-up, get that sorted out, maybe get a coffee and breakfast at the caterers van thingy, sit down and wait. Right?

And then you wait… and wait… and wait. Then someone else who’s waiting will sit next to you (because they’ve never met you before and this is their first shoot and they’re nervous and they’ve heard so much about you) and you’ll talk and wait and joke and have more coffee and, oo, that chocolate muffin would go great with that coffee… oh, I’ve finished that coffee, better pour another… wait, wait, wait, wait WAIT ONE SECOND!

This stuff will get you right off the subject. The subject is Work. You need to be centred and focussed and relaxed and ready. You can’t be hyped up and ego driven. It doesn’t work that way.

I’m waiting! What is the magic ingredients, for crying out loud!!!

A good book and a bottle of water.

What! That’s it! This is your magic formula? A book and some water!!!

That’s it. Drinking 3 cups of java ain’t gonna help. And palling around with some other schmuck instead of being ready is definitely gonna harm you. And at 6PM when you’ve been waiting for your last scene by shooting pool at the table you found on the premises,  and you notice you’re so very tired at the exact instant the Director calls for you to get to your mark, and the bloke who was quiet all day and sat under a tree with a book and a bottle of water, who was always in ear and eye-shot of the Director or 1st A.D; who always seemed to be aware of what was going on…

Yeah, yeah, you’ve made your point. I don’t do it that way. I like to be loose and alive and not boring. You know, who gets the work by being a goddamn wallflower anyway? I mean, when I’m on set, I like to be up and out there, and it always helps my impro skills and….

Yes folks, it’s true. I’ve worked with this before. These are the ones you should avoid at all costs. Your work is too important.

Pray, Prepare, Perform.

I want to let you in on a less-known, hardly ever talked-about thing that also happens. You know when you were at school, and there was the Cool Gang? Or perhaps you were one of those people who weren’t quite cool enough to be in the In-Crowd. Of course, as an adult, you know that adults don’t behave like that. That’s immature kid stuff. I mean, we may do things differently to the next guy, but we still respect each other as Actors in a wonderful profession, right?

Wrong. This profession attracts some rare, interesting, generous people who are interested not in who’s in or out, but in fullfilling the needs of the audience with the art of the writer. And then there are ‘the others’.

For every time you leave a production feeling buoyant in the knowledge that for a few hours, you’ve served humankind, there will be times when the people you’ve just spent hours with, are so rude, selfish and so very immature, that you’ll come home feeling as though you’ve just been through a torrent of abuse (for it’s my belief that it is abuse).

You’ll have done a good day’s work, and you’ll have been as generous to the work and the other players as is your nature, but the passive-aggression that will come from these players will be unrelenting.

I tell you this as someone who knows. You must not waver. The reason they do it is because of their own insecurity. Acting attracts the insecure. And if you are sure that what you do is good, that you rejoice in the challenge, these insecure, inadequate, immature people will be all around you, but they will NEVER defeat you.

Pity them. They know not what they do, and they know not how to Act.

I was in an improvised scene recently and a moment came, and it really proves the point exactly. Being impro, there was no script, just a scenario wherein I was to go with whatever came up.

Because I know what I’m doing, I was at ease with the situation and, feeling free and loose, it was no problem when something surprising came up.

This sounds vague, and I apologise because I cannot go into what I was doing, or what the job was and who was conducting it – confidential and all that.

But what I can say was that something happened in the scene, and I didn’t think “what would my character do?”, I just did the right thing.

It’s a great feeling because I know I did it exactly, minutely, specifically, clearly. This was instant. I didn’t think, I just was.

There are those who would totally disagree with me on my thinking about acting – all I can say to them is “put it on your blog”.

As we strive to make our intentions pure, devoid of the desire to manipulate, and clear, directed to a concrete, easily stated end, our performances become pure and clear. – David Mamet from his book True and False

Make no mistake – there are “snake-oil salesmen” out there. And these peddlers are plentiful. I’m talking about Acting Schools and Acting “Teachers”. Now, I’m sure there are quite a few who actually believe they can offer something to the novice or enthusiastic amateur – there are plenty of them to go around. And not all of these charletans believe they’re conning anyone.

I was sitting in a waiting room recently when in came a gentleman who I know as an actor. We chatted for a while and then somehow the discussion turned to what we were doing with ourselves. He informed me that he was teaching young people Acting. He was making quite a living from it.

When I heard this, I was instantly aware of a certain discomfort. I know this person, and I have to say I felt the way you’d feel if you were told by an ex-bank robber that he was now driving for Brinks. In other words, when you have a mistrust of someone’s ability, and you learn that they are going to spread their incompetence, well, it’s not good.

There are so many young, keen, good-looking guys and girls with daddy’s cash to spend, and these shysters are just so ready to pocket this cash and fatten their resume and bank accounts, that you may think, “well, that’s marketforces, right? – it’s ‘buyer beware’”, but it’s not as easy as that.

Acting has always had a P.R. problem. A problem of credibility. Like anything, once it is devalued, in this case by those who think they know, or pretend to know what they’re talking about, it slips back into a sideshow and eventually is seen as superfluous. To go back to the virus analogy, this toxic stuff spreads and spreads and you find yourself mumbling to yourself  “are there NO good Actors out there?” And the answer becomes “No, there aren’t”.

This guy has no skill whatsoever, and it makes me shudder to think of  young impressionable minds stroking his ego.

I don’t have an answer to offer on how young people can avoid these imposters, but when a parent asks me what they might do for their child who wants to study Acting, I am very clear. For what it’s worth, here’s what I suggest:

• Take them to see Theatre
• Read to them and have them read plays to you, out loud
• Talk about the way you feel when you see what you think are good performances
• Ask them what they feel when they see things they enjoy
• Join Community Theatres
• Do all of this often.

If you do this, you’ll uncover the true self and this is the key to Acting Excellence

Training can often ruin your style – Roy Orbison

Of course, in a way, it’s quite admirable. We all want to do a good job – nothing wrong with that. We’ve got our lines down and we’ve come to place that requires us to perform this in front of a person, or persons. And then we get ourselves all worked up. No, no, no, no, no. This will not do at all.

I went for an audition last week. It was for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. I had the lines down and I went in. After meeting the Director, the first thing he asked me was, “Do you have any questions?”. I asked if he had in mind ‘ye Olde English’ rendition or was he to stage it in a contemporary context, to which he replied that he wanted the latter. I think I said “good”, but what I meant was “Yes, I understand”. Well, I did my thing and I did it again to some of his directions, and that was it. Two days later, I learned that I didn’t get the gig.

Without going into expressing what the usual feelings of disappointment of not getting a gig we audition for felt like (let’s face it, we all know this so there’s not much point regurgitating it here), I can say that my read was an honest approach to the part and I could sit around contemplating what I might have done differently, but it really doesn’t change anything.

The point is, if you’re open to direction and happy to be there, and you have your lines down, there’s not much more you can do. No point trying to be everything – it ain’t gonna happen.

I can’t wait for my next audition.

The fox that chases two rabbits catches neither. – Old Russian saying