Articles on the challenges actors face and suggestions and strategies for improving acting strength and performance.
Also see these pages:
First Steps on How to Get Started in the Television, Film and Commercial Business
Using Your High Sensitivity Personality As an Actor
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- Acting and Body Image: Portia de Rossi, Toni Collette
- Acting and image – ethnicity and casting
- Acting and image – The dark side of sexy photos
- Acting passion – being proactive
- Acting passion – What is your calling?
- Acting schools – building you up, or tearing you down?
- Actor’s Privacy and The Dark Side of Fame
- Actors & Addiction
- Actors and charisma
- Actors and creative polymathy: Mayim Bialik, James Franco and others
- Actors and Drugs and Addiction
- Actors and Insecurity
- Actors and perfectionism
- Actors and privacy – Debi Mazar on publicity
- Actors and self esteem
- Actors and therapy
- Actors coping with rejection
- Actors on building identity
- Agnes Bruckner on the best acting advice
- Amanda Seyfried on anxiety
- Amanda Seyfried on fame, anxiety and being self-critical
- Amber Riley on rejection: “How can I better myself?”
- Amber Tamblyn: artists should be inspired on multiple levels
- Amy Adams on being authentic but safe
- Amy Lyndon on actor training and achievement
- Androgyny and acting
- Annette Bening on unconscious versus conscious
- Anxiety and acting – dealing with an ‘enemy of art’
- Are performers raging narcissists?
- Artistic confidence – Rex Lee likes being strange
- Austin Highsmith: wanting to act more than anything
- Being bullied and an actor
- Being Shy or Introverted and an Actor
- Bonnie Gillespie on fame and redefining success
- Brandon Routh on Biohacking and Bulletproof
- Break the rules – Jodie Foster on good rules and not so good
- Brooke Shields and Kate Winslet on fame
- Brooke Smith on not being like everybody else
- Bryce Dallas Howard on learning more fearlessness from her character
- Celebrity and fame and personal growth
- Claire Danes on taking time to discover herself
- Compromising yourself – Ellen Page: I’d rather be shot in the foot
- Courteney Cox on being sensitive
- Creating a role – Taking your character home
- Creative Inspiration: Books with Actor Quotes
- Creative passion and gratitude
- Cynthia Bain on teaching young actors
- Deal With Self-Doubt
- Deal with stage fright and anxiety to be a more powerful actor
- Dealing with fame – or not
- Dealing with fame and keeping your ego in check
- Dee Wallace on acting passion and limiting beliefs
- Developing confidence as an actor
- Developing intuition to enhance acting performance
- Drugs and actors and addiction
- Edie Falco on her anxiety
- Elisabeth Shue on pursuing excellence
- Ellen Muth on living in the real world
- Ellen Pompeo: strength from a challenging early life
- Embracing fear and discomfort as an actor
- Emily Blunt on fate and stammering and acting
- Emily Blunt on showing her real side and being balanced
- Emma Watson on how college is “empowering and liberating”
- Ethan Hawke on using multiple talents and interests
- Ethnic stereotypes and identity
- Felicity Huffman on becoming more of herself with age
- Gabrielle Anwar on isolation and pursuing interests other than acting
- Grace Zabriskie on “obsessional mode”
- Heath Ledger on his nervous energy
- Helen Mirren: “I’m a would-be rebel.”
- Highly Sensitive and an Actor
- Highly sensitive and in the spotlight
- Holly Hunter on respecting the creative environment
- Hollywood and drugs and narcissism
- Hollywood competition – Amanda Peet: “There’s room for everybody”
- Hoon Lee: a black sheep because he was artistic
- Ian McKellen on telling the truth so you don’t sell your soul
- Insecurity and darkness and comedy
- Intense but Relaxed – Acting with Confidence
- Intuition – Laura Linney on the more mystical part of acting
- It’s About More Than Performing – Life Off The Set or Stage
- Jackie Earle Haley & Kate Winslet: Self-esteem and identity and being an actor
- Jaime Pressly on fame
- James Franco on being a loner
- Jeffrey Tambor on using fear
- Jenna Gavigan on not thinking too much
- Jennifer Beals on her sensitivity
- Jessica Chastain: “I’m not an actor to be a personality.”
- Joan Chen on the emotional need to retreat
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt on feeding the soul & the poison of fame
- Judith Orloff, MD on helping actors deal with anxiety
- Julie Adams: “I knew I would be happier striving toward my dream.”
- Julie Christie on using pain as an artist
- Jurnee Smollett on her warrior spirit
- Keeping out of your head to act
- Kerry Washington on the power of silence
- Kristen Johnston on overcoming her love affair with chemicals
- Kristin Davis: “Why risk self-destructive behavior?”
- Kyra Sedgwick, Anjelica Huston on motherhood
- Lea Michele, Julie Benz, Jim Parsons on auditioning
- Leslie Mann, audition anxiety and rude people
- Limiting yourself with drugs
- Liv Tyler on Feeling Real
- Maggie Gyllenhaal on working with the dark and light
- Making people more aware of their inner world
- Melanie Lynskey: “Go to a dark, honest part of yourself.”
- Melora Hardin on multiple creative projects
- Melora Hardin on social reactions and confidence
- Michael O’Keefe, Mindfulness and Acting
- Michelle Williams on Interpreting Marilyn Monroe
- Monica Raymund: being relaxed about the audition got her the role
- Multiple talents – Masi Oka and Dolph Lundgren
- Naomi Watts on the struggle for integrity
- Naomie Harris: “As an actress you can feel very alienated.”
- Nerves and attitude impact your acting
- Nicole Kidman on fame, and actors as highly sensitive people
- Overcoming Performance Anxiety
- Philip Seymour Hoffman: “It’s an uncomfortable medium for an actor.”
- Pierce Brosnan on being self-critical
- Playacting: childlike creativity
- Portraying people with depth and complexity
- Rachel Weisz: “The actor’s job is to get into people’s skin.”
- Rashida Jones on the creative value of her mixed ethnicity
- Rebecca Brooksher on her experience at Juilliard
- Rejection – does it defeat you or fuel you?
- Relationships and actors
- Roles with creative meaning can be emotionally crucial
- Romola Garai on potential distortions of an acting career
- Rose Byrne on fear and focus
- Samuel L. Jackson on pursuing excellence
- Sarah Polley on fame and the big movie role
- Scarlett Johansson: “I’m comfortable with being uncomfortable.”
- Secrets of the Actor – a podcast
- Shia LaBeouf on fame and meaning and insecurity
- Shia LaBeouf: “You have to be brokenhearted.”
- Staying healthy in a business with unhealthy pressures
- Summer Bishil on the emotional workout of “Towelhead”
- Terrence Howard: “to discover more truths”
- Toni Collette on finding meaning in acting
- Using your high sensitivity personality
- Vanessa Hudgens on striving to be strong and aware
- Vera Farmiga: “What interests me, are the contradictions..”
- Vera Farmiga: It’s a profession so much to do with ego
- Winona Ryder on staying sane with so much attention and work
- Zooey Deschanel and Evangeline Lilly on beauty
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