If I ask an actor to see a sample of their work, 99 times out of 100 they show me a dramatic piece.

Most actors think they are pretty good at it and will default it to almost every time.

When I ask actors about why they do this, in a roundabout way they say that it’s simple to do drama. When I hear this, I get where they are coming from.

A few tears and a quiver in your voice is all it takes to bring a dramatic scene to life...right?

Unfortunately, it’s not quite that easy. Building dramatic characters can be extremely challenging but if you want to be a professional actor, you have to be able to do it.

See, great dramatic actors are tough to find. Actors have to be able to go from one emotional extreme to other, often in a single scene, and that makes for a challenging performance.

It’s also why casting directors and industry decision makers love to work with talented dramatic actors, regardless of the genre of the project they are working on.

Dramatic actors tend to have an incredible acting range and are able to pull off a wide spectrum of characters.

So many A list actors started as dramatic actors, and that’s something you should pay attention to.

If you want to be a professional actor too, you have to get really good at this.

Most actors sort of shrug this off and think they’re pretty good at drama already. It’s usually not the case. Here’s why...

Just about every other category is easier to critique. Take comedy for example. If something is funny, it leads to laughter.
Dramatic moments, even when they reach the climax of a scene or a storyline, don’t always lead to tears.

Comedy is also easier to “fix.” If a performance is falling flat, then adding an element of slapstick and making the character more ridiculous will usually do the trick.

It’s more complicated than that of course, but I don’t want to get sidetracked since we’re talking about dramatic performances.

So how do you know whether your performance will actually resonate with the audience?

This is where your instincts come in as an actor. If your performance is not on track, you will feel it. You may not be able to identify exactly what it is, but something just won’t feel right.

You might find that you are way too much in your head with your character. Here’s what I mean by that...

When you build a character well, the actions become instinctive..

You don’t think about what to do with your hands or how to react in a scene, it all just flows very naturally.

If you are thinking too much on set, then it’s natural to take everything up a notch. The problem with doing that in a dramatic role, is that going too far makes it comical.

The audience instantly sees it as trying too hard.

Go back and rebuild your character and give them a powerful story. When actors do this, they tend to add a lot of information that ultimately doesn’t affect the character.

If you are going through what your character had for breakfast that morning (and there was no scene involving the character’s breakfast) you are probably on the wrong track.

Instead, go through your character’s unspoken story and add layers.

What you actually want to get to is what’s causing your character’s behavior. That comes from their past experiences and how it shapes their perception of what is happening in the scene.

That could either be a recent past experience or it could be an experience from the distant past that stuck with them.

Here’s what I mean...

Maybe your character had a tumultuous relationship with a sibling that used big words to make them feel dumb and inferior.

That could shape your character's interactions in a scene, quite a bit. How would they feel whenever someone used similar language around them?

If your character feels talked down to and belittled by that, that’s a much more specific set of emotions that you can bring to a scene, beyond just being upset.

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine how you would play a character that is upset. Then, imagine how you would play a character that feels talked down to and belittled.

Is it a little easier to imagine the second one?

Of course! Defining those emotions gives your character some constraints, in a good way. See, at the extremes, dramatic characters are either in tears or they are crossing into anger.

For example, with the character we’re talking about, you wouldn’t start screaming in the scene.

You wouldn’t break down crying either. Neither one of those choices would make much sense, so your character would react within those constraints.

Building your characters this way would keep you from going too far in either direction, while still giving you a very specific set of emotions to play off of.

Most actors don’t take the time to think through things like this and that ends up impacting their career, not just the scene.

Here’s why...

Success in the industry doesn’t come from just being able to deliver a world class performance one time. You have to be able to deliver every time you step foot on set.

I think it was Jack Nicholson who said “You can be in a bad movie, but you can’t be bad in it.”

The industry will forgive a project that falls short of expectations, but they are not quick to forgive performances that fall short.

That means you have to be systematic in the way you build your characters and make character choices on set.

When this happens, you become easy to work with and that makes directors want to work with you over and over again. It also makes CDs much more likely to call you in to read whenever they have something else you could be a fit for.

That’s a key part of building a long lasting career. It only works if you can show CDs that you have a great industry reputation. Here’s a great place to start with that.

Just like actors tend to build characters haphazardly on set, they tend to build their career the same way. Not a lot of thought goes into what it truly takes to make it in the industry.

They focus almost entirely on the talent side and ignore everything else it takes. There has to be a balance, so that you build a career on a solid foundation, while also working on your talent, like we talked about today.

That’s why I built this so you can focus on doing what you do best while we work on making you visible to the industry.

We’ll get into it in more detail on this next week.

In the meantime, remember I’m always only a comment or an email away if you want to touch base about anything we went over, or even if you just want to bounce ideas,

I’ll help however I can because I truly want to...

See you at the top,
Scott