How to Create a Believable and Authentic Acting Performance with Two Questions!

One of the most important principles to acting is "living truthfully under imaginary circumstances." In order to do this, actors must fully understand their character's motivations and objectives in a scene. And there are Two critical questions to ask yourself in order to fully embody your character.

What do I want him or her to understand about me? And why is it so important to me?

The first question, "What do I want him or her to understand about me?" is essential in understanding the character's intentions and how they want to be perceived by the other characters in the scene. An example of this could be, "I’m the bleeping Boss." This will define the relationship in the scene to you and tell you who has the power in the scene. It’s really critical for you as an actor to understand this because it will affect how you will behave truthfully in the scene.

The second question, "Why is it so important to me?" is just as crucial. This question delves deeper into your character's motivations and helps you raise the stakes in the scene. For example, "If I don't get want I want from him or her, my wife will leave me because I will lose my job." This provides a deeper understanding of your character's motivation and the consequences that will happen if you don't achieve your objective. And remember, not every character gets his objective but it is important that we see him or her work for that objective. That’s what acting is. and what will make your performance more authentic and believable.

Wynn Handman and Tim Phillips who were my biggest mentors as an actor, based their teachings on the Meisner technique, which was always to stress the importance of "acting from the inside out," which means that an actor must understand the character's inner life and emotions in order to bring them to life on stage or on screen. In order to do this, actors must understand their character's motivations and objectives and make them personal to themselves. This allows the actor to connect with their character on a deeper level and to truly "live truthfully" in the scene.

A character's wants and needs must be clear, and it's important for the actor to understand the character's perspective and how they interact with the other characters in the scene. This creates a believable and authentic performance, and it allows the audience to connect with the character and the story.

In addition to these two questions, actors can also use other techniques to fully understand their character, such as creating a backstory, researching similar real-life individuals, or using improvisation to explore the character's actions and motivations.

As actors, it's important to remember that acting is about living truthfully in a scene. This means that we must understand our character's motivations and objectives, and make them personal to us. By asking yourself the two critical questions of "What do I want him or her to understand about me?" and "Why is it so important to me?" This is how you embody your character and create a performance that comes from the gut.

As my mentor Wynn Handman would always say, “It has to come from the GUT DOUGLAS!” .