- Charisma
- Commitment and Hard work
- Confidence
- Intelligence
- High Level of Imagination
- Understanding of Human Behavior
- High Energy Levels
The personal quality that a person requires to become a great actor is a question that lingers on many people’s minds. The question of whether great actors are made or born has been debated by many people over the years and there seems to be no consensus as yet. While there is some truth on both sides of the coin, it has continually been proven that great actors possess some fundamental traits that are similar for all of them. The question then becomes whether they are born with these traits or whether they acquire them over time in their quest to becoming great actors and actresses.
To be a good actor you have to be something like a criminal, to be willing to break the rules to strive for something new.
Nicolas Cage
While no one can doubt the element of talent in all great actors, it has been proven that talent alone is not enough to catapult one to becoming a great actor. There are examples of many budding actors who were talented but did not achieve greatness. Yet you have a several of actors who are seemingly of average talent but have gone on to become great actors and landing serious roles in the movie industry and finding a place in the actor’s hall of fame. Therefore, we can comfortably conclude that any person who aspires to become a good actor must possess some traits that they have to work on and develop in addition to their talent because this is what makes all the difference between lurk star and great actors.
In this article, we shall discuss the personal characteristics that make great actors.
Charisma
This is the ability of a person to charm, attract and have influence over those around him. While it is easy to notice someone is charismatic, it is difficult to point out what trait in them makes people want to follow that person. Interestingly, charismatic people do not necessarily have to be talkative. Some of them are quite and very hard to notice but they still influence the people who are around them in their subtle ways. We can therefore conclude that charismatic people possess great interpersonal skills and are excellent communicators and this is what makes them fill those around with enthusiasm to follow their ways and influence their decisions.
A good actor or actress must be charismatic and should transfer these skills when on stage or when acting a movie scene. The people who are watching the movie will feel enthusiastic when watching the actor in motion if he possess these traits. Performing on stage requires a great amount excess expressive energy and this becomes advantageous to people and actors who possess high levels of energy and those with the ability to change that energy from themselves and transfer it to a screen during a movie act.
While it is not possible to have all actors born with charisma, it is a trait that can be learned over time by anyone who aspires to become a great actor. To possess charisma, a person has to learn how to communicate with passion and enthusiasm with a positive display of body language. A person must also be a good listener and portray self-confidence and optimism about the future and the success of a particular subject that he is talking about. Also, one needs to be persuasive to build the respect and trust of other people.
Commitment and Hard work
Commitment is having a strong sense of focus and dedication to a particular course such as education, learning, marriage and this case to your acting career. Being committed means showing up each morning to push for your goals despite the challenges that may arise in the course of your work. It means the ability to go beyond problems and challenges that may arise and moving forward until you achieve the goal you have set out.
Being hardworking is a personal trait that makes a person go above their current comfort zone and emotions or feelings and push themselves to pursuing a goal that they have set in their minds. There is nothing that comes easy and we often have to push ourselves to achieve our goals. For most people, the ideal life condition is to rest, relax and have a good time and this is the general condition or most of us. However, the push against this current is what is referred to as being hardworking because it is essentially getting down to work with zeal, enthusiasm and determination.
If you are not hardworking and not committed to your acting career, there is a high chance that you may not become a great actor despite being talented. Talent is enhanced when it is matched with commitment and hard work. This is because it is a very competitive career to pursue and only the best actors make the cut. Movie viewers are always yearning for fresh content and they require actors who are good at what they do which means that as an actor you must be prepared to put in the hours for you to achieve your goals.
Fortunately, hard work and commitment are traits that can be taught and learned and harnessed by anyone looking forward to becoming a good actor. You need to possess the self-motivating factor in all the tasks that you set out to undertake. You must ensure that all your focus is on your acting career and you must not doubt yourself at any one point because self-doubt may take your backwards and push your dreams further away from being achieved.
Confidence
Confidence is having a surety of your abilities as an actor. It entails having an inner voice that always tells you that you can accomplish your goals. When you are confident, you will often feel secure about yourself and the abilities that you have. You will always feel ready to rely on your strengths and skills to handle anything that comes your way in the acting scene. Also, you will always be ready to tackle challenges that come in your acting career which you will handle effectively when they come around.
Having this trait will help you in many ways in pursuing greatness for your acting career. In the early stages of starting an acting career, you must attend many auditions where you are likely to be rejected for several times. When you suffer this type of rejection, it will not affect you in any way because of the confidence trait you will have developed. Many people who are not confident fall off from the pursuit of their dreams when they do not make it during auditions and that is why it is very important to be confident.
Having a good understanding of who you are, what you are capable of doing makes you strong mentally, emotionally and even physically. You will therefore have a great performance when you are being tested in auditions in front of people and this will go a long way in making you great at your work. Confidence takes away fear, doubt and it thus supports in honing your career as a great actor. Also, the more you become good acting, the more your confidence grows and within no time you will be in a position to land some senior roles in the acting industry.
To possess this trait, is a compulsory thing that you must actively work on. You must remind yourself each morning about your skills and never allow a negative thought cross your mind. Keep going despite the challenges that may come your way and within no time you will become an actor of great repute.
Intelligence
This is the ability to understand something or a particular topic by applying a set skill through logic. It requires emotional knowledge, creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving skills. In general terms, it is the trait that enables us to infer information and to retain it as knowledge which we apply in our behavior in different contexts. It is one of the most studied topics because it is observed in animals and plants in addition to human beings. In machines, it is referred to artificial intelligence which is what computers use through programs and hardware that is specialized.
A quick review of most great actors in interviews, one of the things you will notice is how articulate they are about almost all topics they are discussing. Most of them have a good grasp of virtually all topics from science, politics, health, money, wealth etc. They sound educated and one would think that they are experts in these fields. However, a close review will make you realize that most of them have little formal education with quite a number of them being college drop-outs. It is therefore quite a wonder that most of them are so smart.
Acting requires everyone to engage in a lot of reading and research in a wide variety of topics which are projects on their own even before a movie or program starts being acted. For you to land a certain role in a movie, you must have a grasp of that role of what it entails in real life. For instance, if you are to land a role of an investigative journalist, you must learn everything there is to learn about how journalists investigate in real life. The same applies for any other role there is to act on. Therefore, you must work on how to improve your intelligence so that you are well read on all issues affecting people in the world.
The type of intelligence that you are required to have may not be best acquired in a school setting. It is best acquired in real life and it is self-taught. It involves a good understanding of human behavior and what drives people and why the act in the way they do. As an actor, you must understand what drives a certain character that you have been assigned to act, what their needs are and what they desire for you to be able to fully immerse yourself in the role.
For this reason, to become a great actor entails a continuous desire to improve your intelligence levels. To constantly evaluate the drivers of human behavior which is the real life understanding of how human beings act the way they do.
High Level of Imagination
Acting is about creating images and situations that are not in the present time. Imagination is the basis of acting because it is all about mimicking real life situations and it therefore goes without saying that to become a great actor you must be highly imaginative. It is therefore, the most important traits that a person who yearns to becoming a great actor must possess. While many components of acting may require you to take realities of your personal life into the acts of movie scenes, a large part of the others will be imaginative. It will entail you to completely immerse yourself in situations that will be different from realities that are different from your own life and this is where imagination takes over your skills set.
Many great actors have vivid and wild imaginations that stretch their abilities to perform well on the big screen because they can connect their imaginations on the screen much to the delight of those who are watching the movie or program. For this reason, it will be important for you to keep finding ways in which you can harness your imaginative abilities because they will be called upon in your quest for greatness on the acting scene.
Building up an imaginative mind requires a lot of reading and getting new information about different subjects in the world and taking yourself in some of those situations. Also, watching other actors at play by watching movie previews and directors of these programs can help in harnessing the character of imagination in you.
Understanding of Human Behavior
As an actor, your content will be consumed by human beings. It is therefore paramount understand their behavior in a good and intricate way because they will be the consumers of your content. You must understand what makes them happy, sad, empathetic, laugh, yell and all other emotions they evoke. Each acting scene or production has a target group who will comprise of the age groups, demographics, income levels and many other factors. For instance, if you are acting a family oriented movie, you must know what type of viewers are likely to watch your production and thus ensure that you know their behavior.
All great actors have a good understanding of human behavior. They understand what human beings like, need, want and they can appeal directly to their psyche through their motives that determines their behavior. They thus evoke emotions through their acts in movies and plays and that is why they become great actors. The reason people have favorite actors is because those actors have been able to evoke certain emotions from them to the extent that they believe that every movie or production where that particular actor is present must be a great watch. It is the reason why movie stars are popular with people.
To become a great actor, you must be able to read a script and make an interpretation of what emotion you are expected to bring out to those who will be watching it. You can only make this determination if you have a good understanding of people’s emotions. While this ability is sometimes natural to some actors, it can be learned by anyone keen on becoming a great actor. It will entail learning the theory part of human behavior and for the most part interacting a lot with people to understand how they act in the way they do. Also, it should be a continuous process of listening to feedback about your skills set and interaction with viewers who offer you both positive and negative feedback which ensures that you move your skills set to the next level from a novice to an expert.
High Energy Levels
Acting classes start with exercising the body which gives you a high level of physical and mental energy. Being in the acting scene requires extremely high levels of energy because it may call for a lot of repetition of a certain set to be able to get the best shot as required by the director. To be a great actor, you must be able to work continuously for many hours in a day nonstop even for weeks on end. You must be able to conserve the right amount of energy and allocate it to different scenes during a movie act.
Famous actors have reported to putting a lot of hours in their work in a bid to get the best out of them. You must be prepared to put this into practice to become a great actor. This will entail exercising your body to physically have the strength to put in the hours and also your mind to have the grit and mental strength to have the right amount of concentration.
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