It Takes Most Actors 20 Years To Learn This Lesson — Michael Laskin

Film Courage: ‘To show yourself, you have to know yourself.’ What does this mean?

Michael Laskin, Actor, Acting Coach, Author: Let me circle back on something to answer that. I was trained in the theater and it was serious theater and I’m not making fun of that. I mean we thought we were going to change the world doing theater. It was a real passion for me and still is. I love it and I still do it occasionally but you don’t have to show yourself in the theater, you show the character, you show your version of that character. In film and television you can’t escape showing yourself and the minute you try to escape it, you look terrible. As I said my first few TV things that I watched were, I thought at least to my standards, were really bad. I thought Oh, I have a lot to learn. You can’t teach someone about their identity. I’m not talking about sexual identity, I’m talking about personal identity. You can’t teach that but you can curate it a little bit. I always say lead an examined life, do something that’s outside of this acting stuff, plant a garden, refinish a piece…