Somewhere amidst the singular focus on your career success, the relentless proving of yourself at every audition, and the daily justification of your choice to be an actor in the first place, something is missing. In trying to convince everyone (including yourself) that you are talented, worthy, and ready to be a series regular, you forget that you have to fail.
Most actors believe failure isn’t an option. Lacking emotional access, getting emotionally stuck in a scene, dropping a line, making a weak or wrong choice, or not being fully connected to your scene partner are often seen as obvious indications that you are undeserving of the success you’re trying to achieve. And if you don’t deserve it, the theory goes, then your pursuit of the success is a futile one. You’re lying to yourself by even trying. Failure gives your inner critic the tools she or he needs to convince you that you’re wasting your time.
Of course, inherent in this way of thinking is that talent is something that’s fixed—that it’s something one either has or doesn’t have. But as all of us feel less than some of the time, this way of thinking makes an actor fear being discovered as
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