July 25, 2022
-So, do you need good grades to become an actor? In this video, we will explore that question. So, Tom, do you need good grades to become an actor? -Many actors did not excel in high school or college because they were more driven emotionally than they were academically. Don't even talk about the sats, right? -No, I don't want to talk about the sats. -Yeah, we don't want to go there. Yeah, but it's very interesting that now they're saying the sats have a certain cultural bias and schools aren't looking at those so much, right? So, guys, never ever confuse emotional intelligence with academic achievement, they're not related at all. Many people come to us and it can actually be a liability. We're always in praise of education. We have school etcetera. But you know we have had the odd student who comes in with the 4-0 and every scene must be perfect when people characters by definition are perfectly imperfect. So, they're wanting to get the perfect score but it's unattainable and there can be some initial frustration with that. There's just being true to yourself and making strong choices and going, "Oh, I'm making choices for me rather than to please a teacher or a college board or win an academic prize". -So, examples of actors who didn't graduate from high school are. -Marlon Brando. -Jim Carrey. -Ryan Gosling. -And then there's so many who didn't graduate from college either. There's Emma Stone, Anne Hathaway, Leo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks. So... -But it's just not a requirement and a lot of times people that are artistic being a major musician. I mean, the number of people that went on to huge music careers who never completed high school that's a big list. -Right, yeah...-Or college is like because they were feeling the music. But you know by the time they were 18 they had gold records you know they're playing stadiums and going yeah, okay, but they followed that voice. I mean, so much of this life folks is finding your authentic self and it's a journey because so much of our life is about pleasing other people. It's pleasing parents first. It's pleasing teachers and you think, "Oh yeah, I know that I have a tendency to do that but it's deeper than you think. To really get down to gut-level stuff. I mean, it's amazing to see and it's amazing to see we love working with people that are you know they're 40 plus they're 50. They're so they're going, "You know what, I wanted to do this when I was a teenager and my dad talked me out of it or I wanted to do this when I was 20 and I got pregnant and I didn't plan on it but there we were raising a family but I wanted to do this for 30", I'm going, wow, those people are so easy to teach because so much of what we're teaching is what are you fighting for. I go, whoa, I'm clear about what you're fighting for. You are so clear about what you want and they go like that. You know it's the person who's 19 and goes, "Well, you know, I like this. I think I love it but my parents don't want me to do it but I'm going", okay, you know. I mean, the plus is they're asking the question at a young age but they don't have the courage of their conviction yet. -Right, and you make this really great distinction about because it's not necessarily because you do need to there's a lot of work involved in this pursuit and in this life. So, it's not that it means you know but it's just not academic work but it's a different kind of commitment that's required right as opposed to an academic one, it's. -Well, it's more a commitment to self-discovery and self-realization and learning about yourself and knowing your own nervous system learning who you are. So, you know what you have to bring. -And if you're somebody who's had a lot of confidence or you've been very strong academically going into those parts of yourselves might be scary at times, it might be intimidating, but it's that's the stuff that's the you know really getting down to the core of who am I is so much of what we do whenever you're working with actors that's what it's all about. -Well, our ego will always gravitate to what we're already good at because we have comfort there, right? But conversely my ego will ruin every blessing in my life because my ego can also inhibit my growth because I'm so invested in the things I'm good at and been awarded and rewarded for that the other stuff is scary and remember that your ego is not your amigo. -So, in a minute, we'll speak more about the journey of the actor but just take a moment right now and click the subscribe button below. -For those of you that find that your parents are not behind you being an actor it's usually for a couple of reasons. One of them is you're not fully committed so they don't want to support you training in something that they don't see as a career for you because you're not fully committed yet. Because when people do commit it's not uncommon to hear, "Well, honey you know we just didn't think you you were so passionate about this but know we're... Listen, we want you to be happy if this is what you want to do we're behind you", and or when people don't support you because they gave up on their own dream a long time ago and they find that threatening. Because if we come from the same small town and you're successful at this and I'm not you know it's a tough mirror that maybe you fought for it more than I did. So, you know that's a big one, that's a big one. That really commit to what you want to do and the other thing about our business folks everybody has an opinion about it.
-Oh yeah. -Everybody. You have second cousins saying, "You know it's not what you know it's who you know", go you don't know you're not in any of the guilds,
you've never made a movie, you don't know what you're talking about. Everybody thinks they have a take on this and most people think they can do it and many sadly without any training whatsoever, yeah. Which might get you the odd little something but it's not going to feed you for the next 60 or 70 years. But you know when I was starting out you didn't see weekend grosses of movies on the five o'clock news. You know I don't know how I feel about all that that it's just become well that must be a good movie because it made money when maybe you know it opened on a really tough weekend against you know a movie that you know had an ad budget that was 100 times that indie film and when you finally catch up with you you go, "I heard about that film three years ago. Why didn't I see it then?". Well, you know it's the luck of the draw but it's not an academic pursuit folks it's more like sports. -Yeah, it's very... it's active it's right acting is active and it involves your breath, it involves your body, it involves your imagination, and those are all muscles that you need to work out just like an athlete and that's not usually something we were introduced to in high school or college in any way. So, that's where and then often maybe if you were not a strong student in high school or college but then you get into this because you really love acting and you're really passionate about it or directing or writing then you can find that you can work on this for hours and hours and hours and feel invigorated and inspired because this is where your passion lies and that's a really cool discovery I think for a lot of students who right didn't get the grades in high school. -Well, it is active as you said it's active. We say sound, speed, marker, set, write a term paper. No, that's not what we say no. We, say action, you got to do something. So, take action. It's active, it's not contemplative, right. This is for the person of action not that I mean big on meditation right but it's ultimately up to you. You know many people say, "Well, I'm going to meditate on it", I go, great but unless you float to the ceiling ultimately you have to make it happen. It's very willful. You got to go get it. -And this is for the people who are either told you're too much or are not enough. This is often where they find their home. You know we call this the sometimes it's the goldilocks training or the three bears training, right. This one's too hot. This one's too cold. This one's just right. This one's too soft. This one's too hard. This one's just right. So, if you've ever felt that you were too much or you were not enough we think of this as the two much club come join us it's every Saturday and you'll find a passionate community all around the world and now you have people to go visit. If you are inspired to work more deeply than you ever have before click on the link below.