Pathetically Pityful

Today I was an elephant who became a fire fighter named Jack. I was in a zoo one second and then within the span of a minuet, I had warped into a character I created on the spot. This happened today, for example, along with singing a solo song and performing stage combat techniques, and yet all I can think about are the sick, empty feelings I’m getting in my stomach. Even if I try to think about paries or songs or efforts from Laban class, all I can manage is the thought that my stomach feels like a LABAN effort, and that effort is ‘wring’.

I’m in a really crappy mood. That’s the simplest way of putting it, and yet it’s a mixture of so many things that are causing this to happen. I’m never doing enough work, as certain people in my life now like to highlight (unintentionally but still to effect), I can’t hold on to friends it seems, and my love life is a shambles (and I’m not saying that lightly)… Yes it sounds all ever so pathetic, but so what, shoot me, I’m pathetic. I feel pathetic! Fuck it I am very pathetic in so many ways but the LAST thing I want is your pitty people! I’m not pitiful. There’s a line between being pathetic and pittyful I think and yet they always get thrown at me together as a pair and in the same way. I can feel and be pathetic but as soon as people start to pity me I just feel a loss of dignity. I’ve been through my fair share of shit so I think I’m ok to understand my pathetic nature; the side of me I find silly and childish… ‘Irrational’ would be the best word to describe it; the side of me that doesn’t want to care or feels feelings because of things that should mean very little to a man of 21.

It’s pathetic and I see and appreciate that, I let myself have these moments just as children have their tantrums. To give me pity because of this, however, MAKES me a child. I no longer have any choice in the matter and people’s perception of me almost permanently lowers. It lowers in a certain way so that I’m no longer mature or respected enough to actually have strong feelings towards people or things. People begin to disregard my opinions and view me as weak. I’m not. I’ve never been a weak person I’m proud to say, but people abuse the fact that occasionally I do let my guard down to wallow or be ‘pathetic’. To be completely honest I’ve learned not to mind if someone does this, it just means they’ve abused my trust, for a start, but also that they underestimate me… I don’t believe you should ever underestimate someone, because it really will come round and bite you in the ass… And that’s not even worth pity. 

The Rabbit Hole

When your world turns upside down it usually means you’re looking at things the wrong way round. I’ve had a really hard few weeks, perspectivly. I don’t even know if perspectivly’s a fucking word. It should be. 

I’ve completed one of the hardest projects I’ll probably ever have to do. Getting into the mindset of a character, a Nazi, who was in ways worse than Hitler, for two weeks, was very harrowing. Having to be that person and live them out in full and extensive improvisation that lasted hours was tough. Not to mention all the physical labour work. If you want more information on this ‘project’ I’m talking about go to the East 15 site and look up the ‘living history’ module. If you have general knowledge of drama schools in England however, you’ve probably heard about it. I did before I came to the school. I’d heard of the horrors. At one point it made me break down so much so that I screamed and proceeded to cry for a good half hour. People will say this project is self indulgent, many don’t agree with it and that’s understandable. But I advise you not to judge it and those that have done it in a negative way unless you yourself have done it and dedicated yourself fully to it. It’s not what you expect it to be and is indeed invaluable in many ways. 

Meanwhile in my personal life I feel like everything’s draining and slipping away; my friends, my family… Mostly everything I love. I’ve pushed people away recently and feel like I’ve done and said some very regrettable things that will change my relationship with certain people for a very long time, people I care about… And yet I’m too tired to want to care or see the right rout out of this mess. I’m mentally, and if anything a little physically, strained from work and all these personal problems, to a point that I can’t think straight. It’s worse than being on any sort of drug because it makes me feel so useless and helpless every second of the day. I know it’s just a phase but it’s points like this that people struggle and find things hard. I honestly just want things to be simple and easy but alas… They never are. It feels like I’ve been shot in the head with a sniper bullet and have lived to tell the tale… Because I have. My character was shot in the head with a sniper bullet right at the last minuet of the project… It’s ok though… He deserved it. 

Much of this feels like incoherent gobbledygook, but to be honest this is exactly what’s going on inside my head at the moment. Nothing’s going right and I can’t even seem to be able to string sensible sentences together anymore. I haven’t been able to write because I feel like I can’t and doing anything just seems to require too much energy which I need to preserve for all the other work and research and line learning that I have to do. I wanted so badly to ramble on about the living history project but I can’t. I don’t have the time. I’m writing this at feckin 1am. What am I doing? 

Don’t worry folks I’m still here and I’ll get back on track with life at some point but I genuinely feel like nothing at the moment. I feel insecure and stressed. I also can’t seem to be able to sleep properly once again. I’m falling down a hole I know I’ll get back up out of again… It’s just a case of when and how long this feeling will last. Alice falls down the rabbit hole but we never know how long she’s really there for. She makes it back out but only to find herself peering through the looking glass once again. Perhaps it’s in human nature to fall down rabbit holes. Fuck knows… But I’m falling.

Weekend Wonders

This weekend I took a magical journey to a place in south west London. Where that was exactly I have no fekin clue but it was home to a venue that harboured an event which proved to be most interesting, for more reasons that you’d first assume.

It was called ‘soul train’. A night of soul music (thus the inventive title) and a hint of funk I suppose. The ‘club’, if you can call it that, held four floors, five if you include the basement area, each of which had differing DJ’s and/or live singers. The atmosphere was relaxed, easy to boogie on down to and held an air of mystery… What I’m doing is building the scene for what was to come so bare with me. 

I had a wonderful time. Not because of the music. Not because of the crowds. Not because of the insane amount of drugs my friends were taking which caused them to act like animals round a watering hole (mean girls reference, yes I went there). None of these things, in my mind, made the night something that would go down in my life history for years to come. What did was the fact that a girl spoke to me. 

It sounds stupid and immature of me to say so but I actually had a girl I’ve never really spoken to before complementing me and telling me she found me attractive. I never have this. Talking to my (female) friends about what girls think of me, telling them that all I get from girls is no sign what-so-ever, always leads to the same thing: ‘oh shut up you, you’re just being silly’. Well that advice helps me in life.

 I’ve never really known what girls general perception of me is and I think it’s the same for most guys (if not girls too). You never truly know what the other gender are thinking of you and if you do that means you’re an arrogant, cocky, self-centred, lucky bastard and I hope you rot in hell. Sorry too far… It’s just frustrating! If I knew what girls thought I might have more confidence to go up and say hi but alas, I do not. 

I think the lack of confidence for me started at a young age. With one of my first ever crushes my dad told me to go and ask the her out (this is primary school, people, primary damn it). He thought it would improve my confidence which is fair enough. Only when she said ‘fuck no you unattractive, uninteresting shit’ in infant terms did I see what confidence could mean if it backfired. So from then on I got quite shy, especially with and around girls (I liked). 

Having those ‘little’ things, like what happened to me this weekend with an unbelievably beautiful woman, really does help pick you back up off the ground. Sometimes you feel like you need it, especially when you’ve started joking with yourself about how unconfident you are with girls to the point where you don’t know if it’s true or not.

 I felt truly flattered and appreciated for the first time in a very long time. I took it all as a huge complement. Not to say it made me big headed. I appreciated it and I especially apriciate the courage of a girl coming up and starting to talk with me, I centaintly couldn’t have. Definitely not with her at least; she was, sorry, is stunning. I didn’t abuse the situation either and am actually still talking to her during the process of writing this. Guess we’ll just have to see how it goes from here. 

Term 3 – One big mindgrain

So First day back and the beginning of a new term. Term Three. The big one apparently. The one where we have the living history project, the one where we apparently have combat on Tuesday’s (totally awesome and I just found this out) and the one where we are pushed to our current limits. It’s probably the most important term and I spent half of it with a mindgrain in bed. Well done to me. Term Three – 1, Elliot – 0. I haven’t even started yet and I’m already screwing up. Guess that’s just part of life.

 I couldn’t sleep the night before and was stressing over the start of a new term, and at the prospects of a tiring yet exciting new start, which is probably why I ended up getting a headache in the first place. Yet I went to school. I pushed through for as long as I could but as soon as I got up infront of my voice class to do the political speech I’d been asked to learn, it just all kicked in and got too much. I couldn’t do it. My head felt like it was going to explode.

 My teachers are amazing and understood, they let me off big time after I reached that point, but that doesn’t mean I should carry on taking liberties. I want to prove to them that I am determined and have the ability to be the hero they want and need #inyourfacebatman. It was a fuck up, yes an accidental, faultless fuck up, but a fuck up none the less and I’m now more determined than ever to find the moment where I can show to everyone my potential. An opportunity I have of yet been struggling to find. 

I guess I could talk more on how I feel about ‘potential’ later but as for now, let’s see what this term really has to offer… Providing I don’t get another mindgrain. I find it funny really, you never account for things like that in life. But as someone said to me today, ‘you can’t go living your life like that’… Or ‘you can’t go living your life in fear’… One of those.  

 

Piña Coladas

So it’s the last day of Easter break and I’m sitting in my room trying to not think about how tired I’m going to be when I go back. I could have easily done another week of just not doing anything while lying to myself that I’ve actually been doing copious amounts of homework. I watched a few documentaries and drew a few pictures. No reason to be proud of myself. Fuck it, I’m allowed to have had the time actually off I think. It’s nice to have time off; it’s not like I had time off before the ‘holiday’ anyway, I had a job on the weekends and while everyone went out partying to get a hangover in the morning I went out to work to get another dose of work in the morning. I needed my beauty sleep ladies and gentlemen! We all do. Ok to be fair, my form of ‘beauty sleep’ is going to bed at 4am to wake up at 3pm… Not a selection of particuarly wise decisions but it had to be done. We’re all allowed to be lazy and if there was any time to do it it was during my time off school so screw you voice inside my head saying ‘you should really be doing…’, I tell you what I should really be doing… Lying on a beach in LA sipping pina coladas, but oh tragedy, I can’t, so I’ll go with the next best thing on my ‘holiday’: me sitting in bed illegally watching films I missed that I needed desperately to catch up on seeing.  Hey, it’s an important life process. We’re all fuck ups. It’s just appreciating when to be and when not to be.

Mums

Probably the hardest topic for me to write about but I feel like it will show how important it is if I do. So fuck it. Any positive figure is taken for granted until they’re gone, this is mainly so within families. You don’t seem to realise what you really had till you’ve lost it, and if you do, you’ve had something happen in the past that’s already taught you that valuable lesson. I lost my mum back in 2012. It was a hard year and the lead up to her loss wasn’t at all pleasant but I’ve always said I’d go through it all again to be the person I am today. I was a brat, a spoiled child; I remember one year on my sisters birthday I pulled a temper tantrum because I was jealous in that I hadn’t received a present, my parents actually got me one but my temper only grew as I realised it wasn’t the ‘one I wanted’. I hated myself, I was a little shit. I mean now I’m a slightly bigger shit but at least I don’t scream in someone’s face now if they don’t get me what I want. Seriously though, I have changed. When you lose something you can’t replace (as Coldplay so elegantly state) it makes you appreciate certain things more, even with the change in lifestyle that came before my mums death I began to see what I once had. You grow up, the reality of things become a lot clearer and you see all the imperfections of the world. The colourful, glossy coating that was draped over everything by the protective wonder that is your parents has now been wiped away.

 All this happened to me because of one person, my mum. One woman among billions of others and yet she impacted my life in more ways than anything on this planet could have. How beautiful and unfathomable was the wonder of this person that she could completely turn his world upside down at will? In reality, not that magnificent at all in comparison to all the other mums out there who do exactly the same for their children, but she was my mother, and the meaning of that word, ‘mother’, holds so much more than you or I could ever understand. People travel to the ends of the Earth to find their real mother, others adopt a mother, some people even look for qualities of their lover to be like their mothers (going deep with the phychology here ladies and gents), but when you find that person, whoever or whatever that may be to you, they take a part of you that you never even knew you gave. There’s something incomprehensible about the connection we share with our mothers and weather you like it or not they played a vital role in your life and making you who you are. Without the mothers of the world, firstly, you wouldn’t even be here, and secondly, you wouldn’t be the person you are; you wouldn’t have that ‘soft’ quality about you, you wouldn’t be that ‘compassionate and empathetic’ person all your friends say you are; those things that only existed because of that motherly, feminine touch you had. 

The women of the world play much, much more of a role than just being mothers however. That’s part of the extra brilliance that is the female gender; when they do become a mother, a real ‘mother’, they don’t just part-time it, they put all their being into being the best that they can be. Their world is their children and nothing else seems to matter more. That’s what’s amazing; that when they still have a life to live, a job to go to, a person to love (or a, possibly lonely, break up to go through) they still work their ass off at being your mother. You’re the first thing on their mind when they wake up in the morning, and last thing on their mind before they go to sleep at night, and the love they will always have for you is unconditional. My mother made unbelievable sacrifices for me and yet at points she must have felt like she couldn’t be the mother she always wanted to be, I couldn’t disagree more because damn it she did the best anyone could have with what she was given and I’ll never let anyone think anything less of her than an angel, and I’m not even religious. This is the point where I’d normally write about how I want to say a big ‘thank you’ to the mothers of the world but fuck that… As if I could even begin. 

Women [A City of Angels]

Very broad topic I know, but one of the major themes that keeps arising in my life at the moment is ‘women’; everything that surrounds that word and everything that is implied or included under that title. I always feel like it’s a bit of a taboo subject if I’m totally honest, I mean, I consider myself a ‘feminist’ (even though no body really knows what that word means any more) but every time I talk about women I’m always scared I’ll accidentally say something that isn’t deemed ‘politically correct’ by someone. I wouldn’t do it intentionally, I know that, but the topic is so hard hitting when discussed seriously that it causes people to raise their defenses dramatically. To be fair, on the other hand, this is completely understandable as there are people out there who would state their derogatory, outdated views on the ideas formed around women (the same scenario applies to the topic of race). What I’m pointing towards is the idea that people should be allowed more leg room when discussing such topics with their friends. I want to be able to say something without feeling like I’m going to be attacked on it, not saying I will be, but there’s an atmosphere created that makes people sometimes feel insecure about themselves and what they want to say. I have a friend who doesn’t always say things in the right way, but the intentions behind his thinking are so kind, and in my mind he has a heart of gold. The problem is that whenever he seems to open his mouth during a ‘heated debate’ (if you can call it that) between friends, he’s attacked for it. He accidentally says something that isn’t deemed ‘intelligent’ enough and people jump on him for it. I’m not saying I’m Mr nice guy in this sense either; I’m pretty sure there’ve been a few points where I’ve thought what was said was ironic or worth a comment, but I shouldn’t have. I know what he or other friends are trying to get at when they say things like that in the wrong way and it’s not cruelly intentioned at all. So why are we all so quick to judge?

I’m so proud of women. I’m allowed to say that without sounding patronising I think. With all the disgusting hardships that they’ve overcome, a lot of the time they still stand there and take it all on the chin. There’s still a fight going on, that I can see, because the things many women put themselves through just to survive in today’s society is unbelievable. Without seeming like I’m comparing the entire gender to a TV show, I want to talk about a series I’ve been watching, and as an actor I’m shocked by the acting capabilities and limits the women on the show reach. It’s Californication. I advise you go watch it but be warned there are multiple sex scenes etc etc. Etc. Oh and etc. It is, pretty much, about a man who goes around and has sex with the women of Los Angeles, seemingly any girl he wants, which you might say is degrading for the women watching or acting in the show; but actually I think, in a sense, it does the opposite and is a good example of some of the realities certain women have to face. In the show you really get the sense that LA is a place where women have to fight every second of the day to be appreciated and acknowledged because of the general attitudes placed towards them, and the only way some of these women can find that is through sex. Not because of their own ‘faults’, of which there are none, but because the society makes it so. Men are portrayed as the unaware rulers of the city, the people who have the power but don’t see what the realties of a place like this are. Many women see that sometimes the only means of getting what they want or getting appreciated is through sexual desires. It’s disgusting. And the show sheds a light on all this. It doesn’t deny that this happens but instead makes it slowly apparent to the main character and thus, the viewer. There are some beautiful moments where it’s all taken a step too far and the only person who see’s the sickening truth and bothers to change things is the main character (kinda giving you a teeny bit of hope for men on the whole). One such moment in the series (no real spoilers so don’t worry) was shown in the last episode I watched where one married woman flirts outrageously with the men she’s in the car with, neither of which are her husband. One of the men gets tired of her and just chucks her out on the street, in the middle of nowhere, yelling at her. The car then continues on leaving her behind. The other man is Hank, the main character, who then stops the car again and says he’s going to walk back for her because no one should ever be left like that. He’s not exactly being a comic book hero but in a city where he could easily have left her and had a night with his friend, he chose not to and chose to not be a dick. Later in the episode he’s stood with her at the side of the road which is pleasantly situated on a picturesque hill in California, and you see the other side of this woman, the side that thinks the only way she can get attention is by sleeping around and Hank tells her that’s not who she is. He stands there and says to her “I mean, no offence, but, you know, letting some guy order you off the TV like you’re Chinese take-out. Is that really what it’s come to mean to be a member of the fairer sex in the city of angels, circa 2008? For someone as accomplished as you? You’re Chloe fuckin’ Metz.”. Yeah it’s a weird pep talk but the thing that got me the most, the thing that really hit me was what she said after:

“Fuck if I know. I’m just glad my kid’s a boy.”

Eating crisps

So I’m sat here eating crisps thinking about the time that I’ve lost. I can’t find it, where did it go? Fuck knows. But I’m sat here eating crisps thinking about it. Thinking about how I should be getting on with work but instead, I’m sat here, eating crisps, writing this. What does it take to feel like you’re throwing, waisting your life away? Not much apparently. Don’t get me wrong, I do work, and I have done a lot of the work that was set for me over this Easter break (and there was a lot of it) but sometimes you just reach those points where you either feel like you’ve done too much and can’t think about it anymore, or that you’ve just hit a block; you feel like you can’t do anything and you just sit there wallowing in your own wallowing… A continuous cycle of wallowing. I don’t feel particularly depressed, I don’t feel like I need to go for some fresh air, I just feel like I want to sit and procrastinate all day.

 There are usually a few ways I push myself out of this ‘mood’. I usually start by giving myself an easy task to pull myself out of it; something practicle I might enjoy doing like drawing or even writing (like this). This way I’ve started myself doing something that feels worth my time. I start to feel competent again. Though sometimes I slide in and out of procrastinating from this, like going on Facebook or daydreaming, I push myself to go back to the task at hand. After I’ve finished this task I’ll usually try and do the next thing on the list; the thing that would be most beneficial to get started on or even finished/out of the way. At this stage I’ll give myself little five minute breaks so I don’t end up killing myself from boredom. 

All this sounds like I’m complaining about the smallest problems in life but in all honesty I bet lots of people have the same problem with procrastination, and before you can go out there and get to work on saving the world from its slowly auto-cannibalising crises, you need to get a hold on yourself sitting there munching on those Doritos that have obviously left a pitiful, soul destroying stain around your mouth. Get a hold of yourself damn it! At least I’ve moved on to coffe now. The caffeine kick’s actually made me think (very energetically) about how I haven’t really been too impractical today at all, it’s only where I’ve been working at the pub doing the quietist shift of my life that I feel like my times been waisted. In reality, I got paid for those hours and I’d had to have worked them no matter what.

 A lot of the time, I think it’s down to perspective. You might not think your day has been very productive but in reality you probably just feel tired from limitations that external forces have placed on you. It’s got nothing to do with your own capabilities or what you could have done to change things. A good example or metaphor I like to use is if you’ve ever been on your way to see a show and you’re on time, prepared, you have your tickets and made all the right plans for your journey and then get on the train to find yourself held up and you can’t get off; you’re going to be late and theirs nothing you can do. In this scenario a lot of people would panic but I’ve learned that the only reasonable way of dealing with this situation is to wait until you can do something about it. If theirs nothing you can do it’s not your problem so why not just sit back, relax and eat the bag of crisps you packed in case of an event such as this. Until of corse you know in yourself you have the power to take action so enjoy those crisps while you can. 

 

Climbing out of the pond (part 2)

The most quoted thing at our school is from the ‘jump in the pond’ metaphore. This is from the story of there being two types of actor; the first one is asked to go and jump in the pond (I’d imagine by a metaphorical director, not some random guy who likes to sniff socks)… And the second one is already in the pond. The whole idea is that you should use your intuition as an actor and just ‘do’ rather than constantly asking questions. My dad always used to say you can only go wrong from trying. There you go, that’s two inspirational quotes for you. Today’s your lucky day. Directors and other actors always prefer working with someone who just gives things a go anyway, it shows they’re more willing to work and test themselves for the benefit of finding something that works for everyone. This, again, links in to what I was previously saying about how in auditions the panel might like to direct you. They want to see if you’ll go with it and, at East 15 at least, they want to see if you can ‘jump in the pond’. If you can’t or don’t want to then you’re not testing yourself and acting should be a test of will, if it were something easy, you wouldn’t be applying to drama school and you’d be the leading role in a staring west end production, but alas, you’re not, you’re sat here reading this shit. Touché mother fucker. Unless you are a leading role in a major west end production, in which case… double touché to you. Shit. But the likeliness is, you’re not. So suck it. Ha.

People always seem to think there’s some magical answer to auditions, when in reality we all know that’s not the case. There is no advice I can give you, there are no speeches that will get you a place and there is no way in hell you’ll know exactly what to expect. Most of the time you just have to roll with it. You’ve obviously done as much work as you can (if not re-evaluate your life choices, you’ll find no pity here unless you’ve been terminally ill, in which case I sincerely throw my best wishes at your lovely face) and now you just have to be open to change. Don’t get so set in your ways that you forget what it is to be an actor in the first place, you’re learning constantly and forever adapting and changing to suit yourself to roles, the role won’t come to you either, you have to go to the role. That’s your talent as an actor; you can move yourself to become people, it’s not that character/persons job to become you.

I remember the day I got my acceptance letter. I saw it and let out one long ‘YES’ before sitting back down on my bed and staring at the paper for what must have been half an hour. I read that shit through and through. I’d worked for this so I didn’t go screaming the house down, I was simply satisfied with myself for all the hard work paying off. I was actually with a very close friend the other day sitting in Olympic park, looking across at the river that flowed silently through it (picturesque I know), drinking a now five year old beer he had bought a year ago with me at Borough Market (ok now I’m sounding pretentious, but it was a nice moment), and we spoke about how we’d both been struggling at drama school. We felt like we’d been getting worse as actors and it was actually quite comforting knowing there was someone else going through the same problems. We know it’s part of the training process to sometimes feel worse before you get better (do comment if anyone else is having this issue with life in general) but it was good to talk about it. We went on to say how we couldn’t complain because in the end we were so thankful that we were out of the ‘audition’ phase. He’s now doing the same course as me at GSA (a bloody good school). I looked down at the water and said how it felt like when we were auditioning we were swimming around helplessly in the water with everyone else in the same situation; trying to find someone on the edge who will pull them out and save them from a future of uncertainty. A future of either finding your own way somehow, or drowning. We’d made it out of those waters and now we could see the hardships some of the people we know/knew were going through. It’s not easy and I respect anyone still going through that struggle (don’t give up if it’s what you want). Climbing out of the pond isn’t easy, but when you do, you see why you jumped in to begin with.

Climbing out of the pond (part 1)

Auditions. Even writing that word hurts a little. I remember auditioning for drama school being one of the scariest most horrifying things I’ve ever had to do. I’ve auditioned at most large schools in London and I repeated the process three times before I finally got a place on the course I’d dreamed about. It’s not easy and it has near nothing to do with your talent. So why do they do it? Why do they make you stand in front of them for a measly two minuets before cutting you off saying ‘I’ve seen enough’? No! You have NOT seen enough thank you very much! I’ve been working at this shit for the last oh… Just my ENTIRE life, so don’t you dare say you’ve ‘seen enough’ to judge what the utmost reaches of my capabilities are. It’s agrivating to say the least. Though, those words aren’t always a bad thing; the first time I heard the words ‘I’ve seen enough’ said differently was a strange experience and it usually sounds more like ‘I… Think I’ve… Seen enough… Thank you’. The pauses of stunned glory from the panel, it feels as though you’ve slapped them across the face in those few minuets with a supprise attack of ‘yeah bitch look at what I can do’. Giving them something they don’t always expect seems to work quite well, though, and this is the important bit, I came to learn that that doesn’t always mean shocking them with a piece of gritty in-your-face text. What they’re actually looking for is your contrasts as an actor. I’ve been lucky enough to sit in on many, many auditions (at East 15) and each time they see something they might like, they test that person; ‘ok so you played Hamlet wallowing in self pity and did that well but now let’s see if you can do it while running around the room shouting it excitedly to the audiences faces…’ They do this for a few reasons but the main two being: 1. They want to see your contrasts and if you will be able to reach their full potential with training, and 2. They want to see you take direction. The second is always, usually, the most important of them all. If you can’t take direction there’s no point in you, firstly, going to drama school, and secondly, ever acting again; you’re not open to change and as an actor it’s vital that you see your mistakes and learn from them. There is no such thing as a perfect actor and, actually, it seems the beauty and learning comes from that, just read sonnet twenty three by main man Bill himself and you’ll see what I mean. That’s another thing; know your Shakespeare. Seriously. The amount of people who have turned up with a piece of paper in their hand stating ‘I’m not too strong on it can I have the words in front of me’ is horrifying. It literally makes my stomach churn. I want to be sick a little in my mouth. Mouth sick, that’s what happens when I see that. I’m not even exaggerating. Know the characters, read the damn play and go into that audition as confident as I am that William Shakespeare wrote his own bloody plays. Same with any speech you do, know it. Especially if you’re about to apply to a method school numbnuts.