Eventually I got tired of being a pylon. Background performers are the lowest of the low in the film industry and for the most part they get treated accordingly. Sitting in a freezing cold tent, eating nasty ass sandwiches, and getting yelled at by wranglers for pretty much minimum wage.
I needed bigger and better things if I was going to become the star that I knew I was destined to be. A few of the other extras had been training at acting schools around the city, and I figured that was probably a good place to start. So off I went to finely tune my craft.
I took various part-time classes at different acting schools all over Vancouver. I’d take a scene study class here, an improv class there, film & TV classes, audition intensives, casting director workshops. Whatever I could sign up for that would help take me closer to where I wanted to be. A super famous celebrity actor making millions of dollars for just showing up and being awesome.
After about a year of part-time study I found a full-time intensive program being offered by the William Davis Centre for Actor’s Study, which at the time was one of the highest regarded acting schools in Vancouver.
It would be a year long commitment with nine other Hollywood hopefuls who were also willing to be ripped emotionally raw for a chance at superstardom.
The full-time program wasn’t something you could just walk into off the street. There was a very competitive audition process in which hundreds of people applied for the ten available spots. The reputation of any school is only as good as the talent that it produces, and therefore only the best of the best were allowed to attend.
I submitted my application to the school and after a few weeks I received a letter telling me that I had been invited to audition for a spot. I had to prepare both a contemporary and a Shakespearean monologue, which I would have to come in and perform back to back.
For somebody who didn’t come from a theatre background, anything Shakespeare was essentially a FML moment.
Surprisingly enough I managed to make it through the audition process without throwing up. Two weeks later I was informed that I had been accepted into the program. That I was among the best of the best… at least out of those who applied, which probably isn’t saying much. Regardless, I was super excited to take the next step on my journey to becoming an A-list celebrity.
Training to be an actor is a really weird process. Every teacher seems to have a different way to get to the intended destination. The destination being a performance that the audience believes to be true to the story being told on the stage or the screen. That’s really all there is to acting.
If the audience believes your performance then you did your job. But that’s the logical approach, and definitely not how they go about teaching you how to become an actor. The way acting is taught is more based on the conscious emotional manipulation of one’s self. I think, therefore I am. But nobody can seem to agree on what to think, which is really confusing for somebody trying to learn.
Over the next year, the ten of us would attend classes for eight hours a day, five days a week, with rehearsals on evenings and weekends. We would take yoga, pilates, and voice classes every morning, with the intent of teaching us how to effectively gain control of our “instrument.”
This is what the superficial acting people call their bodies and voice, an “instrument.” I’m assuming it’s because using the actual words “body” and “voice” would be comparing them with the non-acting people, which would obviously be complete blasphemy. Stars are nothing like the common folk.
In the afternoons we took a variety of other classes. Mondays would be improv and comedy. Tuesdays and Thursdays were scene study. Wednesdays was Shakespeare, and Fridays were reserved for Film & TV classes.
Every type of class was taught by a different teacher who was a working actor in the industry. Sometimes, because of their schedules, other teachers ended up filling in for them. So we had multiple teachers with multiple different opinions. None of whom were stars. This would be my first step in realizing that I should be very selective in who I decide to learn from, and that not every teacher is for every student.
That year I acquired a very serious addiction. An addiction which will probably stay with me for the rest of my life. It has cost me tens of thousands of dollars, and will undoubtably cost me much more in the future. About a year ago, I spent more that seven hundred dollars in a single day to support this addiction. Over seven hundred dollars on an extreme addiction that the majority of people can’t even begin to understand.
My addiction started when I was watching an episode of the show “Inside the Actor’s Studio” with James Lipton. The guest who was being interviewed on that episode was Johnny Depp, and I can remember watching it like it was yesterday. They talked about his relationships with Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson, the boots he was wearing, and what he loves about living in France.
The part of the show that had a major impact on me was when Lipton asked Depp what kind of training he had taken. Johnny listed off a few studios that he had studied at, and then went into depth about the various books he had read.
Johnny said that the book that profoundly changed the way he thought about acting, and was able to bring it all together for him, was the book “No Acting Please” by Eric Morris. So obviously if I wanted to be a star I had to find and read this book.
After some research I found a place called Biz Books in downtown Vancouver which specifically catered to the film industry and all of its various counterparts. I was able to locate Johnny Depp’s acting bible, and then decided to take a little look around. What I came to discover absolutely shocked me, and was the catalyst for my addiction.
