by Jason Bennett

What is it that distinguishes the average, employed actor from the truly memorable, astonishing actor? It was once thought that the ingredients of amazing acting were inexplicable and could not be taught. But during the last 20 years, huge advances have been made in actor training and many of the ingredients are clear. If you find one of the rare great acting classes, you can cultivate many of these qualities in yourself with profound results.

Here are a few vital characteristics of a great actor: a free-flow of emotions and impulses expressed in the body and voice; an understanding of how to create life-and-death, moment-to-moment acting; a vivid imagination; and a body and voice capable of telling all kinds of stories.

We live in a dangerous world. People are insensitive, self-absorbed and emotionally retarded. Interacting with people can hurt, often far more than we consciously realize. Life shuts most of us down. We tense up and build a protective psychological wall around ourselves. The temptation to avoid our feelings is irresistible for most of us. Feelings can be no fun. We live in a culture filled with distractions and addictions that take us away from who we are on the deepest levels. We are forgetting who we are and our deepest experience of life, over and over, because it seems easier.

So when it comes time to act and genuinely experience the reality of a character, we are blocked. Great actors understand the human tendency to shut down. They fight against it. There are many ways to slow down and open yourself up: yoga, massage, meditation, 12-step meetings, Aikido, nature walks, long drives, proper nutrition, cutting down on caffeine, eliminating drugs and alcohol from your life, etc. It is vital that you continually find ways to slow down and open yourself up emotionally as an actor.

Many approaches to acting ignore the emotional walls actors bring to the work, promoting the idea that pursuing objectives and playing actions will free you from all your emotional blocks. Learning to pursue objectives and play actions is a vital part of actor training, but often does not free an actor's talent if they are blocked. It sure would be nice if it were that easy.

There are hundreds of exercises that can liberate you from emotional blocks and inhibitions, but many acting teachers do not deal with blocks in their classes.

Are you sure you can move effortlessly into any emotional area required by dramatic material? Often, it is the most sensitive and talented actors who wall up and shut down. It makes sense because the most sensitive and talented actors are the most tempted to escape their deeply felt experience of life – they have the most to escape from. It isn’t easy to stay open, relaxed and available. But it is a requirement if you want to be a great actor.

Acting is a tough profession. Pursuing an acting career is a constant battle. And most of us really want to get along with our fellow actors. We want supportive acting classes and to support one another at auditions and on the job. And we want to send the auditors the clear message that we would be very fun to work with in a rehearsal room eight hours a day for many weeks.

But many young actors are so busy pleasing one another that this wonderful trait spills over into their acting. Dramatic material is almost never about characters that get along. If you want your acting to astonish, you must learn to be a polite professional off-stage while simultaneously creating WAR that is titanic while you are acting.

Many aspiring actors do not know how to do this. And a lot of writing today, especially for television, does not supply the kind of built-in conflict that characterizes great drama. You just see lines on a page and the scenes don't seem too meaningful. You must add the depth yourself if you want to be remembered. Stella Adler called it “agitating the circumstances.” Great actors learn how to do this by studying the great dramas for many years.

You need a place where you can learn to do this where there is no penalty for failing, a real acting class. There is a penalty for failing and doing bad work when it is in front of casting directors, in any setting -- audition or paid audition workshop -- casting directors are judging you.

So in a real acting class, you need to learn how to raise the stakes, beyond simply being told you must do this. You need to learn why people fight. You need to learn some relationship psychology. You need to learn about and experience your vulnerabilities, and about how vulnerability underlies every human conflict. You need to learn about archetypes, relationship patterns and the human psyche. When you do, your imagination will grow leaps and bounds. So will your acting.

We live in a culture that saturates us with sensory input: lights, sounds, cartoons, movies, music, computers, cars, subways, city noise and on and on. We are stimulated all the time. We don’t have to use our own imaginations much, because so much of our culture does our imagination work for us now. This is a huge problem for young actors. Their imaginations are rather dead compared to the generations of actors that came before. You never had to invent friends to play with in the sandbox. You had computers and television.

Great acting comes from a highly developed imagination -- your unconscious, infinitely vast dream world. As actors in a technological world, you must work even harder to develop and connect to your imagination. I have seen actors’ imaginations grow tremendously in my classes. I have been amazed at the results of the dream work we do and imagination games we play. I have learned not to have auditions for my school, because with the right tools and exercises, actors previously dismissed as untalented can produce startlingly interesting work. I look for the rare qualities of full commitment and artistic integrity when I interview actors who want to study at my school.

Finally, great actors must have a flexible and expressive voice and body that connects to their highly developed imagination. It is astounding how few aspiring actors have good voice or body training.

All you have to tell stories is your body and voice, and your imagination that controls them. Your body and voice must be capable of painting all kinds of colors – of hitting all kinds of notes, physical or vocal. You must have a well-developed physical and vocal vocabulary – with tons of letters in your physical and vocal alphabet. Different stories require different physical and vocal languages. You only have the opportunity to develop and expand your voice and body in acting, voice and movement classes.

It is sad so many actors think they can learn acting “on the job.” You do not learn the tools great actors use on the job, and you do not experience the required voice and movement exploration on the job. An acting job is not the place to learn a process you should already have at the audition. If you think you can learn acting on the job, or be a successful, fulfilled actor with no training (or only training in college many years ago), you have an unfortunate opinion of what it takes to be a great actor.

Your voice and body must be trained throughout your career. You should take voice and movement classes that connect your voice and body to your imagination. Many voice and movement approaches are technical and devoid of the imaginative component. Old-fashioned voice teachers work on breathing and scales. This can disconnect actors and singers from their imaginations – very bad news. Old-fashioned movement teachers teach classes where technical mastery of the body is promoted, without any attention to story-telling and the imagination – very bad news also.

Look for the rare voice and movement teachers who connect their work to acting, to your imagination. You must have a feeling of vocal and physical ease when you work. And this takes years of study for most actors.

There are many more qualities required to be a wonderful actor. These days, some actors delude themselves into thinking great actors did not study acting for years. And many actors today think of acting classes as a last resort, or somewhere to go when your career is sagging.

Great actors of the last generation knew better. They knew that the basic lessons you need to learn to be a great actor must be practiced throughout your entire career. They knew that the advanced lessons can only be explored in great acting classes, not on the job. They knew there was an infinite amount to learn about acting, far more than most professions. They did not insult the study of acting. They had a deep respect for acting. If you know these things, you are already way ahead of many aspiring actors.

But respect is not enough, you should take action. You can work on your acting process and your voice and body every day. Since a specific acting process and highly trained body and voice are what get you work, keep you working, and cause your acting to be great, maybe you should make your studies as high a priority as getting to auditions.

You can do it, starting right now, no matter how long you have neglected the vital work that great actors do. Take the next right action. You deserve it. The performing arts need you now more than ever.