Insights 1, Insights 2, Insights 3, Insights 4
A third randomized list of thoughts on VO, acting and a life of going for it.
The best cure for stage fright is more stage time.
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Rejection is an actor’s dumbbell.
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With no costumery, set, audience energy or eye contact, in VO there is nowhere for bad acting to hide.
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You become more who you are by doing what you love.
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Nothing speaks louder to others you’re with than what you silently repeat to yourself about yourself.
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You don’t necessarily need a classroom to become an actor. Study acting in a classroom only if it helps.
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Delayed tipping point: It may take a long time of seemingly nothing happening in order for something to happen.
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Handle self-congratulation with the rubber gloves of suspicion.
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The best thing to happen in improv is for something to go wrong. This is why a good improviser never fears the vertigo of stepping onto a stage.
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Even a pothole is part of the road forward.
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Actors are hired not for neutrality or obedience but to have an opinion.
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Don’t limit yourself by underestimating how good it can get- or how quickly that can happen.
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Voice actors are like short-order personal chefs. Words are our cutlery, our performance the meal.
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The ultimate goal of any good acting class is not to go to acting class.
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Nothing attracts luck like being ready for luck.
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Market value: Well-placed confidence is always in high demand.
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Without its patience, how could a spider earn a living with its artwork?
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Actors: Don’t do merely what you’re told. Do what works, what solves the puzzle, what needs to be done.
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Being an actor requires both a suit of armor and a proclivity for proudly flaunting about naked in a crowd.
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Even the worst thunderstorm never fails to drift away.
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The bigger the elephant, the less bothersome the tick.
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The effort of amateur-to-pro: You start out treading water in a pond but you end up swimming up stream in a river.
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Aim higher: Survive then thrive- but also endure.
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If you’re dependable you’re in. If you’re invaluable you move up and return.
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Success can be its own worst obstacle.
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Beginners: The longer you can hold off directing your art towards money, the better.
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Sleep breeds optimism.
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Normal may get you in the building, but authentically unique gets you in the room.
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The peril and opportunity of the great marketplace is that, assuming all goes well, the only boundaries left will be the ones you choose to set.
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Change favors the most adaptable.
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The memory of a wound is a wound doubled.
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Actors don’t lament a curtain call. We come together, tell the story then say our farewells.
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Better to be a Swiss Army knife than a can opener.
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The peril and promise of blue-sky opportunity in Los Angeles is its pervasive volatility.
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Turns out, a watched kettle boils.
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The best way to capture money is to avoid hunting money.
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Why have sharks been around for hundreds of millions of years? They committed fully to their environment and never evolved a capacity for crippling self-doubt.
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Acting is a unique human education. The child actor is trusted and relied upon equal to an adult. The adult actor must be as open and honest as a child.
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A smartphone atomizes and isolates us by stripping human communication of nuance. It is the opposite of theater.
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Welcome even your regrets at your dinner table- just don’t overfeed them.
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Great art lasts: In over 300 million years the cockroach’s classic design has never gone out of style.
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Controlling talented people doesn’t make you talented or an artist or even an expert.
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A good voice actor fills even silence with meaning.
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As an artist, you contain vast energy resources awaiting discovery and liberation. Locate it, extract it and set up a refinery.
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Enthusiasm is contagious. Talent isn’t.
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Excavate the fossils buried in your backyard.
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One peril of being an actor is being paid to walk around with an emotional volcano on tap.
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Be careful about buying too much into your own press packet.
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Be wary of non-actors who purport to teach acting. Business minds can teach business, but actors have their own vocabulary.
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No matter their competency or level of expertise, anyone is happy to take your money.
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A pebble can start a ripple of perpetual consequence to the lake.
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This world needs creatives: What is more human or humanizing than story telling?
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In the end, all you’re left with is what you’ve given away.
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