Aaaand Scene.

I am a horrible actress.  Seriously.  And it's weird because I would totally think I would be good at it.  And I also think that other people think that I would be totally good at it.  But I'm not.

Just like how I am super duper funny sometimes, when I'm trying not to be, but then you ask me to be funny on demand and...I got nothin'.  That's how it is with me and acting.

I thought it would be a good idea to put a voice over reel together before I move back to Lala Land.  Incidentally, I would officially be okay with them tearing down the Hollywood sign if they would replace it with one that said "Lala Land".  I really would.  Maybe when I move back I will start a petition.

So, I have a friend up here in Nowhereville (where I smartly moved to when I left Lala Land) who has been doing voice over work for almost twenty years and she has an in home studio.  She was someone whom (I'm using "whom" without really knowing if that's the right choice...I never did understand the rules of "whom") I looked up to back in the day (she's a friend of my friends mother originally, so she's a generation ahead of me) and we have a lot of similarities in our humor and such (sick, twisted, and inappropriate) and we've always had a special bond.  I figured, she has so much experience and I'm SUCH a natural, of course, and in no time we can whip something up that I can take with me and it will be just one more thing I can have in my talent arsenal to use to make some mula.

Um...not so much.  First of all, where I got the idea that I could just make a voice over demo reel with no experience is kind of beyond me.  Yesterday, prior to 2pm, it just seemed like the logical thing to do.  Fast forward to 4pm with me in the recording booth, lump in my throat, fighting back tears, and completely unable to do anything, much less act, it started to seem like a really dumb idea.

I have been listening to radio my whole life.  How many commercials I've actually heard since birth is probably equivalent to how many stars are in the sky.  Zillions I think.  How many of these ads have I mimicked to perfection?  Ga-Zillions.  I have one of those voices.  I can parrot very well, tone, inflection, you name it, I can copy it.  And people laugh and say, "You sound EXACTLY like that!"  And I do.  I totally do.  So, I just kinda figured that I could sound commercially, use my voice, and that would be that.  Well, that's not how it works.

If the script calls for the word "Magical", you have to sound well, magical.  Right now it seems like I could do that, but yesterday when called upon to do so, I couldn't.  I couldn't do anything right.  I couldn't speak from my diaphragm.  What the hell does that mean?  My voice was too high.  I sounded dead.  I couldn't be sexy, sincere, sophisticated, caring, serious, jolly, or any other adjective that suggests that a human being has a pulse.  At least those were my notes.

My friend, let's call her Wendy had to repeat over and over "Just get out of your own way".  Um, okay, I don't even know what that means, so being able to do it in the next fives seconds probably isn't going to happen.  I've been told this before you know.  Not with acting, but just with life.  Get out of your own way.  Now, I actually do know what this means, but what it actually entails DOING, I have no clue.

This is why I want to take acting classes.  Desperately.  I know I can freakin' do this shiz.  I know I can.  But something happens to me when it's time to perform and I cannot explain it.  I am not the only one, I've seen it with other people and one of the places I've seen it a lot is on America's Next Top Model. (My very favorite guilty pleasure show.)

If you watch the show then you will totally know what I'm talking about.  There's always this one girl on the show who totally has what it takes to win, but she's so traumatized by everything that's happening that she simply cannot do what is asked of her.  The people try to help, the photographer, the director, whoever, the more anxiety ridden she becomes and eventually she just starts crying.  What happens is, everyone knows she can do it, SHE knows she can do it, but for some reason she's not doing it and everyone is bewildered and she knows that they are like "what the f?" and so then she's like "what the f?" and then instead of thinking about what she's supposed to be doing, she starts thinking about why she's not doing it, why she can't do it, what is wrong with her, and then the internal monologue becomes extreeeemely self defeating and there you are.  Tears.  And a shitty performance.  And all the while watching from home you can see what they want from her, and you can see that she's totally capable if she would just...just...just...get out of her own way!  It's painful to watch.

I understand the frustration of everyone involved because that's totally me.

I think the problem with me is that my self perception is very very off kilter.  Everything I do when "acting" comes off as ridiculously fake.  I do that annoying crap where I try to look/sound happy, sexy, angry, whatever instead of FEELING happy, sexy, angry, whatever.  And I mostly think that's because I'm not sure what any of that stuff feels like.  Well, angry I could probably do, but...the other stuff...I can mimic what other people do, but if I'm not feeling it, it just seems phony, cause it is.

I guess this is why a guy that I dated several years ago used to always tell me to take some improv classes.  He told me they were like therapy.  This guy was, and still is, a total jerk (we are still sort of friends), but he could see me very very clearly.  The problem was, he was just like me and so in hating things about himself that he saw in me, he would give me tips and advice from a places of disgust and "tough love" that only caused me to feel worse about myself, so nothing he said ever helped.  I wish he could have be more kind about it, maybe I would have listened to him.

This brings me to the issue of sensitivity that is also a part of this whole failure to perform thing.  I am so freakin' sensitive.  All of the notes that I got yesterday from my friend were totally valid, but they weren't kid-gloved and I felt very stupid and inadequate.  Like a total failure and an idiot.  And I don't blame her for not loading up her hints with honey and molasses, that's not typically what people do out in the real world, but...I'm just too sensitive at this point to not beat myself up when I'm not doing a good job.

I know I'm not the only person in the world with low self esteem and a distorted sense of self who ever wanted to act.  I actually think that those are the two biggest requirements to being actor.  I mean...am I wrong?  I think a lot of actors, Jamie Lee Curtis being one of them,  come to their "craft" (god I hate it when they refer to it that way) because they are missing a fundamental sense of love and security from their childhood so they make a career out of getting reactions out of people.  Acting.

What it all comes down to in the end is practice.  Practice hearing/taking criticisms (which are NOT personal), practice feeling things that may otherwise be a bit unfamiliar, and practice learning what constitutes normal human behavior.

I honestly don't know how I've gotten this far in life.

Aaaand Scene.