Acting: Finding the Line (and then deciding what to do when you get there)

"Acting is a cheap way to do things that you would never dare to do yourself."
-Robert De Niro

"It's very easy for me to become someone else . . . . On stage, you're split up. You are the characters and yourself. Like schizophrenia or multiple personalities. Reality versus illusion. The split feeling is not comfortable. Uneasy. The ground is moving . . . . It's like time or space traveling . . . ."
-Actor interviewed in Pretend the World is Funny and Forever

"Acting is putting on a mask. The worst torture that can happen to me is not having a mask to get in back of."
-Henry Fonda


It seems that I have been wrestling for the past 10 years, at least, with what it looks like to be both a Christian and an actor. I am starting to put together the pieces--or rather, I think God is doing that for me--meaning that the scattered questions are starting to boil down to more concise, condensed questions. So, even if I don't have full answers yet, at least I am starting to understand what it is I am asking.

Here is one of my big questions:

Does being a Christian make me a bad actor?

I scrawled these words in the margin of my sermon notes this morning at church. It sounds like a dangerous question, maybe, but I need to ask it. Theatre is notorious for an "anything goes" attitude. In fact, that is the title of a Broadway musical. Artists, not just actors, but artists in general, want a place to express themselves, and to a certain extent, I am one of those artists.

It does no one any good to pretend they are something that they are not, and to put on a happy face mask in their day-to-day life, feeling like no one knows them. But then, that is one extreme on the spectrum.

The other extreme, I think, is this idea that anything goes. And I don't say that because I am all about hushing people up and making sure we are all just "nice" people. Here is what I am getting at:

I have heard my dad reference 1 Corinthians 10:23-24 in the Bible, where Paul says, "'Everything is permissible'--but not everything is beneficial. 'Everything is permissible'--but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others."

I am in a Sunday School series right now at my church called "Becoming Discerning Consumers of Media", and one question our teacher, Chris, raised this morning was, "How do we bring about peace ("shalom") in the areas of media?" In other words, as we think about how we use (or, in the case of the performer, create) media, we ask ourselves, "Is this helping me to love God more and to love my neighbor better?"

I wrote a research paper last year in my grad program that was really just a fun excuse to look up a lot of stuff I've been wanting to learn more about. I chose a clear title: The Effect of Acting on Actors. If you have fifteen minutes and are interested, I can send you a copy. Absolutely no pressure, but this happens to be a topic I could discuss for hours.

I wrote the paper because I wanted to start understanding, for instance, why celebrities will play romantic leads in a movie and then end up together in real life. Or, why I, personally, have found it so hard to draw a line between my characters' lives and mine.

So, the paper was a look at how we as actors are affected by the characters we play and why. I found quotes like this one, from actor Bryan Cranston, interesting: "When you play a character, he's in your skin. You are him. When people ask what I think of Walt [his character on the show Breaking Bad], I have to step out of my head and my body, and try to look back at me."

What do we praise in an actor these days? As in, what wins you an Academy Award? "Oh, his performance was so ___________!"

(I will give you twenty seconds to come up with some adjectives.)

Did you fill in the blank with things like, "believable", "truthful", "real"? If so, I am thinking you are not alone. So, here's where I become a person split in two.

There are two "Elizabeth-the-Actor"s:

#1: This Elizabeth-the-Actor is willing to sacrifice all for her art, jump right in, cross all lines, put everything secondary to creating the most immersively believable characters I can, come what may. I am a natural connector, and I will tear down all walls onstage for the sake of the art.

#2: This Elizabeth-the-Actor knows the damage that that sort of approach has brought upon my psyche in the past, and how unhealthy it can be for me. This second me knows that God has put certain limits in place because He loves me, in the same way that I don't let my cute little baby boy go play with matches. And I know that God has assigned me infinite value, and that I am more important than the work that I do.

A quick note: I know that these sorts of desires are not exclusive to Christians, and so really, anyone could be wrestling with similar questions of how to be healthy while doing their work as an actor, or really, their work in any field. I just happen to be a Christian and an actor, and these are the worldview and the career field with which I am dealing, so those are the perspectives from which I write. Okay, back to this blog post . . .

A mentor of mine told me recently that he thinks that either you are willing to "cross that line", to "go there", to immerse yourself fully in the part, or else you will always be a "good" actor, never brilliant.

So, I ask: Does being a Christian make me a bad actor?

I hope the answer is no. I hope that there is a narrow way that I am not seeing that God is leading me along that will eventually enable me to create fantastic characters while taking fantastic care of my character as a person. People will be moved by the art that I am a part of, and I will have a healthy and thriving marriage and family and a balanced perspective on life.


But, for the time being, I keep walking with one foot in front of the other, and with more questions than answers.