Learn to act with emotion.
The convincing portrayal of emotion by an actor draws his audience into the scene. In years gone by, certain famous actors relied on their neuroses to fuel performances at personal costs that often led to tragic circumstances. Today's actors employ safer ways to achieve this goal. Learn to express emotions in a realistic way with professional tips on acting.
Your Experiences
Use your real-life experiences by identifying the emotions such as joy, grief, anger, fear and love you felt in situations that made a strong impact on you. Access these emotions via your memory and tailor them to fit the character you are playing. Examples include remembering the grief you felt when a pet passed away, the joy of passing an important examination and the fear felt while walking through a creepy graveyard at night. This method of using your own emotions to generate a believable character was pioneered by the actor and drama teacher Stanislavki, who later modified his system and advised students to access memories that were at least seven years in the past, to avoid traumatic effects and stress caused by reliving recent events.
Your Imagination
Imagination, the tool that is active in your daydreams, allows you to "get inside" a character. In the same manner by which children create fantasy worlds and imaginary friends and situations, the actor must create the character in his imagination and see himself as the character to be believable. Most people have imagined winning the lottery or inheriting a large sum of money, and this is the facility that can be trained for use in acting.
Your Senses
Use your senses to evoke the required emotions for any role. The two most useful senses are smell and sight. Smells are strongly linked to your memories. Scents such as fresh-baked apple pies bring back happy memories from childhood scenes. Others, such as the smell of hospital disinfectants, remind us of less pleasant occasions. What arises from the memory of each smell are emotions, and these are put to use in acting. Observation of people on the street and in crowds, especially during demonstrations, is a rich mine of emotions for actors who copy and modify the gestures and facial expressions they witness.
Your Classes
To fully express emotions takes practice and skill. Actors learning to do this require the support, training and encouragement offered by professional classes. These classes provide a safe environment for emotions to emerge and space to dissolve emotional blockages that restrict the scope of an actor. An emotionally constricted actor who is uncomfortable with expressing anger in his life will not portray it convincingly on stage.
