It’s funny, a while ago, I confessed to Husband that I missed being an actress. It’s been years that I’ve been on stage or that I pursued that life. And he said “I’ve got news for you, you are still an actor.” I was very struck by that because I realized that was very true.
First, just the skills and experiences of acting absolutely shape how I perform my job and are highly practical. It helps me just live and deal with certain moments, and I notice when I work with people who are former actors, they are strong communicators.(I mean, I appreciate that so much — like can you at least reply “got it” to my email?)
There are so many work situations or meetings where I just don’t feel like it. Know what’s useful? The experience of not feeling like doing an emotionally demanding scene or not having the energy to do a highly comic scene. You just had to get into the head space where you could do the moment, and that helps me so much at work today.
Likability. It helps in corporate American when you are widely liked, and I can do that because part of an actor’s job is to just be likable. (Because of this skill set, I do think most people don’t necessarily think I’m that intelligent or educated, but as we know, that would be incorrect.)
All of that is the practical and somewhat superficial stuff. What’s more difficult to explain are the moments at work that feel like performing. I don’t mean performing like you’re being extroverted or even presenting in front of a group of people. What I mean is that moment when performance work — where there is alignment between your body, your words, the moment and the world. I don’t know how else to explain that feeling, but when you get there, you tap into like a resonance or some kind of energy that’s greater than you. Exactly like if you were fitting all these different parts of pipe together and when you tap on one end, and the note rises through the whole thing.
No wonder I fell in love with acting and why it took so long and so much to leave it. I was hot pursuit and constantly chasing that feeling. Of course you had to practice and audition, and then even when cast, it doesn’t always work out, but when it does, I mean, it was the the best. It is the best. But what’s lucky is that I get to experience that in my life still, and maybe it is my time as an actor that makes me more attuned for those moments and that’s why I can still experience them. That’s why I still feel like an actor.
There’s so much of life where I definitely feel imposter syndrome, including during that time when I was an actor (really wasn’t about being on stage per se, but getting material that was so good that I had a drive to embody those words), but what’s nice about age is that those feelings fall away. And then there’s just you.