If ever you're looking for a sure fire way to get yourself feeling horrified over...
yourself, I got one:
Get on film, and watch the play-back tape.
Now.
Now:
I've been on camera before. I actually really like it, and I actually think that I typically am pretty stupid good at it. Not to toot my own horn, but yeah. I do. It's fun. It's a challenge. And I think that 9 times out of 10 I rise to it pretty freaking well.
But.
"Good" things have this crazy little tendency to go bad on occasion.
And yikes.
...
I started a new job today (job #2 SUCCESS! SO! EXCITED!), and I was having a good ol time, buddying up to these new fun spunky co-workers of mine and tipping this ridiculously good locally-roasted coffee back like it was my job--because it kind of is--when it happened. The thing that inherently always happens whenever I meet a whole new group of people who know virtually nothing about me all at once:
"Hey, Angela--are you an actress?"
Ummm...yes. (Aw god, aw crap.) Why?
"Oh no, nothing. I could just tell."
(Yikes.) Oh no. How? What do you mean?
"No no, you're just veryyyyy--" (argh, here goes) "--exuberant."
...
Over time, I've come to interpret such a phrase to mean something like You resemble a whirling dervish with a rubber face....and talking hands.
Other such terms that frequently get thrown my way:
--animated
--expressive
--caricature-like
--charactery
--big
--not subtle
--not shy
--theatrical
--Italian.
...And yeah, ok, all of these things might very well be true, but godDAMN it's like a curse. When I was young and entirely too insecure, I thought that I scared enough people away with some of my physical attributes--and now that I'm older and essentially over all of that stuff, I'm suddenly keenly aware that I have this overwhelming expressiveness about me. This entirely genuine uncensored-like expressiveness.
Eff. Is that off-putting?
And if it's not necessarily in life, is it professionally?
I'm smart enough to recognize the fact that there is an ENORMOUS difference between how you play things on stage versus how you play them on camera. On stage, you need "big" because the "big" helps your every thought read to the 600 people sitting a half-a-mile away from you--staring at you with their binoculars, drinking their boxed white zin and feeling uber-proud and cultured that they are taking themselves out for not just a night at the theatre, but a night of SHAKESPEARE! SHAKES! PYAHH! ...Goodness me, that blonde corseted-thing has her iambic pentameter down! And she is awfully animated...
Versus on camera, where your thoughts and actions have to be much more real because your audience is so much closer, and they could--therefore--see you lying that much easier. The world is much more contained, so your thoughts and actions should be equally as contained.
Well.
I guess I just threw allllll of that crap out the window last night, because there I was: rubber-facing. RubberFace.
See RubberFace walk into a workshop. See RubberFace see a friend, and shriek with glee. See RubberFace size up the competition around the room--RubberFace has this in the bag.
See RubberFace beam at the casting director as he walks into the studio, and then watch as RubberFace charms him with her bubbly "Hello!" and can-do candor. RubberFace is ready. RubberFace is set. She is so. completely. money, baby, she's money.
And then: action.
...
I looked at the play-back, and I could see the wheels turning in my head, I saw where the crap I was going emotionally when I wasn't even moving (gooood...)--and then I decided to express it further by making my eyebrows dance.
DEEE-zaster.
Why do I jump to this?
Is it that I don't trust enough in the fact that I am a completely and utterly transparent person (because I am, I so am), or is that truthfully just how I operate? Am I really like this wind-up toy of a girl, gesticulating and rubber-facing my way through life? ...Is that ok?
Can I calm the eff down?
...Or do I even want to?
Could this be my niche, or my crutch?
And, honestly, maybe I don't even have to decide.
I have bounded my way into the world's arguably most subjective industry. My expressive nature could read as "DEEE-zaster"-like to two dozen people--and maybe even two dozen really impressive people--but then, there could be one person who sees it as just that:
"Expressive".
"Not boring."
"Not stiff."
"Not subtle."
"Big."
"Charactery."
"Animated."
"Exuberant."
And maybe that'll be great.
But, for real.
I could at least attempt to tame some of this, couldn't I? (With some discretion...maybe...)
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