A Is For...Acting

I am taking part in the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Twenty six posts over the course of the month of April all corresponding to a different letter of the alphabet. Here's the first post I have written for it and naturally enough it concerns the letter A.

A is for...Acting:

I am an actor.

I make that sound like a confession, or an introduction you might hear at Actor's Anonymous, and I don't mean to.

My father was in the Royal Air Force and before I knew what an actor was or did, I was going to follow in his footsteps and join up. We lived on RAF bases, I went to RAF schools and practically everyone I knew was involved in the RAF somehow, so I had no idea their was a life outside the Royal Air Force. When I was about seven years old, we returned from two years based in Germany and I attended non-forces school that did a school play every Christmas. I was very quickly hooked. I loved it. I became aware of actors for the first time. The people that did this for a living fascinated me. I read TV and film credits voraciously and would be able to quote tranches of certain actors CVs whenever I saw them on screen. I began recognising actor's voices in cartoons and the revelation that a few actors could voice a cast of thousands was magical to me.

I knew that I wanted to be an actor, but there was still a veil over the profession. I had no idea how one became an actor and the only references on TV were in Making Of [Insert Film Name] style documentaries/promotional material, that implied that actors were to be found in armchairs and full make-up waiting to be interviewed and that all actors worked constantly.

Sadly, that isn't the case. This is an exaggeration, but:

I've certainly never had more fun in a cold and drafty church hall than when I've been rehearsing a play. When you hear an audience react positively, it's intoxicating. It may very well be an addiction, but it's not one that I'm willing to seek treatment for. Maybe those periods of unemployment work like going cold turkey. It's unpredictable and unreliable, but when you are working there's no job like it...