Acting passion – What is your calling?

A demanding career

A number of actors advise pursuing this very demanding career only if you can’t feel right doing anything else. And a number of highly talented actors change direction into writing, producing or some other vocation.

You need to be aware of what is really driving you.

Maria Bello on being of service

Maria Bello [left] was often asked by her best friend at college, an Augustinian priest, how she was going to serve in life. She says in a magazine interview, “So it was a difficult decision for me to become an actor because I was on my way to law school. But I realized that you serve by doing the thing you love, doing it well, and being conscious about what you’re giving to the world.”

Jamie Rose – fame is not enough

Actor and teacher Jamie Rose notes on her site JRose Studio that “Too many actors.. concentrate all of their energies on getting an agent etc. and don’t spend enough time on becoming great actors. If you are only about outward success – fame money etc., I promise that there will never be enough of it to fill you up…” [more of her quotes on The Inner Actor site].

Part of doing what you’re meant to do is learning to disregard the seduction of fame, or the pressure of what other people think, if it isn’t right for you.

Suzanne Falter-Barns on being your own quirky self

Suzanne Falter-Barns, who writes and leads workshops on finding and living your life purpose, asks in her article Finding Your Niche in Life, “Are you willing to rise above everyone else’s agenda for you, and carve out the niche that is rightfully yours.. and honor your greater self instead? Are you willing to be known as the tremendous, quirky soul that you are?“

She gives as an example Roger the Jester, “a wonderful, original performer” who, after unsuccessful stabs at psychology and photojournalism, “landed on jesting by asking himself what he wanted to spend the rest of his life doing.”

“What I really liked was making people laugh, and goofing off,” Roger said. “Once I got booked for a show and they told me, ‘We’d just like you to carry on.’ Well, that’s what my mother used to yell at me — ‘Will you stop carrying on?’ And now, here I was, carrying on and getting paid for it.”

related pages: vocation / calling … achievement
~~