GUEST COLUMN
Television and film actor Tisca Chopra, who will soon be seen in the Aamir Khan Productions’ Taare Zameen Par, pens down her thoughts on acting…
Anyone can act. Infact we all do…. with children, with our bosses and certainly with our husbands. But is it the same as acting for an audience or acting for the camera?
Alas not!!! As many discover when they land on the soil of Mumbai, from every gully, nukkad and Kasbah of the country. They may be Miss Kapurthala or the best mimic of SRK or the one with the best body in the local gym, but Mumbai is full of many thousand such.
What then is the thing you need to gainfully employed as an actor?
First please ask yourself… do I want to be a star or do I want to be an actor? The two are not necessarily synonymous. If you want to be a star… please stop reading this now!! Go to the local astrologer instead. Or pray really hard and be born into a film family!
If you want to be an actor, the answer is simple… Doctors spend a minimum of four years to get their MBBSs, Engineers’ and MBAs at least two years.
It is a colossal folly to assume that the “art†of entertainment is going to need any less.
The art and culture of any civilization is the pinnacle of its achievement. After all who remembers the business of the great businessmen in the times of Leonardo Da Vinci but who can forget his paintings?
Will Dhirubhai Ambani’s memory live longer or M F Hussain’s? My bet is on the latter!
The Goddess of the Arts blesses but a few and she demand toil and blood and sweat and hope and love of the Art; then and only then you may create a work that lives beyond your life and times!
Training in acting is essential!! Of course we all learn on the job, but that is on top of one’s basic training.
The number of hopeful hearts that break when lines can’t be said with the right inflection or emotions that refuse to look real is astoundingly large. I have seen a practicing Doctor who thought he could act, turning stiff with fright, not being able to get a single word out once ‘action’ was called. Thankfully he is back in the US and is treating patient for anxiety and other nervous disorders!
So Miss Kapurthala, Mr. Mimic and Mr. Akhada, please get into acting school of the local theater group and ACT! Watch movies and plays and do workshops. And fall in love with acting, before you leave mamma and papa’s cozy cocoon!
