Getting Into Character

When you're acting it's important to LEARN YOUR CHARACTER. Yes you need to make the character your own but you need to analyze the character so that you can do it correctly. Whenever I receive a role there are a few things I've learned you should always do to learn your character. First of all you need to know the time period. Obviously someone in the 1920's isn't going to have their hand on their hips or other quirks we have in our modern society. Time period is also important because people behaved different within families, schools and every day life. This brings me to my next tip that you need to learn character interaction. Look at the other people your character will be in contact and interact with. If you're doing a reenactment or a show previously done or if there is a movie use those past performances to see how your character should talk, behave and act towards the other characters. If this is an original work, ask the director or writer how they imagined your character acting towards the others and the kind of relationships they have. Finally ALWAYS learn your character's history. Learn their backstory, what they are driven to do, and who they are, as if doing a history report. If you don't know who they are, how can you pretend to be them? And also make sure to enjoy it. It should be fun getting to be in another person's shoes for the sake of entertainment.