We’re All Actors And We Don’t Even Know It
You probably couldn't play certain roles as well as Brando. But Brando couldn't play certain roles as well as you.
Acting may seem like the most glamorous job in the world—when you’re rich, famous, and have your name imprinted in the musty floors of Hollywood Boulevard. But in the wild, wild west of everyday life, it’s a survival mechanism born of our need to navigate complex social situations.
Have you ever struggled to “act natural” in everyday life? To remain calm under pressure? Confident under stress? Indifferent under scrutiny?
Whether you’re old or young, experienced or a noob, Marlon Brando or Tommy Wiseau—we’ve all been there at some socially agonizing point in life.
But if “natural” is simply a state of being, why does it require so much effort?
Why must we act as such?
Well, if you asked a social anthropologist or a professional actor, they’d probably tell you that’s what it takes to communicate your thoughts, manage your emotions, and reveal parts of yourself essentially unknowable to the outside world—sometimes, even to yourself.
But that’s not acting… is it?
What is acting?
Me? A potential Broadway star? Our camera-shy hearts can hardly fathom it!
But I’m not talking about lifestyles of the rich and famous here. I’m talking about the social, psychological, and physical process of inhabiting a role aka the work professional actors do for a living.
As it turns out, behaving like your “self” as opposed to an “other” is not much different from the process of play and representation used in film and theater. For professional actors, the line between “self” and “other” is intentionally blurred beyond the point of recognition—sometimes even to themselves, if only for a moment.
Call it a useful delusion.
Yet there’s far more to professional acting than the pursuit of authenticity or the desire to “be rich and, you know, someone important”…
Good acting, on or off the big screen, requires the ability to examine some aspect of the human condition, and experience and/or represent it with specific motive.
Think about it. What makes an actor “good” isn’t the strength of applause nor the number of awards acknowledging it, but their ability to elicit a desired response in a way that feels mysteriously unstaged—even if it’s the very product of calculated self-staging.
In other words…
A good actor manages to convince you that what you see is "real."
Of course, for folks like you and me, acting (good or bad) simply happens on auto-pilot mode. We don’t have a script typewritten in Courier 12 nor a fictional backstory for each role played out throughout our lives.
We just do it moment by moment, day by day, within the range of our social, biological, and environmental limits. Except more than half the time we’re not even aware of the many parts we play, let alone how we play them.
Isn’t that fascinating?
Sociologist Erving Goffman certainly thought so. In fact, he wrote a whole book about it in 1956 called The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which birthed an entirely new field of study called dramaturgy, i.e., using theater as a metaphor for human behavior.
But a LOT has changed since. Not just how we interact but where, why and with whom…
All the world's a stage. So what?
Many of us react defensively to the idea of “playing a character” in life, but deem it worthy of knighthood when done exceptionally well on stage. So why the double-standard?
In film and theater, a good actor is deemed an artist worthy of praise. It’s high-art. A craft. A service to society. Olivier. Hepburn. Streep. Day-Lewis.
But in the “real” world, a good actor is often reduced to a morally questionable trickster. A liar. Imposter. Crook. Con-artist. Bundy. Madoff. Holmes. Belfort.
Beyond the gold-plated gates of Hollywood, acting becomes synonymous with manipulation and deceit. The craft becomes a vice—a danger to society.
This distinction is made worse by the cult of “celebrity” where success is measured in the currency of fame and fortune, as opposed to the everyman who is motivated not by artistic genius nor the promise of stardom, but by the attainment of social utility.
The inability to view ourselves in the same light as professional actors is perhaps best illustrated in a 1973 interview by TV host Dick Cavett with acting legend Marlon Brando.
In his first televised appearance since the Wounded Knee incident—for which he refused the Academy Award for Best Actor in The Godfather—Brando is asked why he downgrades acting as a profession to which he famously responds:
Acting is a survival mechanism.
We act to save our lives every day.
Source: The Dick Cavett Show, YouTube
Not only does this interview capture the process of negotiation that drives performance in everyday life, but in Cavett’s case, also indicates the importance of self-delusion when constructing a “sincere” representation of self.
Ultimately, the only way for the host to realize the depth of his own performance is for an “other” (in this case, his own guest) to break the fourth wall.
This often disruptive and uncomfortable process of revelation (captured poignantly in Cavett’s reaction: “I just feel like all my clothes have been taken off!”) is explained by Goffman in the following words:
At one extreme, we find that the performer can be fully taken in by his own act; he can be sincerely convinced that the impression of reality which he stages is the real reality. When his audience is also convinced in this way about the show he puts on—and this seems to be the typical case—then for the moment, anyway, only the sociologist or the socially disgruntled will have any doubts about the ‘realness’ of what is presented.
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, p. 10
This is self-deception at its finest and it explains why we struggle to notice it within ourselves, despite our best efforts. More importantly, I think it teaches us an important lesson about society:
Whether or not someone is in fact genuine or dishonest, or somewhere in between, becomes irrelevant when a majority is convinced of the sincerity of the performance.
This will become abundantly obvious with the rise of AI actors as they learn to read, replicate, and respond to human behavior with extraordinary nuance.
Why does any of this matter?
If acting is a fundamental part of human interaction, it’s important to understand how and why we do it, especially as it pertains to our survival.
What’s truly bizarre today is that we tend to act in the absence of a physical audience.
The show goes on even when we’re all alone.
This is concerning for a number of reasons, especially when you consider it in the context of a backstage.
Goffman described the backstage in everyday life as “a place, relative to a given performance, where the impression fostered by the performance is knowingly contradicted as a matter of course […] Here the performer can relax; he can drop his front, forgo speaking his lines, and step out of character” (p. 69).
But remember, this was written in the 50s. BEFORE the advent of social media and smartphones.
Today the backstage, as we know it, is going extinct.
As face-to-face interactions are replaced by screen-to-screen interactions, we now perform at an unprecedented length of time without a designated space for creative incubation, critical thinking, and self-reflection (the same “backstage” clearly still distinguishable to professional actors).
This is particularly obvious in work-from-home settings and social media where the line between public and private erodes, cannibalizing the self for a longer shelf-life.
We’re never alone, even when we think we are. An invisible audience follows us into our most sacred space, demanding our attention long after the curtain goes down.
What roles are we playing in our personal and professional lives, and what lies are we telling ourselves to sustain a fiction that doesn’t serve us?
Maybe it’s time to break the fourth wall and find out.
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