The Actor Cleans Up Their Own Life

Peter Valentino Actor Training Blog

The Actor, as I have said before, must seek a certain neutrality in his own life, from which he can go in either direction. For this, I recommend living a clean and uncluttered life. In the artist, we must find some degree of asceticism. It is a part of us that would give up contrivance and, rather, take the truth.

A cluttered existence is a form of hiding. You are hiding within your stuff. Creativity is qualitative, not necessarily quantitative. This also speaks of status. The serious actor wants to be able to play various levels of social and economic status. By keeping an untarnished lifestyle, you avail yourself of the highest levels of status.

When you liberate your space, you make it sacred. That means that the work that you do there is more important to you. Cleansing removes articles that you have kept around you that you really don’t feel that good about. When you remove these offending objects, you will notice an improvement in your self-image. You will also intensify your attention to detail, something every artist in any field needs.

Acting requires clarity. You must create something out of whole cloth. That is why Acting and the mindset of manifestation have direct similarities: if you have a lot of clutter in your life, like it or not, that is part of your character. You are carrying that stuff. In our lives, everything is either trash or treasure. If there is trash in your life, it is because you are clinging to the past out of sentimentality. There is something in that excess that you don’t want to see. When you have a number of boxes that you haven’t gone through for some time, you need to  examine those boxes, to find the jewels that are held within and throw out the rest, meaningless to you now. The Actor cannot hide from himself. This is to deny one’s power. These things lurking in the dark shadows will absorb your light.

Out of simplicity comes freedom, the actor’s stock in trade. Often, very creative people become chaotic until they make the switch from the child to the adult. The Actor will always have a child inside, who is born again each day. The successful Actor must also have a strong adult self in order to protect that inner child. That child craves a clean slate in order to grow and experience. Be sparse in possessions, and always strive towards higher quality material objects. Higher-quality objects are more yang and have a stronger focus.

If the actor allows freedom to be his path and focuses on balance, he or she will eventually reach the apotheosis of artistic merit.