When I first decided to enter this business, I thought I'd get into commercials first, because you don't need experience or talent necessarily. So I started with a commercial workshop class which taught me the basics of commercial auditioning with a few lines of "copy" to learn in order to sell the product. This was not acting, but selling. This is why many actors turn their noses up at doing commercials. Most actors do commercials for the outrageous amounts of money they can earn. That was my goal, in the beginning. But now I want to be well-trained and respected as an actor.

Once I began taking serious acting classes, I discovered that I wanted to be really good. I knew I had talent and that I just needed to cultivate it and watch it grow.

This is when I began taking scene study at a well-known and respected acting school. I have studied there for one year now and I have learned so much about acting. I thought I knew about acting before, but I had no idea what it takes to be a good, natural actor. I didn't know that the character you are portraying in a scene comes from within yourself. You're supposed to place yourself in the character's circumstances and not play the idea of what you think the character should be.

This is how a typical 4 hour advanced class goes (I'm in an advanced class now, it's very exciting for me): We start off lying on the stage floor with the lights off. Our teacher leads us through breathing exercises and a brief meditation to welcome us into a room of "bright light and acceptance" in order to release our creativity. We then sometimes do tongue twisters to work on our speech skills. Try this one: "Unique New York, New York is unique, you know you need unique New York." Can you say it quickly, three times?

Then we do an exercise or two to bond the class together. They seem silly, but they're fun and bring the students' guards down.

After this entire warm up we begin our scenes. The scenes take place between two students at a time. We rehearse them on our own time with our scene partners at home. We are supposed to keep them within 5 minutes, which can be difficult because sometimes it takes awhile to get into the scene emotionally. But there is enough to work on and be critiqued on in that short amount of time.

In those 5 minutes you need to come up with a super objective (what you want in the scene); an obstacle (what stops you from getting what you want); and an action (how do you overcome the obstacle to get what you want).

You also need to put a transference onto your scene partner for someone who you know in your own life. Someone who has similar qualities to your scene partner's character.

Then you need to create a "back story" for your character and the situation they are in (a lot of the back story information is already given in the play from which the scene is taken). The back story includes where you (your character) were born, what your childhood was like, where you were raised, what you do for a living, what is your relationship to the other character and all the things that make up your character's past.

On top of all that info you need to create, a previous circumstance must be present in your mind during the scene. Where you've just come from and where you are going after the scene.

Once you've created all of this in your mind, you need to go through the scene and pick substitutions for anything you as a person cannot relate to. For example, if my character says," I'm taking my son to Martha's Vineyard for Easter break." And I don't have a son and have never been to Martha's Vineyard. I need to substitute my "son' for my younger brother perhaps and I might substitute Martha's Vineyard for Santa Barbara. 

It's all about making it truthful for you, so that you invoke believability from your audience and create it for yourself as well.

The more specific you make your back story, substitutions and transferences, the better. 

I've been working on two challenging scenes recently. In one, I play a young, pregnant, poor woman from the south, who is giving up her fourth child for adoption. The scene takes place with the woman who is adopting my baby. It was intense and difficult, as I could not relate to any of it in my personal life... lots of substitutions. 

The second scene takes place between two professors in England. (I was able to use my British accent, which was fun). We had attempted, unsuccessfully, to sleep with each other the night before and this morning (when the scene takes place) he tells me he doesn't find me attractive. He also has a fiancé.

And that in a nutshell, is the method to naturalistic acting, which is what every actor should strive to achieve. As long as I am an actor, I will continue to train. There is so much to learn and I think continuous honing of your craft can only put you ahead in this mad game of Hollywood.