Learn your craft. You want to be a doctor or a teacher - it's very important to learn your craft and indulge in it. You have to get involved and learn as much as possible and go for it.
Soaps are really like boot camp for acting. You learn about the industry, you learn about being on stage, and you learn about showing up on time. The sheer volume of work, on a daily basis, blows your mind and forces you to really work that muscle of memorization and just being able to change things on your feet.
Put down your cell phones, put everything away, and feel your blood pulsing in you, feel your creative impulse, feel your own spirit, your heart, your mind. Feel the joy of being alive and free.
No creative writer knows what is commercial and what isn't. You just write from your heart, you write from the deepest, creative urges in you, and you write from your soul, and you just either get lucky or not.
Even my colleagues don't read classic criticism. And my feeling is that if you don't do that then you're not really practicing your craft. That's how you learn how to do it. You don't learn how to write about jazz just from listening to jazz. You learn how to write by reading the great writers and how they worked, the great music critics.
Nobody else knows your reason for being. You do. Your bliss guides you to it. When you follow your bliss, when you follow your path to joy, your conversation is of joy, your feelings are of joy - you're right on the path of that which you intended when you came forth into this physical body.
The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity. . .
Learn your craft well. Take care of your own business. Success (popularity) is fleeting for most, but longevity lies in a quality craft with integrity. Oh, and don't take yourself too seriously.
The advice that I can give anyone wanting to be in the biz: do all the work, learn your craft. There are no shortcuts. If you stay with it, you will get an opportunity. Whether you make the most of an opportunity depends on if you are prepared. Learn your craft, every aspect of it. Eat it, drink it, sleep it, then when you are the most prepared, you can make the most of it.
At the end of the day, filmmaking is a sheer act of creative will. You have to be prepared to stick with your art no matter what comes your way.
Well, you're in a theater and it's 24 shots a second, your face, your body, your voice, and it's your craft, the way you earn your living, and it's indelible. It's not like writing a script - I write as well - I can't do another draft, it's done.
The difference between art and craft lies not in the tools you hold in your hands, but in the mental set that guides them. For the artisan, craft is an end in itself. For you, the artist, craft is the vehicle for expressing your vision. Craft is the visible edge of art.
A director, I forget who, told me that it takes 30 years to make an actor. And I believe that. You have to learn your craft, learn your trade - and also you have to live a life and experience things.
You only learn when you give your whole being to something. When you give your whole being to mathematics,you learn; but when you are in a state of contradiction, when you do not want to learn but are forced to learn, then it becomes merely a process of accumulation. To learn is like reading a novel with innumerable characters; it requires your full attention, not contradictory attention.
The difference between people who believe they have books inside of them and those who actually write books is sheer cussed persistence - the ability to make yourself work at your craft, every day - the belief, even in the face of obstacles, that you've got something worth saying.
I wrote several screenplays over the years to really polish my craft and learn from my mistakes.