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• Art Imitates Life Or The Other Way Around?
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  Sunday, Apr 13, 2008 11:48AM / Standard Entry / Members only
  78 comments

  I woke up this morning with a very strong, true, and uncomfortable feeling.  Art imitates life.  What if our artistic expressions are representations of our true selves and the artists are the ones with the eye to capture that essence?  Obviously, there is more good than bad to this theory.  But my fear is whether or not the artists' perception is more precise than our own?  If that is true, then maybe I am not the person I believe I am, but rather pretending in real life, locked down by societal conventions and faulty self-perception.  Throughout my career I have played the villain in films.  I know that as an actor, no matter how distant the character seems to what I believe to be who I am, there is always a part of me in every role.  To act you must emote real feelings.  How you bring yourself into the necessary state of emotion is different for every actor.  However, the emotions are real, or the audience can see the lies. 
  
  In honesty, I never believed I am anything like the villian characters I have played in films.  But what if that perception is real.  What if all the directors that have casted me in these films see something in me that I don't see or refuse to see?  I have always wondered why I have been mainly casted as a villain since my 2nd film.  After sometime I realized that as a screen actor, your on-screen presence and the way the audience perceives it is very different from self-perception.  In that sense, it is the audience and the directors who cast you dictates your self image.  After working with many directors, I realize that a gifted director is usually very good at capturing your essence, your unique characteristics, then manipulate them so that they fit the story they are telling.  The actor has to inspire the director to see something in them that makes the character true.  Sometimes films are developed based on the characteristics of a single actor alone.  I am only one person.  Can it be true that my self-perception has been wrong all these years?  Maybe the directors and the audience actually understand me better than myself???!!!!!
  
  To take a step back from this eerie feeling, I don't believe that the art imitates life theory is true, at least in my case.  I have a very strong sense of self and have had many years of life experience to help me understand myself.  But for younger actors, very often they cannot separate themselves from the characters they play.  Directors will often choose younger actors based on their perception of the actor's personality alone.  After all, if the true personality of the actor is similar or identical to the character in the film, it should be very easy for that actor then to relate to the character and "act" with their real emotions.
  
  So the challenge for the actor is this sense is to discover their own on-screen presence and find the right roles to convey that image.  This is the ideal, and very few actors are given that opportunity.  However it is very important for all actors to understand the difference between their on-screen personas and who they are in real life.  After all, to "believe" in a film requires suspension of disbelief.  A truly gifted actor must recognize the complexity of this parallel and recognize the points where the two worlds meet for them.  Only then will the actor cease to be passive and become a creator in the same sense as the director and the screenwriter. 
  
  Sometimes when I wake up, I just feel funny.  Maybe this comes from the residual effects of a dream I have forgotten when I wake.  Usually I don't have time to dwell on my funny feelings as I carry on with my day.  But it's Sunday and I woke up too early.  It's nice to be awake this early on Sunday for a change! 
  
  So to answer the question, does art imitate life?  Art is an expression of life.  Art allows us the space and opportunity to find mirrors into our souls and enrich our experience with color, laughter, tears, and compassion for others.  OK, that's the rah-rah version.  Art doesn't imitate life.  Art is an expression of life.   And through an artist's expression we can often see and feel something true, for ourselves.