Great acting is about emotional intelligence

Creating great acting has always required the actor to be highly emotionally aware. Not just regarding their characters, but of themselves as individuals. In the early 1900s there was an amazing actress called Eleonora Duse, who was arguably one of the greatest actresses that ever lived. When she was interviewed regarding her acting, she said that one of the reasons her acting continued to grow and get better was due to her ability to use her own experiences within her acting. Instead of seeing her personal life issues as distractions, she saw them as potential inspiration.

To this day, many actors struggle with this concept within their actor training. Many acting classes and acting courses tend to veer away from this area, as it is felt that it is very psychological.

This is an interesting standpoint for an industry that is built on revealing the psychology and lives of characters. Surely this requires the actor to delve into the emotional states within themselves to recreate those states for a character? This was what Duse did to create her outstanding body of work.

There is an actor training that does focus on emotional recreation - Method Acting.

Method Acting lessons focus on allowing the actor to get in touch with themselves to recreate emotion, consistently. Its foundations were borne out of Behavioural Psychology, where it was established that humans react to sensorial stimulus.

During Method Acting courses, the actor spends a lot of time reliving personal memories from their past in conjunction with their senses. For example, to recreate joy, they may work on a memory where they experienced extreme joy - and relive that event by recollecting the sounds, sights, tastes, smells and feel of the event. During acting classes, the actor carries out these acting exercises to recreate the correct emotional content, as emotion in itself can only be recreated through the senses.

In the UK, Brian Timoney Actors' Studio is the only UK acting school or drama school in London to solely focus on this approach. The acting course is focused on recreating real, in depth, believable acting of the highest standard.

Brian Timoney recently said "It's important for the actor to be emotionally aware. My approach to acting training is to get the actor to get in touch with this side of themselves to build their ability to express themselves without fear."