ShmoopTube

00:04

[Coop and Dino singing]

00:13

There are a lot of jobs out there: coal miner, brain surgeon, [Man working as a coal miner]

00:17

brain surgeon who operates in coal mines…

00:20

…okay, maybe not that one…

00:21

But there are a lot of jobs, and they all sound pretty cool! [list of jobs]

00:24

We can't possibly do every job in the world…or…can we…?

00:29

You see, there's one magical career that lets us be whoever we want to be… [List of jobs falls into hat]

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What is this magical career we speak of..?

00:35

It's….acting, acting, acting!

00:38

Actors portray characters in all sorts of different media, including theatre, television, [Coop discussing actors]

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radio, and film.

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Though generally not all at the same time.

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Making a live theatrical, televised radio film can get a tiny bit complicated. [Man on stage as microphone appears]

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So the actor's main job is to interpret the script and their character.

00:54

This means a lot more than just memorizing their lines.

00:56

They need to use their imagination to get into their character, and represent their [Chickens walking around a patch of grass]

01:00

point of view.

01:01

For an actor, getting into a character can be tricky.

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It's not like a mascot costume that you can just pop on and off. [Cheerleaders dancing]

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For the mascots, the toughest bit is finding someone to zip them in.

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Actors, however, might have to learn some sort of specialized skill, such as musical [Man playing a large instrument]

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training, horseback riding, or martial arts.

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After all, it's pretty tough to make a movie about a skilled samurai if the actor doesn't [Man acting and has arm cut off by samurai sword]

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know how to fight.

01:21

There's always CGI, but it's never quite the same…

01:24

An actor might even need to pick up some special language training, learning dialects or regional [Person picks up book]

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ways of speaking.

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Again, an actor's going to have a tough time playing the Queen of England if they sound

01:33

like they've spent their entire life surfing waves in Southern California. [Girl holding surfboard]

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And even though this might sound really simple, one of the hardest things that an actor must

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be able to do is study and understand human behavior.

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You'd think that'd be pretty easy, given that the vast, vast majority of actors are already humans. [Leonardo Di Caprio walking off stage]

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After all, not too many dogs or aliens win Academy Awards.

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But this is the tricky thing about acting.

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It's one thing to act naturally in your day-to-day life. [Girl brushing teeth]

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It's another thing entirely to act naturally while a camera's pointed at your face, and

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dozens of people are watching you. [Girl looking in a mirror while being filmed]

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These are the kinds of risks no coal miner or brain surgeon would ever want to face.

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So really, who has the harder career here?

02:09

…Yeah, okay, probably the brain surgeon and coal miner. [Piece of coal hits miner on the head]

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Sorry, actors.

02:12

We still love you.

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