The Authentic Actor with Michael Laskin | 060 - Actors Talk - Come Inside The Acting Business

Your success, however you may define that, is likely tied to some 'personal indelibility' some instant reaction people have to YOU, not to the part you're playing, but to YOU. That's hard to teach...in fact you can't teach it. But you can open people's eyes to it.

Michael Laskin - Actor - Teacher - Author

In this episode of Actors Talk I'm speaking with actor, teacher and now author, Michael Laskin about his new book The Authentic Actor The Art and Business of Being Yourself and about how he came to pursue the actor's life.

Some actors and other artists I speak with know from a very early age that we want to act or write stories or music or pursue other creative endeavors, and sometime it's others who see in us something we might not yet see in ourselves.

Such is the case with Michael Laskin. I found out that Michael is a Minessota kid who was a good student but really had no aspirations to become a professional actor...at least not until his high school guidance counselor planted that seed in his mind that acting was something he could study and just maybe do well.

He went to Northwestern and studied theater, moved to Minneapolis and became immersed in the regional theater scene: he was in the company at the Gutherie, worked in Seattle, Louisville, off-Broadway for 10-11 years and in 1983 decided to move to L.A.

With that as a background we pick up the interview where I'm asking Michael what percipitated the move away from a successful career in regional theater into the film and television world in Los Angeles.

ACTING - FROM STAGE TO SCREEN

Michael Laskin made the move from busy regional theater actor to L.A. based actor around 1983 with a play called THE BASEMENT TAPES written by Erik Brogger.

So, I wondered, was the transition from stage to screen an easy one or were there some bumps in the road.

"For me it was a difficult transition and...in a large way it has informed my teaching and the book I wrote..."

He had early success.

Michael tells how his friendship with a writer on HILL STREET BLUES, Stephen Bochco's seminal 1980s era cop show, help Michael gain a foothold into the L.A. market.

Within six weeks of landing in L.A. he had an agent and he had booked his first job.

But, Michael says,

I was terrible in my first job. I saw it on TV and I was just mortified....That pivot from stage to screen was a challenge.

LEARNING FROM A REAL PRO

... most TV and film actors do not get the chance to be transformative. we are generally hired to be something akin to ourselves a more truthful dynamic version of who we appear to be when we enter into any human transaction..

Michael credits the late Jack Warden for helping him make the transition into becoming an authentic actor.

While working on a recurring role on Warden's show CRAZY LIKE A FOX, Michael says he learned by watching how Warden worked.

Michael says he realized "Oh, he's the same guy I'm talking to off the set when he's on the set...it's seamless. He's mastered the art of completely being himself while doing all the things one has to do...to be a good actor."

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

Michael says he 'went to school on Jack Warden and on several other skilled actors he was able to work with and observe.

So what were the biggest challenges he had to overcome to make that transition from skilled stage actor to skilled on camera actor?

That, says Michael in the interview, gets to the heart of what his book, THE AUTHENTIC ACTOR is about.

A key idea that Michael explores is that actor training is largely still wedded to approaches, 'the old dogma' as Michael says, that train the actor to DO rather than to BE. In those schools of actor training "It's about what you can go not who you are," he says.

You may see someone and you say 'he's not very good...but he's booking everything...