How to Develop a Believable and Relatable Character in Acting?
Creating a believable and relatable character is one of the challenging and important tasks for every actor. Here are a few steps to help an amateur actor to build a character:
Read the script many times: Reading the script repeatedly will help you to create a certain image of the character and situation in your mind.
Understand the character and the situation: Be clear about 5W and 1H questions (i.e. What, Who, Why, Where, When, and How) of your character and the situation.
Place yourself in the character: Feel yourself as the character, what if in that situation you were that character?
Try character is a distinct voice and personality: After feeling the character try to act in a different voice, body language, facial expressions, and personality to find the best way to build the character.
Make a character graph: Design a graph to show how a story’s character feels throughout a story. Sketching out the emotional highs and lows can help better visualizing a character’s growth.
Practice in the mirror: Keep practicing in front of the mirror. For every actor, a mirror should be their best friend. Rehearsal is very important to polish your acting skills.
Learn to react: Acting is all about reacting, so an actor must have enough information about the situations and other characters so that he/she can react well.
Live the character: Live the life of the character instead of playing the role or just pretending to act. Do not act, but feel and live the character.
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