Mark Evans Studio

 I recently came across a quote from the wonderful Olympia Dukakis that really struck a chord with me. “The reasons that somebody becomes an actor or performer and the reasons that somebody stays an actor or performer are very different things and a career is how you bridge that gap. It has to change from bringing home prizes for mommy and daddy into standing in my own purpose, standing in my own power.” I think there’s something rather brilliant about that. Most of us begin acting because of how it makes us feel. Perhaps we loved the attention, the applause, the encouragement from a teacher, or the sheer joy of pretending to be someone else. Perhaps, for the first time, we felt truly seen. There’s nothing wrong with any of those reasons. They’re wonderful reasons to begin. But are they enough to sustain us? At some point, if we’re going to build a meaningful and lasting relationship with this craft, our motivation has to evolve. We have to stop relying on other people to tell us w...

  A couple weeks ago, our 7 week old baby boy spent eight days in hospital. We were incredibly fortunate. We caught a potentially life-threatening bug before it had fully developed and taken hold, and he received the care he needed. But for eight days, our world became very small. It was him. Our daughter. My husband. Our family. Our friends. That was pretty much it. And it’s amazing how quickly all the other stuff that can consume us suddenly becomes completely irrelevant. The audition. The job. The email you haven’t answered. The career plan. The opportunity you’re worried you might miss. The irritating thing somebody said. Whether you’re doing enough. Whether you’re achieving enough. For those eight days, I genuinely couldn’t have cared less. And I was reminded of something I think we can easily forget, particularly as actors. When real, hard shit happens in your life, your career isn’t going to pick you up. Your people are. The people who texted us every day. The people who che...

 The leaves are turning, the days are shortening, and apparently we’re all expected to start liking pumpkin. Transitions can unsettle us. We get comfortable. We find a rhythm. Then something shifts. But perhaps, as artists, we can meet change with curiosity rather than resistance. How is this next season going to affect me? What might it bring out in me? Energy, melancholy, excitement, irritation, hope? Whatever arrives is useful. It becomes part of the ever-growing collection of experiences we carry into our work. And feelings are remarkably temporary things. We can transition into frustration in seconds and, sometimes just as quickly, transition out of it. We are not required to remain loyal to a feeling simply because it arrived first. The same is true in our acting. We can become strangely attached to our idea of a scene. We decide where the emotional moment happens, what the scene is “about”, how a particular line should feel. Then we spend the scene trying to preserve it. But...

There are moments in this industry when the business of acting can become louder than the reason we started. The emails. The auditions. The waiting. The self-tapes. The callbacks that don’t become bookings. The endless wondering about what’s next. And sometimes, without even realizing it, something starts to shift. The excitement gets quieter. The work feels heavier. We become more focused on getting somewhere than on the extraordinary privilege of being an actor. So, as we head into the fall, I want us to remind ourselves of something: Acting is incredible. We get to step into another person’s life and, for a few minutes, experience the world through their eyes. We get to tell stories that make people laugh, cry, question, understand, remember and feel less alone. We get to play. We get to imagine. We get to collaborate with wildly talented, passionate, strange, generous, complicated human beings and create something that did not exist before we walked into the room. That is extraordi...

  There is a particular kind of energy we can bring to our lives that feels productive, but often isn’t. The frantic energy. The tense determination. The feeling that if we just push harder, move faster, concentrate more intensely, somehow we will get better results. But what if the opposite is true? What if we could accomplish just as much, perhaps even more, by dialing down the frantic energy and simply taking a breath? It is surprising how effectively we can work, create, perform and communicate when we remove some of the tension from the equation. We don’t necessarily need to be less committed. We don’t need to care less. We simply need to stop gripping so tightly. Tension rarely serves us in life, and it definitely doesn’t serve us in our acting. Think about a scene that requires enormous emotional intensity. The instinct can be to tighten everything - the jaw, shoulders, stomach, hands, breath. We think that because the character is experiencing tension, our body must be tens...

  Ten months ago, my son was smaller than a sesame seed. Just sit with that for a moment. Today, I’m looking at his tiny ears - perfectly formed. His fingernails, impossibly delicate. I listen to the little grunts and groans he makes as his lungs learn to do a job they were never asked to do before. For nine months he relied entirely on an umbilical cord. Now, every breath is his own. Every cry, every stretch, every yawn is another step in his remarkable introduction to the world. How is any of this possible? The more I stare at him, the more I realise how disconnected many of us have become from the sheer wonder of nature. We walk past trees without noticing the way they continue to grow. We barely think about the complexity of a flower blooming or a bird navigating thousands of miles across continents. Creation surrounds us every second of every day, yet we’ve somehow become numb to it. And then a child arrives and reminds you that life itself is the greatest miracle you’ll ever ...