Why You Should Quit Acting
You are an artist.
The first and most important reason why you should quit acting is that you are an artist. When you first engaged with live performance it was overwhelmingly exhilarating; it made you want to do that, be that, for the rest of your life! You love creating engaging, ambitious, and emotionally charged pieces of theatre. You hate contracts. You hate greed. If you want to hold on to everything that is roses and macadamia nuts (my personal favorite) about this industry, quit ASAP.
You love watching theatre, film and television.
This one’s a biggie. If you love watching theatre, film and television you should definitely quit acting. Acting ruins the experience of being in the audience. After you’ve performed in a play, you will never see a piece of theatre in the same way again. During a fight scene you will either be so utterly unconvinced by the faux violence you’ll want interval to last all night, or you will be terrified that the “method actor” onstage is going to murder his co-star. Love making scenes are on a similar scale and equally unnerving. Yuck! Quit!
You want to travel.
Have you ever said “I don’t really care about money?”. I know I have. The problem is I LOVE TRAVELLING. New places and new faces are the best. And in order to travel you need money. Money that doesn’t grow quickly or easily on acting trees. Give your travel bug a chance and quit acting while you still can!
You’re getting older.
We all are. For some actors that’s a good thing. Maybe you have a young face for your age or your ears are huge and you need to grow into them. For most actors it means more years waiting for the phone to ring. Forget the time you put into becoming an actor and consider the time you’ll lose staying an actor. It’s a tough choice but if you’re not happy (be honest!) QUIT!
You’re not good enough.
If you read the title and you’re still here. Respect. If you keep acting you will hear “You’re not good enough.” or it’s many other incarnations for the rest of your career. If you can’t handle that, it’s not necessarily a sign of weakness, maybe you just don’t have time for haters. Hey, who does? Go on, live a little; Quit.
These are pretty wanky reasons to quit acting and generally any actor who is offering reasons to quit acting to another actor needs to re-think their criteria. Although this article isn’t clearly telling anyone to “quit” as a directive, the reasons themselves are flimsy. There are so many reasons beyond the above mentioned why someone should quit acting that I could think of, but “Not being good Enough” is up for debate. Sure, you can clearly tell if some one is absolute shit, but let them live their lives and continue being shitty until hopefully they fix that. If they can’t fix it then hopefully they can be honest enough with themselves and considerate enough to the rest of the world to just stop whatever shitty acting their doing and get their shit together.
It’s true, you will never see a performance the same way. You’ll recognize all the work that went into it and appreciate it more. Every reason listed in this article is flimsy and generally untrue. If acting makes you happy, DON’T QUIT. Don’t take the advice of someone who clearly has no dreams and no motivation.