A few weeks ago I finished an audiobook.

It was a fucking slog. It was hard work. It was gruelling.

Towards the end it took everything in my power to haul myself back into my homemade sound booth that is really just a sweaty cupboard with an ikea stool in it so i could finish recording the fkn thing.

I didn’t want to be in there.

It wasn’t to do with the quality of the book – the book was good.

It was to do with the uncertainty.

The uncertainty of the creative work.

Every morning, I didn’t know if what i was going to do that day was going to be worthy of what I wanted it to be.

I didnt know if i was going to hate my voice

I didnt know if the accents were going to be crap

I didnt know if the acting was going to be so unbelievably un-believable it was going to destroy any chance of a future for my children

I didnt know if i was going to spend 15 mins trying to get one sentence right, fail, panic, sweat loads and then die.

I didnt know if the listeners were going to realise that i haven’t a fkn clue

I didnt know if all these things were going to force me to take so long that i miss my deadline, my business comes crashing down in a fiery ball of idiocy and i’d be ruined.

I didnt know if i was going to suck

Every morning held the possibility of my dismal failure.

I just didn’t know.

It wasn’t simple. It was uncertain. This was the hard part.

Part of me did not want to do it. Fk it – a huge amount of me did not want to do it.

But each morning I hauled my ass into my cupboard of death and forced myself to sit in it until that book was finished.

Because that’s what I was being paid to do.

The work I had to do was artistic.

I was being paid to think about characters and what their needs and wants were. I was being paid to work using accents. I was being paid to have conversations with a writer, another artist, about interpretations, arcs and through lines and mad, scary, funny, emotional moments.

My day job was to bring this author’s vision to life.

I got to be in conversation with storytelling.

I am lucky to do this job.

But that doesn’t mean I wanted to be in that fkn cupboard.

In those moments i like to think of Steven Pressfield, hovering over me, whispering his sweet nothings in my ear.

Every actor I know has their own cupboard of death:

Receiving your 27th agent rejection email with no positive replies.

18 months without an acting job that doesnt lose you money, more convinced that this time, this time for sure you have been blacklisted and you have no future in this industry.

The tape that came in on a Friday night due for monday that absolutely ransacked your weekend and you want to throw back in a casting directors face.

The morning of an in person audition that you are so convinced you are going to crash and burn in that you consider faking an illness/death in the family/anything to get out of it.

Week two in a rehearsal room when the romance has worn off and you still havent even figured out how to pronounce your own fkn character’s name.

The night before your first day on set, convinced you’re going to be fired as soon as you open your mouth.

I have been in every single one of these situations (many of them quite recently)

And every single time, despite the temptation to flee, I have hauled my ass back into my cupboard of death.

And every single time I have been grateful that i did.

Know an actor who wants to see the industry change, who loves to make things and wants to make more?

They might find this newsletter useful:

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Reader Wins

• Thank you to the amazing readers Simon S, Ollie R and Jean M for generously adding their simple rules to Notes From Working Actors​
• Really interesting additions.

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• If you have 1 simple rule that has helped you in the past that you’d like to pass on to an actor who might find it useful – reply to this email with it and i will add it to the doc.

• WE have so much more to offer than the little fucker in our mind tells us. Fk that fucker.
• What you have to offer will almost certainly help one other actor feel less alone in our deeply isolating industry. Tell them what you wish you knew.

Your death cupboard is the moment when you don’t want to do the thing that’s hard.

What do we do when we don’t want to do the thing we want to do?

We do it anyway.

And that’s the whole trick.

So here’s my question to you this week:

What’s your death cupboard?

What’s the hard thing that’s been in front of you? And what is something you have turned up for despite your not wanting to?

Reply and tell me about it. I love to hear from you.

A x

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P.s. If there’s an actor you know who is interested in the sort of stuff we talk about, share this link, we’re stronger the more of us that are here.

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P.p.s. You’ve done it for years – it’s what youre good at – going toward the hard thing. Keep going. Keep fkn going.

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p.p.p.s. only if you’re feeling clicky 👇