Acting Tip: Get comfortable with how you look

A lot of actors say they are too self-conscious or too critical of their own performance to ever watch their own clips. I say watch your clips. More than that, develop a loving eye about how you look expressing the whole range of emotions. Why? Because it's freeing. The more comfortable you are with how you look on camera, the more you can let yourself be free to act and to have fun with your character.

Starting out in this business, I think we all want to look as attractive as possible on film and in photos. Hollywood projects glamor, after all. American films and American television in particular reach for a certain standard of physical perfection. Even Jennifer Lawrence gets photoshopped in print to look thinner and have more hair! (Good grief!)

The tendency is to be overly conscious of our imperfections. My eyes are a bit too close together, for example. My nose definitely has a "good side." My face in the throes of deep emotion has hundreds of little muscles that create way too many lines and wrinkles (Julia Roberts, by the way, has all three of these issues too.)

Vanessa Redgrave

The point is, there are tens of thousands of hugely attractive actors out there trying to get work. Don't feel that you have to compete with them. Take a close look at A-list stars. They're not perfect.  Faces don't need to be perfect. Faces need to be interesting. They need to be memorable. And to achieve that, you need to accept how you look on camera and work from there.  #KathrynBrowning