The Ego and the Performer:
To Be or Not to Be
On ambition, identity, and the question underneath the question.
"To be, or not to be, that is the question."
Hamlet
Hamlet is contemplating whether life itself is worth enduring. But I think that line could just as easily describe the internal struggle of many entertainers working in Hollywood.
To be means staying in it.
It means suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous rejection. It means spending long stretches of time waiting for an audition, a booking, a call from your agent, or some sign that your career is moving forward.
To not be means leaving the very thing you spent years crafting, loving, thinking about, and sometimes obsessing over.
That can feel like losing a part of yourself.
Almost like a severed limb, you are asked to let go of something that felt so closely connected to who you were.
From either direction, there can be suffering.
So where does the suffering actually come from?
IIs the Career Really the Wound?
Does the suffering come from the bad review?
The rejection?
The director firing you?
Watching somebody else book the role?
Or is there sometimes a deeper wound underneath all of those wounds?
Maybe the rejection hurts so much because it confirms an old belief:
I am not good enough.
Maybe somebody else's success becomes unbearable because somewhere underneath it is:
There isn't enough for me.
Maybe losing a job doesn't simply mean losing a job. It means:
I'm a failure.
This is where our early schemas, or core beliefs about ourselves, begin interacting with the career.
The event hurts, but what we make the event mean about us can hurt even more.
IIWhen the Career Becomes the Self
Entertainment can make this particularly difficult because the line between the work and the person is often incredibly blurry.
Your face is part of the job.
Your personality is part of the job.
Your body can become part of the job.
Your voice, relationships, appearance, charisma, social media presence, and even the way you carry yourself can all become things you evaluate professionally.
After enough years, it becomes difficult to know where you end and the career begins.
Am I Sasha, or am I an actor?
Am I a person who acts, or is acting what makes me valuable?
If nobody wants to hire me, what does that say about me?
If I stop acting, who am I?
This is what I mean when I talk about ego and the performer.
The ego wants to create an identity that feels solid.
I am successful. I am talented. I am important. I am wanted.
The problem is that Hollywood is probably one of the worst places imaginable to ask for a stable identity.
Because the industry is inherently unstable.
IIIThe Answer Is Not "To Be" or "Not to Be"
This is where I think we often get the question wrong.
The path toward peace isn't necessarily staying in entertainment.
And it isn't necessarily leaving entertainment.
You can quit acting and remain completely consumed by resentment about the career you never had.
You can also become enormously successful and remain terrified that everything will disappear.
The deeper work is learning to relinquish the career as the primary source of your happiness, self-esteem, and capacity for a good life.
That doesn't mean becoming less ambitious.
You can still want to be a successful actor.
You can want to be famous.
You can want the award, the money, the incredible role, and the opportunity to work with people you've admired your whole life.
But those things cannot carry the entire weight of your identity. That is too much pressure to put on any career.
IVDo You Really Need to Suffer to Be Great?
There is also a romantic idea in the arts that suffering somehow makes you better.
The tortured artist.
The brilliant performer whose personal life is falling apart.
The person who sacrifices everything for the work.
We have almost turned suffering into evidence of seriousness.
But what's the point?
Marlon Brando is considered one of the great actors of the modern era. His name is still brought up constantly in acting classes, books, and conversations about performance.
And yet his enormous professional success did not protect him from tremendous suffering in his personal life.
That distinction matters.
Talent does not guarantee peace.
Success does not guarantee peace.
Fame certainly does not guarantee peace.
You can become incredible at your craft while remaining miserable inside of your own life.
Those are two completely separate achievements.
VGetting What You Want Doesn't End Wanting
There is one idea I want you to really think about:
If you are chronically unhappy and unsatisfied without the thing you want, getting the thing you want will not automatically teach you how to be satisfied.
Human beings adapt.
This is one of our greatest strengths.
It is why people can survive painful losses, difficult circumstances, and enormous changes and eventually find some version of normal again.
But adaptation works in the other direction too.
The thing you once dreamed about can eventually become normal.
The first time you're on a professional set might feel surreal. Then you get used to it.
The first big paycheck feels enormous. Then it becomes the new expectation.
The first time somebody recognizes you might feel incredible. Eventually you wonder why more people don't recognize you.
The mind adjusts.
Then it looks for the next thing.
This isn't a character flaw. It's part of being human.
But if you don't understand it, you can spend your entire life chasing the next level believing that this one will finally make you feel complete.
VIThe Mirage
Chasing accolades, money, status, and fame as your primary source of fulfillment is a little like chasing a mirage.
It looks beautiful from far away.
You imagine how good it will feel once you finally reach it.
So you keep walking toward it.
But the closer you get, the farther away it seems to move.
And even when you reach something you once desperately wanted, eventually your mind adjusts and creates another horizon.
You cannot completely control that part of being human.
What you can control is the kind of person you become while you're pursuing the things you care about.
You can practice being present.
You can enjoy the process.
You can create because creating is meaningful to you.
You can build relationships that have nothing to do with what you've booked lately.
You can enjoy somebody else's success without immediately turning it into evidence about your own failure.
You can want extraordinary things without making your ability to enjoy an ordinary Tuesday dependent on whether you get them.
Maybe that is the real question for the performer. Not simply: To be or not to be? But:
Can I carve out a life worth living that actually feeds my soul, rather than spending my life performing an idea of what success is supposed to look like?
— Sasha Feldman, LMFT · Los Angeles
