Stress. Pressure. Rejection. External commitments. Losing sight of your goals. Losing sight of the fun. There are a multitude of reasons you might take a break from acting. And all of them are entirely valid.
Feeling a need to take a break from acting is entirely normal. It is something you are absolutely able to do, and most likely should consider if you are approaching burn-out or contending with a physical or mental health problem. However, simply downing tools isn’t as helpful as interrogating why you might feel this way. Examining the reasons for taking a break can help you avoid similar problems in the future, or simply re-think your relationship to craft and career.
In this article, we’ll examine the particulars of giving yourself time away from your art. We’ll look at some helpful things to do in the short term, such as assessing goals, as well as possible solutions in the form of scaling back your acting rather than stopping altogether. Finally, we’ll talk about the importance of rest, and the all important road back.
Check In With Your Acting Goals
The first step in taking a break is to listen to yourself: your mind, your body, that voice inside that starts to whisper about something not being right. Your acting break might last for five minutes or fifty years—you won’t know unless you listen to yourself and do a good, honest job of it.
Next, check in with your acting goals. These are the big-picture, blue-sky plans that you have set out for where your career is taking you. They’re excellent things to have. They’re also hotbeds of stress and pressure. Are your goals realistic? Are they causing you problems? Is there a way you can scale back your efforts—even if it means putting a temporary hold on some of your goals?
At StageMilk, we approach the wellbeing of our community by urging a separation of career and craft. Often, actors confuse the two and think solutions for one will fix the other: “My headshots are out of date, that’s why I forgot my lines.” or “I’ve spent $900 on acting lessons with celebrities. The fact you wouldn’t cast me is a sin.“
Maybe you can pause work on your career for a while and focus on craft instead? That’s often where a lot of the external pressure lies.
Examine Your Process
If it’s not your career that’s bothering you, it could be to do with your actual process as an actor. Talent, effort and commitment are important factors in a performer’s development—as well as enormous drains on that person’s energy.
Is it possible you’re working too hard? Pushing yourself in your pursuit of excellence? If you’re an actor drawn to tragedy and misery, are you properly undertaking a process to de-role and leave bad emotions on the stage?
Always be looking for ways to make your acting process better; this is not the same as doing more and making greater sacrifices.
Keep it Fun
One of the most common reasons people want to take a break from acting is that it ceases to be fun. This might sound silly—acting is work, damnit, after all!—but it’s understandably difficult to pursue something that is both demanding and unenjoyable.
Is there a way you can take a break from the aspects of acting that no longer bring you joy? This could be the self-promotion, the social scene, the constant grind of audition and rejection… Go back to the things that you love about it, the things that used to give you energy before the rest of your craft got you down.
Return to the simple joy of performing a sonnet or a monologue in the mornings. Do a quick vocal warm-up to remind yourself that your body is an instrument capable of so much. Crack open a script and do some analysis—something you can do any time, anywhere and take such enrichment from it. And these are all solo pursuits. Ever done scene study with a group of actors (code for read a great script together with too many bottles of wine on the table)? Spark joy. Take it light and keep it fun.
Prioritise Rest
Of course, all the points we’ve made above should defer to this simple point: if you need to rest, you can. And you should.
Burnout affects actors’ physical and mental health—sometimes to the point where their break from acting becomes permanent. Acting is not the only field in which its workers suffer from overwork and stress, but it is exacerbated by the fact that most actors are balancing multiple plates to keep their career on track. Actors seldom work a single job, and they are therefore some of the most time-poor human beings on the planet.
However, there’s something hopeful in all of this we’ve yet to discuss. If you take a break from acting, you’re in charge of for how long and why you return. It doesn’t need to be a year. It doesn’t even need to be a set time. You might return to acting when a particular project at your day job ends, or in the winter when your indoor soccer team is on hiatus, or when your in-laws cease their extended holiday stay in your guest room.
Good rest, and learning to recharge as an actor (hit this link up, we can’t recommend it enough) are skills as important to an actor as how to memorise lines. If you work on taking effective, efficient breaks at the right time, it may be as simple as a few weeks off, or saying “no” to a particular audition you were starting to feel stressed about. You make the rules. Be comforted by that.
Keeping Your Skills Sharp
If you do decide to take a break from acting, one thing we’d suggest is doing a little independent work each day or week to keep your skills sharp. These are no-stakes exercises and practices that can keep your head in the game if that perfect audition comes along, but won’t consume your calendar or identity in the process.
Consider vocal warm-ups, some physical exercise or stretches and perhaps reading through a short monologue every week or so. You don’t need to get the monologue to performance level, or even memorised. Just do enough to bring the character to life and get a grip on the meaning that drives it.
You should also use a break to become a sponge for all manner of great movies, television, plays and books. Soak up some culture and inspire yourself back into a mode of creativity. Watch things critically, evaluate the work being done and never forget: “Hey! I can do that!”
This might sound like we’re sneakily keeping you acting during your break. That’s not what this point is about. What we want to encourage is fostering good habits around work, and setting boundaries that see you exercising your acting muscles regardless of your career pursuits. If it’s too much, you can scale it back. If it gets you feeling confident and inspired, you may even like to return to acting sooner. Speaking of:
How Can I Return to Acting?
Our best advice on this is gradually, and with a plan in mind. If you were, for example, to set yourself a date for when you want to be actively looking for jobs again, try looking around before that to see what kinds of opportunities are out there. It may be the case that you could adjust your return date based on an industry occurrence: an open audition, pilot season, even a class you want to take.
In fact, if we had to pick one avenue of return, taking an acting class would probably be our number one piece of advice. It’ll help you smooth out the bumps in your technique and confidence, and put you back into a community of like-minded peers.
You could also sign up to StageMilk’s very own Scene Club, which offers industry coaching, monthly feedback on your tapes and more resources than you could yell “Shameless plug!” at.
Comfortably returning to your career after you take a break from acting also depends on the amount of time you were away. Six months will feel like nothing compared to ten years—during which the industry will have gone through some pretty seismic changes.
Conclusion
Step behind the curtain for a sec: whenever we prep an article on StageMilk, we select which category the post falls into. Sometimes it could be “Acting Industry”, other times it’s “Monologues” or “Acting Tips”. When it came to this article, we logged it under “Actor’s Health”—because there is nothing so important as knowing when you need to rest, regroup and start afresh.
The profession of acting has seen some exciting (and important) growth in the past few years; actors like never before are standing up for their rights, their dignity and their mental health. And yet, there is still such a taboo about learning when to say no, or making a point of recharging your batteries.
Take a break from acting if you need to. The craft, the grind, the people: we’ll be right here when you get back.
Good luck!
