Does the thought of a presentation or meeting new people make you sweat? Actors including Maxine Peake and Johnny Flynn explain how to perform under pressure
From job interviews to presentations, first dates to wedding speeches, how can you give the air of being self-assured if you feel anything but? Actors share their secrets to appearing confident.“I’m not confident at all,” says the actor Maxine Peake. “For me, another part of the acting process is pretending to be confident.” Similarly, the actor and musician Johnny Flynn says: “It’s amazing how many actors identify as introverted.
Flynn dealt with this through a combination of hypnotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy. “A thought can become your whole being, that is the amazing thing about the brain,” he says. “If you’re inside a negative thought, it can very quickly escalate. My therapist would say: ‘A drop of joy in an ocean of fear neutralises it.’ You can’t actually feel fear and joy at the same time; they’re incompatible with each other.
Austin suggests box breathing, where you breathe in, hold, breathe out, then hold again. “Your exhale should be longer than your inhale, which is really grounding, because when you’re nervous you’re not breathing all the way down to your diaphragm – your breath tends to get quite shallow. Whether you are performing or just feeling anxious in the day to day, breathing tends to go really shallow and into the chest.
Peake occasionally appears at political rallies, where she prefers doing a reading to making a speech. To avoid tripping over your words, “don’t be afraid to take a breath”, she says. She gives the example of Shakespeare, where there are certain beats where you can breathe. “And take your time. People are interested. I think we give our audiences short shrift sometimes. People want to listen and they want to be engaged.”“Relaxing the jaw is a massive one,” says Bramhill.
Peake says: “What’s the worst that can happen? I’ve had the worst. I’ve been on stage and forgotten my lines and completely blanked. It was the second preview of A Streetcar Named Desire at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. It was an amazing experience in a way, because I felt the audience really got behind me.”“Rescue Remedy is like brandy,” says Bramhill. “I find it helps immensely.
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