I.D Essay Book - When I was a Child Star (Part 6)

Ah, what I thought was the penultimate part wasn't actually the penultimate part. Part six is actually the penultimate part of the essay. I should have counted up. The entire essay is composed of seven sections and this is part six. So! Almost finished! The next part will be the end of the essay! Woo!

When I was a Child Actor (Part 6)
Casting off the child actor!

There wasn’t a conscious decision on my part to cast off my ‘role’. But the special treatment I received for simply being a child actor gradually trailed off (for example, if it got late the studio would record my parts first and then let me go home before everyone else, or at lunchtime someone would treat me to a dessert etc.)

And once I entered middle school I was sort of at a loss. When work came in the various hurdles to do with acting I was faced with suddenly seemed to get a lot higher. I started thinking that perhaps up until this point I had just been coasting along as a child actor and maybe I didn’t really have any talent at all, from this I gradually fell into a rut.

Although I had faced the microphone straight on without any nerves in the past, it was at this point I gradually became more and more inhibited by a strange sort of self-consciousness. Perhaps you could say that this is something all teenagers experience, but I tried to hide myself completely, and was afraid of standing out from those around me. I lost the courage to do anything out of the ordinary at all.

No matter how hard I tried to see my work from a rational point of view, it was in this state of mind that I began to experience a mental block towards acting. I would suddenly forget everything I knew, thinking ‘huh? How do I do this again?’ It felt like the film ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’, when one day Kiki the witch suddenly completely forgets how to fly.

Actually, very recently a director who has often employed me even from way back said to me at a party, ‘Oh yeah, when you were in middle school you didn’t really shine at all, haha!’ Ah, so it wasn’t just me. I had to laugh. But I often wonder whether it was this period, when I held all these questions towards my own acting, that I shed my skin of being a child actor.

Being lost, getting depressed, but then deciding that I actually did enjoy my work and then continuing on with it, I think that I was then able to reaffirm my ambition to become a professional. Well, strictly speaking, from then until now I’ve quite often been lost, troubled or depressed, and whenever this has happened I’ve just decided that, ‘No, I still want to do this’. It kind of makes me want to ask ‘just how many times have we got to go over this before you’re satisfied with the answer?’ But I imagine that I’ll carry on regardless, stopping and starting as I continue on.

Anyway, until then I had been completely happy with my acting. Whatever role it was, I felt that I was able to pull it off perfectly. But then I lost the ability to feel satisfied with any performance I gave at all. No matter how hard I tried, whenever I cleared one hurdle, I would find a new problem. And this cycle has continued until this day.