Being an Actor Hides Your Stutter
You can’t take the stutter out of the girl
Acting always terrified me — all eyes were on you, everyone would notice if you messed up, and the pressure to be the best was debilitating. Once I realized that I had a stutter, the stakes seemed monumental. I took acting classes as a kid for a short while, but that was enough for me to not pursue it any further. As an introvert, I’d rather be behind the camera. As a person who stuttered, I’d rather not say anything at all.
Until I read about actors who stuttered.
If there is one thing you should know about stuttering, it is that most people grow out of their stutter by the time they hit 12 and that’s the final cut-off. Most grow out of it by half that age. That leaves 1% of the rest of us having to deal with it for the rest of our lives. Many actors have a similar story in that they had a stutter as a child and grew out of it. So personally, some of their stories aren’t really impactful to me.
To act is to transform into someone else
Emily Blunt did something that I did or believed I thought would help me. When you act, you are a different person, a different character. And so if you are a different person and that person is not a person who stutters then when you act, you are not stuttering.
So you think to yourself: “If I act, then I do not stutter.”
It’s like you trick your brain into seemingly switching it off.
For years, I convinced myself that if I sounded different or if I spoke a different language, have a sing-song voice, then I wouldn’t stutter. Marilyn Monroe did that and it worked out for her.
So I would try speaking in a British accent when I read aloud. I would say dialogue like I was an old man. When I would play something out in front of my mother she would be in awe because I wouldn’t stutter.
And then that’s when she read the articles of other actors. That was when I found out. That was where I realized that acting was a fluency method. She thought that I should be an actor.
When you’re an actor, however, there is always a part of you in the character
It can be the smallest thing. But my stutter is too big to ignore. If acting is a fluency method then I am using my career to distract, to derail, to not accept something that is a part of my life. Something that is bigger than my career — my identity. To chose to act because it might give me some solace? It’s not the right reason. Nor is it the truth.
I took drama in middle school. It was more of a requirement than a want. No matter how small the role or how many times I practiced, if I stuttered then I stuttered, and no 19th-century circus performer role I transformed into would convince me otherwise.
It sounds nice in theory. It really does. Every year I watch award shows coming close to considering taking up that path. And I know I can do anything I set my mind to. But let’s shut down the idea that acting can be a cure for stuttering. You know what? Let the stutter be a part of the character. Let it be and let it go. And with accepting it for what it is, it might be a better performance than you were expecting.
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