Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Actor

1.  An actor is an individual who knowingly pretends to be someone else.

2.  Some actors pretend to be actual historical persons.  For their efforts, they are paid at least a living wage.

3.  Some non-actors believe they are actual historical persons.  For their efforts, they are thought to be delusional. Some of these are given medications.

4.  So far as known, most actors who portray actual historical persons are not thought to be delusional.

5.  One actor, Charleton Heston, portrayed Moses and Michaelangelo without being thought in the slightest way delusional, but when he became a vocal spokesperson for the National Rifle Association, serious questions arose.

6.  Every year, at various conventions celebrating science-fiction themes and comic book super heroes, non-actors converge to impersonate characters, and to mingle with the actors who portray many of these characters.

7.  At least once a year at a street parade in New Orleans, a group of young and middle-aged men, riding motor scooters, gather to impersonate Elvis Presley.

8.  At certain times in the past, women actors were forbidden by law to appear on stage, resulting in boys pretending to be Ophelia and Queen Gertrude in Hamlet.

9.  In Twelfth Night, the character of Viola, a young woman, is portrayed by a boy who pretends to be a girl who pretends to be a boy.

10.  When persons in Real Time hold differing opinions about a matter, they are said to be argumentative. When characters within a story hold differing opinions, they are said to be 
dramatic.

11.  The novel called The Second Life of John Wilkes Booth presents a character who is an actor, running away from assassinating another character who was a real person, Abraham Lincoln. In his attempts to fabricate a new, non-acting persona for himself, the character becomes an artist, famed for his penetrating drawing ability, as was Barnaby Conrad,the author who wrote the book.  In this novel, the character, John Wilkes Booth, has been maneuvered into portraying the man he shot, Abraham Lincoln, in a Fourth-of-July celebration, whereupon Booth, as Lincoln, is set upon and assassinated by another character portraying John Wilkes Booth.

12.  The actor who portrayed the King of Siam in the Broadway production Anna and the King, was married to another actor who reported how her husband would awaken in the morning during the run of the play saying "We are hungry," to which the actor who was his wife would respond, "Well, we can just get our own breakfast."

13.  It is common for a person who is not an actor to be told such things as "Act your age," "Act surprised," "Act as if nothing happened," "Act as if you meant it," and "At least act as if you were sorry."