Malik Yoba said it best when he said to me “Acting is not acting, acting is being.”

So what exactly did he mean by that? I’ll answer that question, but first, I’m going to take a bit of a risk and open up a window of my childhood for you, just a sliver. Let’s take a peek, shall we?

Rewind to a warm June night. Both of my parents lay bleeding from bullet wounds to the head. The only witness other than the gunmen? Me.

Rewind to the sleepover at my best friend’s home, when her older brother snuck into the room while I was sleeping.

Take it back to a time when I first realized I was different from all the Jewish kids I played with in my neighborhood, because for some reason, I was the only one that Melane kept calling “ni**er”.

Journey back with me as I stand on the curb, and watch my friend Albert run into the street in front of speeding car…

Now, let’s go to a place, where if asked about any one of those incidents, and more, I would tell you about them while feeling the emotional equivalence of someone reciting a grocery list… to a place where I sat at funerals and wondered what was on television. A place where ending long-term relationships and friendships felt as traumatic to me as throwing out an old tube of lip gloss.

Emotionally bankrupt, my sister would call it. “Noree,” she said, "you are sociopathically numb.”

For years, I lived with the belief that perhaps, after a certain threshold, human tragedy just didn’t affect me, when it happened to me. I felt immune, fortunate, strong, impenetrable – like Superman packaged into a petite female frame. And while my sister and I would sit on the phone for hours debating who was more “screwed up” – me, nominating her for being so dramatic and sensitive; and for trying to convince me that feeling pain actually makes you a whole person, and makes the life you live that much richer.

She threw my name on the ballot for, well, as she put it so many times, “having the emotions of a doorframe” - which of course was an exaggeration, because as strange as it may seem, I did empathize profoundly with other people and feel for them, it just didn’t register much at all if the same events happened to me.

I felt as if giving into the emotions of grief, sadness, loneliness, fear, etc,   was an ultimate weakness. And it never was a problem for me… until I became an actor.

Think of the greatest actors that exist and their most incredible performances. Then, think of why they’re just so freaking incredible. It’s because whatever they are going through on screen resonates within you. They make you feel them.  Film is actually a healing art when actors bring dynamic performances to the screen that draw you in and make you feel connected. And when that happens, it’s not because an actor is in front of you acting.

Anyone can act. It’s because an actor is in front of you being, and feeling, and actually living out the emotional life of their character. To be able to do that when the world around you is make-believe is a special gift, granted only to those who have embraced their own complete emotional existence on a level even more elevated than the average living, breathing, and feeling human being. For this reason, actors have to be able to dig deeper and feel more.

Think about it. 100 people walk into a movie theatre in 100 different moods. They watch a scene where a woman grieves over her murdered son. If that actor can’t draw most of you out of your current moods and into her grief, then she hasn’t done her job.

If I am that actor, I have to take myself to an emotional abyss and feel this grief so deeply, so that when you see me, I allow you to feel it too. If I’m faking it, if I am “acting” and not being, then you will remain unconvinced. In other words, when you see me, I really am grieving, not pretending to grieve.

One of the biggest obstacles for me as an actor has been, number one, even acknowledging that my pain exists. Moving on from that, is embracing that pain, and then allowing myself to feel it. When I first started out, I would frequently receive the same feedback, “I can tell that you are acting, why don’t you just let go and feel it?”  And I would walk away, frustrated, screaming in my mind, “HOW?! When I just don’t feel anything!”  

In a quest to find and uncover Noree’s Emotions, I began to work tirelessly with a few acting coaches, some from very popular studios, many of whom had the right concepts in mind, but still failed to point me in the right direction for personal growth. Anyone can tell you what to do, but there are few who can actually touch you deeply enough, take you by the hand, and show you how.

At one point, I even began to think that just maybe I didn’t have it in me to continue on. Maybe I was a sociopath, and maybe I should just give up trying to give life to these characters on paper. It wasn’t until I found a combination of the right people with both the talent and emotional and spiritual (yes, spiritual) insight into someone like me, that I began to transform and actually feel. And immediately I began to see a difference in my work.

Not only that, but my personal relationships began to transform as well. I also cried. Daily. Until every last bit of denied pain from my past was wrapped in snotty tissues on my bathroom floor.  

And now, Instead of approaching scripts thinking “Ok, she’s hurt - this is how a hurt person would say this.” I ask myself the questions I’ve been trained to ask, and I tap into those insights that take me back to an emotional place of actually feeling hurt.

 And then, I leave my heart on the floor for you. 

Love, Hip-Hop and Productive Pain,

Noree Victoria

Check Noree out anytime at myspace.com/noreevictoria

Footnote: Noree’s parents survived their tragic incident and are both alive and well with minor physical disabilities.