@Kezarian,
Sure. I decided I thought it would be useful to be good on camera, in case at some point that was a skill I could use. So I looked to see what sort of acting classes were available nearby. Most of them were stage acting, which I didn't want to do; however, I found one entitled "Acting for the Camera", which sounded like exactly what I wanted, so I signed up.
90% of the students were college kids who were taking the class for a theater credit. Almost all of them were also drama majors and came from acting backgrounds. I, on the other hand, had but a single line in a school play (plus Rogers and Hammerstein's
10 Minutes Ago, which I still have memorized, and belt out occasionally for women if I really want to completely floor them... they never expect you can sing like that
).
Anyway, the acting teacher told me again and again my face was too wooden, and that it was a big change from her theater students, who tend to be too expressive. Many times she talked to the class and said theater students are TOO expressive, because they learn to be overly expressive so theater audiences far from the stage can read their expressions; meanwhile non-theater students tend to be too wooden. So this was my thing I worked on over and over for something like 8 months before she was finally telling me I was hitting the right amount of expressiveness.
What happened was that at the same time I was learning to be more expressive in class, I was also extending that to the field. I realized I was probably being too wooden when I approached women too. Because in the field, if you're in state, okay, you can do everything perfectly without thinking about it. But when you're not in state, you're acting. And most guys when they are not in state, if you will see them (and I've seen many when I was an in-field coach), they are very stiff and wooden. They're trying to emulate their in-state selves but not doing so successfully. Learning to control my face so I could be expressive at will and emulate a confident, relaxed, happy guy even if I wasn't feeling it meant I could go out to pick up even if I was in a bad state and still come across in-state to girls and get into great interactions (at which point you start to feel pretty good, and then before you know it, if you're not outright in-state, you're at least in a much better mood).
I drove up to Los Angeles to do a spate of auditions for roles in TV shows and other things but didn't land any. I didn't keep going because it was just too far... a two-hour drive each way from San Diego. Had I been in LA and could've kept going to auditions, maybe you'd be watching me on the tube instead of reading my stuff on the site.
Anyway, I got a few bit parts in indie movies, including one that aired on the silver screen in Miramar... unfortunately I got to the theater late (bad habit of mine) and missed myself on the big screen. Such is life.
For a while I was exclusively telling girls "I'm an actor" and forgot about telling them "I'm a writer" altogether. Some girls got REALLY into it... I had one chick I was seeing who just went around excitedly introducing me to everyone as the actor she was seeing. I had people I didn't know coming to me saying, "So, I hear you're an actor." I was like, LOL, I guess! I would actually tell them, "Yeah, I mean, I have a day job too," but nobody cared about that, they just wanted to know an actor.
We had a chance to get an agent via the acting class. We had to do two things: a film scene and a stage scene. The film scene I completely nailed; it was by all accounts a solid performance. The stage scene we practiced a bit, but unlike all the theater kids there I hadn't been on a stage in a few years (since my rap days), and when I finally got up there with the lights in my face and a theater full of agents and talent scouts I croaked and stumbled through my lines. The agents thought my film performance was good but me croaking on the stage meant nobody picked me up. Better luck next year they said.
My California project at work ended and the company started sending me on projects all over the US... Northwest, Midwest, down South, you name it. I wasn't able to be in town for the acting class anymore and I had to discontinue it.
I felt like, creatively, while doing it, while it was fun to learn, being an actor was just me acting out somebody else's story. I didn't like that side of things and felt like it stifled me. After I'd done a bit of acting I realized I would much rather be the one creating the stories than the one acting them out.
Though, maybe, someday, when I start releasing my fiction (I've written several novellas and one full-length novel already this year... working on another now... mostly just for myself as a leisure activity because it's fun and a good stress release, but maybe someday I'll get around to publishing them... no time for that with all my duties at GC though), if some of them get made into movies I'll freshen up my acting chops and sign up for a role in a film based on something I've written.
One fun note: when we shot One Date in 2016 -- we were on the set every day 12+ hours a day, 2.5 weeks straight -- our director was over the top about how easy it was directing me... she kept saying "It's amazing! I give him a direction and he just gets it instantly and does it, and then he remembers to keep doing it. I wish every one of my actors was like that!" So while I may not have had an acting career come out of it, it definitely helped with seduction, and it helped later on with the video courses we filmed. I'm doubtless better on-camera for the GirlsChase.TV videos now thanks to that class than I would otherwise be (the GC.TV videos to me are just more training too... I don't know how successful that site'll be; I hope it does well! But it's just another excuse to refine my on-camera delivery... just one of those skills I feel is worth having in today's day and age of communicating with people at scale over digital media).
Chase