(Ultimately, my rationale is this: in the end, I’m either going to do it consciously or unconsciously, so I may as well fold it into my mindfulness practice and be aware of it.)

I was just asked to do a short film for a fashion-forward website. Directing the piece is the lovely and brilliant Poppy de Villeneuve, who shot the New York Times short, “The Park,” I did some time ago. When she described the character to me as a man of mystery my first thought was, “Who can I steal good from?”

In about two seconds, it hit me: Alain Delon.

Delon was a beautiful and troubled man, maddeningly talented, who has somehow slipped into the cracks of American film consciousness. It’s a shame, though history is a cruel arbiter even in the best of circumstances. But for anybody interested, watch “Le Samourai,” and see if you can either take your eyes off Delon or ever figure out quite what he’s thinking.

Yes, I will be stealing as much as I can from Mr. Delon this weekend, though to be fair he had an on-screen magnetism I can’t really hope to emulate. Still, as an exercise I will be looking for anything that might clue me into what gave him his particular brand of mystery. Perhaps it was a stillness. Perhaps a habit of holding a look for one beat too long for comfort. I don’t know, but I hope to find out this afternoon.

In the meantime, let’s all steal good. And if you feel like confessing to the practice, there’s never any shame in being clever.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

As a relative latecomer to the business, I rationalized that I didn’t have time to waste getting started professionally, but as the years pile on, it would have been fine.  (Yes, youth is wasted on the young.)  Even as it turns out that I’m doing better than most who do have degrees, it doesn’t change the basic idea here.

Well, the past is gone, and there’s little I can do.  But we should all always be studying.  The classroom has reawakened my instrument.  Whether any of this has transformed my skills is not for me to say, but I can attest to a booming confidence, and an eagerness to keep learning that had gone missing.  It has also left me a bit burnt out from trying to do too much, but one step at a time… I’ll find the balance.

The industry in New York and Los Angeles offers no shortage of places to study.  A little research will reveal some good places to get back to the ABC’s of the craft.  Do it.

Trust me on this one.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

I’ve done a fair amount of work, and I do have some modest skills, so it’s rare for me to be the absolute least talented person around, but even so, I’m always looking for somebody to take notes from.  It could be the camera operator with a suggestion to lean back slightly to catch my key light better.  It could be the sound mixer.  A costumer once told me to sit on the tails of my jacket so it would create a more flattering line across my shoulders.  It did.

When you stop growing and learning, you’re dead, as an actor, and as a person.  So, whoever it may be, look for somebody who knows more than you do.  Believe me, they’re always there.  The day I find myself in a room full of these people, I’ll have arrived.  Until then, I’ll keep looking for them.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

Granted, I work in film and television, where you can whisper your way through any performance, and I’m rarely called upon to make the guy at the end of the block hear me, but still… fundamentals are fundamentals, and I felt a fool.  So, months later, I have taken it upon myself to study voice.

And it is a marvelous experience.

No, I have not simply fallen in love with my mellifluous tones, but rather I’ve discovered something remarkable, and shockingly basic: there’s a whole new world for me to use in performance.  It’s as if I suddenly turned around and realized that the room I’m standing in is twice as big as I’d thought.  And very well decorated.

Who knew?  Actually, many people.  And many of them had told me this very thing for years.  Train your voice, and you will become a better actor.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I replied.  A good haircut and some teeth whitening trays are what’s really needed.  Just look around.

Well, that may be true for some, and true for a part of this industry, but it’s not where I want to live.  Or how I want to live.  I want a voice that can hit the back of the biggest halls, night after night.  Even if I never have to speak above a hush.

The journey continues.  For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

The last several years of my career have been defined, with some small exceptions, by doing what I already knew how to do.  There was no desire to continue studying the craft, or push my abilities.  And like a shark that stops moving, I died.  I could still make a living and get cast just enough to appear to be a working actor, but I’m not afraid of the truth: as an artist, I died.

Over the years I had always found a reason not to go through with classes.  They cost too much.  I’m too busy pursuing work and my own projects.  I already know how to act. (That last one, in retrospect, should have ruptured my gut with laughter, but anyway…)  But the real reason was another.  All desire to keep learning and growing had been lost.

By the end of class I had tears in my eyes, my pulse had quickened and I wanted to jump out of my skin.  But there was no time for that.  There are miles ahead to swim, and the water feels good.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

This week I was reminded of something I’d long thought of as silly when it comes to classes, and I couldn’t help but think of it as another chance to put my feelings about interpretive choice to the test.  Acting studios keep a mishmash of props around.  They’re typically in closets, or hidden behind a tattered curtain in the back of the room.  And actors presenting scenes haul them out to set the stage for their work.  A bench here, a ratty chair there, a wobbly desk over there, maybe some well-worn fake flowers beside a rotary phone and voila! you’ve got what is meant to be a country estate in the south of France.  Or a Brooklyn apartment circa 1962.  It’s all the same, really, and it always looks like a pawn shop.

I have always preferred not to dress my set in class.  Two chairs and a table is fine by me.  Ideally, it’s about the work being done by the performers, not whether they managed to use every last piece of wood found in a nearby alleyway.  If a teacher is critiquing your lack of set design, I would suggest moving on.  Anyway, I digress…

Now, the “full monty” set strikes could be one of two things.  It’s either very sad and pathetic – how can these poor, desperate actors not realize how absurd they look amongst GoodWill rejects – or it’s a testament to incredible powers of imagination – how amazing is it that these actors can believe that this is a real place, and get us to do the same.

I’m still mulling this one over.  I’ll get back to you in a couple of weeks after I present my first scene in more years than I care to count.  Besides, if you believe Shakespeare’s claim that “all the world’s a stage,” is any room, with its collection of things, really all that different?  I spent years with a study that looked increasingly like a garage sale… perhaps we are “merely players.”

But are we not also our own authors?  I see I still have much to learn…

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.