I was doing a scene once where the character was distressed and scared and I started getting frustrated with myself because I kept stimming in the way I do when I am actually upset.
I voiced this to my scene partner and they said, “Use it. He can be autistic if you want him to be, you can incorporate it into the scene.”
Which is good advice, but in the moment the only way i could articulate why I didn't want to was: "But that's mine."
An element of that was, "I'm acting, I'm playing a character. I want to move as he would move, not me, because that feels like cheating and that’s the point.”
But most of it was, “It’s mine. I’m not giving it to you or the director or the character or the audience because it is mine and I want to keep it to myself and you don’t get to use it.”
I don’t know if I’d describe myself protective of certain aspects of myself or possessive, but I do find myself pulling back sometimes in performances because of this repeated chant in my head of it’s mine, it’s mine, it’s mine.
