While it may seem natural for an actor to include a chapter about performance in his book, the bold fact is that performance, the accompanying anxiety that goes with it, and the instinct used in the choices we make pertain to everyone. It's natural to examine performance and instinct in relation to actors and athletes; nevertheless, they are likely affecting the quality of your life right now. Regardless of our profession, most of us are overtly rewarded or punished depending on our ability to perform when it counts. Everyone's quality of life is directly correlated to how well they perform.

There are two common denominators behind the ability to perform well in any circumstance: overcoming anxiety, and honing your instincts. When you're focused on serving, helping, listening to, or engaging with anyone or anything besides yourself, you have a shot at success. But if you turn your head, even for a split second, you can lose the thread and watch your performance crumble before your very eyes.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

At my high school back in the late 1980s, there was a massive chasm between athletes and those involved in the theater. The social groups were separated into “jocks” and “dramies.” The reason John Hughes's movies, like The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink, struck a chord with audiences is that they reflected a societal truth. Students definitely uttered snarky comments like, “He's just a dumb jock” or, “Dramies are such freaks.” What I've discovered over two decades as a professional actor, however, is that there are huge similarities between athletic performers and artistic performers. Both of them, in their best moments, have a certain lack of fear and a touch of something beyond the purely physical world. There is much to learn about anxiety, and how to manage it, from both of these camps.

Despite my awareness that I was not a naturally gifted athlete like many of my friends, I was pegged as one of the jocks in high school. I played sports throughout the year and I was proud of my work ethic and my dedication to my teams.

“And that's when it clicked with me. I thought, ‘These are not super heroes. These are just men that can do super things.’”

—Christopher J. Burns, MD, FACS, former US Navy SEAL

There is an aspect of elite performance that is otherworldly. Watching Michael Jordan play basketball, Lindsey Vonn ski, or thespians like Meryl Streep and Christian Bale knock a powerhouse role out of the park, it seems as though what they're doing is effortless. It appears so natural that many people believe they, too, could do it, if only given the opportunity. Many mistakenly believe that it didn't take much work to pull it off, but that's the magic of performance. The work ethic discussed in Chapter 2 is like the energy it takes to get a rocket off the ground and through the atmospheric barrier, but the performance is more like what happens once the rocket jettisons its big engine and enters the weightlessness of space.

The media, and many times the performers themselves, often downplay the amount of work required to create such graceful moments because work doesn't sell as well as glamour. Even the lifestyles of great performers give outsiders the image of them sipping cocktails on a beach when they're not busy dazzling the rest of us, but nothing could be further from the truth. The actors I know and respect are the exact opposite of the attention-seeking stereotype strolling down a red carpet. Many are introverted and most possess enormous intelligence. That intelligence may or may not lend itself to being book smart or great with numbers, but the acting greats have an understanding of the nuances of human behavior that is astounding. Which is why it's not shocking when so many actors who go back to school for their degrees after working professionally when they were young have diplomas from universities like Brown, Harvard, Yale, or Columbia.

I have discovered that a large percentage of the actors I've worked with over the years came from athletic backgrounds. Even many of those who did not play traditional team sports were once dancers or figure skaters, both of which require incredible athletic ability and physical discipline. I believe the commonality lies in the performance. The same elements that go into performing every Sunday on a football field, for example, exist every night in the theater. I've experienced pre-show jitters just before the curtain goes up in the same way I used to find myself nervous on a football sideline until I got in the game. Getting hit by an opponent knocked me out of my head and into my body the same way uttering my first line in a play grounded me to the stage in front of a large audience.

Similarities abound. The ways in which we combat our nerves in sports and the arts are shockingly similar. Physical and vocal warmups in the theater can be compared to calisthenics before an athletic contest. There is a reliance on your teammates and coaches in sports, and a reliance on your castmates and crew in any production. And yet in both arenas, ironically, the majority of accolades and excessive pay are given for individual performances. Players are judged for individual statistics such as points in basketball, home runs in baseball, or touchdowns in football. Likewise, actors are singled out for a particular performance. But in both cases, it is the team effort that is awarded the championship trophy or the Best Picture Oscar regardless of individual performances.

Perhaps the real root of why so many former athletes turn to acting once their sports careers end is their addiction to the spontaneity of live performance and the management of fear and nerves. Playing lacrosse beyond the high school level I learned that, while raw talent does matter, perhaps the most important contributor to success in sports is the mental game and one's ability to continue playing despite a physical setback or a bad bounce that costs one's team a game. I've found that to be true as an actor as well. While the ability to keep one's nerves in check in high-pressure auditions, or particularly high-stress days on set, is important, the ability to face the abyss of extended unemployment in a very fickle business without cracking is the real challenge. One of the biggest factors deciding the longevity of one's career is the mental game.

“If you bomb, if you fail, it's okay. You just go back home, and you work again, and you go back. If it lands, if it kills … you're just the happiest man on the planet.”

—Gad Elmaleh, Stand-up Comedian, Actor, Voted Funniest Man in France

Nowhere in acting is the thrill of the unknown more electric than live theater. As a young actor in New York City, much of my early work consisted of plays. Aside from a few legitimate off-Broadway runs, those plays were performed in black-box theaters or other spaces that were not exactly what one envisions when they imagine a life on the boards. Regardless of the venue, the electricity of live theater is ever-present. When I moved to Los Angeles in the fall of 2005 to continue my run on The West Wing, my career transitioned into consisting almost exclusively of film and TV work. But in the fall of 2007, Loretta Greco, who had directed me off-Broadway in New York, came to Los Angeles to audition actors for a production of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow. It was to be performed that winter at the Geary Theater in San Francisco under the auspices of the American Conservatory Theater.

Not only have I had the opportunity to work on several Mamet plays in various classes over the years, but I had the good luck to be cast in that spring 2008 production of Speed-the-Plow at the Geary. Some of the houses I performed in while living in New York held less than 60 audience members. That intimacy carried its own brand of intimidation. But the Geary was a beast of a different nature to what I'd experienced before. Multiple tiers of balconies rise at a sharp vertical and the ornate decor harkens back to theaters of our past. It can seat an audience of more than a thousand. It is an incredible place to work, but its size and prestige definitely bring with them an added level of excitement or stress, depending on how you view them.

You Can Take the Kid Out of the Black Box …

The fundamentals of preparing Speed-the-Plow were virtually the same as preparing for any other show. We began with a cast table read in front of the producers, then proceeded to break the show down into smaller parts before gradually building it back up to the complete show the audience would experience. The main difference between this and the smaller productions in which I had performed before was that our tech week was more extensive. This just meant that our “cue-to-cue” rehearsals, in which the cast moves to the spots on the stage where they'll be standing during lighting shifts and scenery changes for the technicians to calibrate and time their cues, took a little longer. Much like scaling a mom-and-pop business into a corporate enterprise, the bells and whistles may appear different, but the foundation upon which it is built is constructed in roughly the same manner.

The nature of Mamet's writing, and this play in particular, which we performed for 90 minutes straight with no intermission, is very demanding and detail oriented. My character only left the stage for a very brief time before re-entering for the climax, so it required a certain amount of stamina and energy as well. The heavy, metered dialogue, in which my co-star and I, our characters having had a long history together, finished each other's sentences, required massive amounts of rehearsal to get the timing right while giving the audience the illusion that we were ad-libbing. My castmate Andrew Polk, who is a regular on the Broadway circuit, and I would go to the gym and speed through the entire play multiple times a day, every day, while climbing side by side on StairMaster machines. Once the play was up on its feet, performing it was like being shot out of a cannon or getting on a speeding train for 90 minutes straight every night.

By the time we reached opening night, the performance had become a dance between our tiny cast (Polk, me, and Jessi Campbell) and each audience that packed the house. Rave reviews made us a hot ticket in town and every night felt like a new, slightly different high-wire act. The potential for disaster in live theater has an allure to both the audience and those performing for them. Much like professional sports that are being played in front of a stadium of tens of thousands of people and simultaneously broadcast to millions more, there is no guarantee that things won't fall apart at any given moment. At the same time, there is always present the possibility that we may witness greatness with our own eyes, as it unfolds.

While this danger is alluring, it can also be terrifying. I will admit that there were some nights where my thoughts would begin to spiral into what I have since heard meditation teachers describe as “monkey mind.” Minutes before a show, I'd be bombarded by hysterical thoughts of potential disaster striking. For an actor, that disaster could translate to what actors call “going up” on one's lines, forgetting one's lines in front of a packed house. The thought of having nowhere to run and nowhere to hide can be nightmare-inducing. But, as my old acting teacher Terry Schreiber used to say, “Sometimes the roles we fear the most are the roles we need to take on.” His logic was that all of the energy we use to hold ourselves back from a role we fear, once we commit, will propel us even further into that character. This theory applies to anything from the daring feats of a trapeze artist to a field goal kicker attempting to boot a ball through the uprights 60 yards away to win the Super Bowl. It also applies to going out on stage every night in front of a live audience.

The razor's edge of performance is perhaps best illustrated by a story Tony Robbins shares at his Unleash the Power Within seminar. He tells of his two similar, yet drastically different, conversations with Carly Simon and Bruce Springsteen. When he asked Simon about her paralyzing stagefright, she said, “I feel my heart start to palpitate, my palms get sweaty … and I know a panic attack is coming on.” When Robbins asked Springsteen about his famously long concerts and how he can get himself into peak state for a new crowd every night, Springsteen answered, “My heart starts to race, my palms get sweaty … and I know I'm ready to take the stage.” Two identical symptoms; two opposite associations and outcomes.

“I trained eight hours a day seven days a week, two weeks off a year from the age of three until I officially retired at 16. And I had a hangup. I got really badly injured at 13 because I could not land a double axel … I had this mental block … and I would just … that was all I would practice every day … my parents sent me to sports psychologists and I had to listen to all these different tapes of visualization … but I just could not do that one jump and it really became my biggest nightmare.”

—Julie Benz, Actor, Dexter

Former figure skater, ranked 13th at the 1988 US Championships

A few of my own 10,000 “no”s have come from bouts with performance anxiety. To make the point that the actual stakes of a situation are not as important as the perception of danger in our own minds, I'll share one of my first performance hiccups from the third grade. It was not a proper production but merely my class performing some kind of staged reading of a very short play in front of other third graders. They were our audience. No parents were present. The older and younger grades at our school weren't even aware this was happening. And yet, I can still remember the nervous feeling I had in my body. At a certain point I was to say, “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.” I did so, and we moved on. Somehow, however, the same cue came back around to me a minute later and I found myself saying the line for the second time. We all smirked, as would be expected from kids, but we stuck with it … until it came around again.

As the line came out of me for the third time in three minutes, I snorted and keeled over, laughing so uncontrollably that I was crying.

It may have been compounded by the fact that the line itself described exactly what we were doing. The entire audience of third graders watched as everyone in the “play” broke down in giddy laughter. We were stuck in a loop and we couldn't get out. Eventually, we made it through the piece and it didn't leave much of a scar on my psyche. It just serves as a reminder of the slippery slope of performing, regardless of age, time, place, or audience.

Doesn't Take Much to Be Knocked Off Course

Another anxiety hiccup took place on a night of one-act plays I did in the West Village with a group of friends. It was a relatively tiny production and the play I was performing was about two cater waiters. Romantically involved, they were questioning their relationship as they worked together on New Year's Eve of 1999, heading into the new millennium. I had only been dating my now-wife, who is not and has never been in my business, for a few months when I invited her to bring her parents to see me perform. Most likely distracted by the thought that they were present in the theater, at one point my scene partner said her line and I went completely blank. I had no idea what came next. It felt like an eternity, a nightmare. Though it was probably just a second or two, in those seconds, I had thoughts of my new relationship ending because no parent would want their daughter dating, much less marrying, a guy who says he's an actor but can't even remember his lines. Somehow, I slowed my brain down enough to recall the circumstances of the play and this moment. Magically, my brain fed the line to me and I promptly spit it out. The show must go on, and it did.

After the curtain, everyone gathered in the lobby and talked about the play as is typical. When I asked my now-in-laws if they were nervous when I forgot my line, they stared at me with puzzled expressions on their faces. They had no idea what I was talking about. What felt like an abysmal gaffe to me went completely unnoticed by the audience.

There Are Hit Shows … and There Are Hits in Shows

The run of Speed-the-Plow was a hit and every night different VIPs would show up as well as friends and family, sometimes even those from the East Coast, who flew in to see the show. One night after the show, I learned that one of my older brother's friends had been in the audience. When I asked him what he thought, he said, “It was great.” There was a slight pause, and then he continued, “I mean, that punch is a mile away from you, but other than that it was great.” He was referring to a staged fight in which my character gets punched and knocked down. Once he's on the ground, he gets kicked in the ribs. I had a packet of fake blood, which I bit so that when I came up holding my nose, the blood would run down from my nostrils as though I had a bleeder. I allowed this comment to pull my focus from the task at hand, which would have a drastic effect on the following afternoon's Sunday matinee and prove just how dangerous it can be to try to please an audience.

“Last night you asked for a cup of coffee with that line. Tonight you asked for a laugh.”

—Uta Hagen, Legendary Theater Director and Acting Teacher, explaining why an actor failed to get laughs on a joke that landed the previous night

In that performance, when the punch came, I thrust myself back with a violent jerk and hit the deck in an effort to prove my brother's friend wrong. Whereas I normally landed close to the foot of the stage, this time I felt my momentum carrying me further. As I was rolling over I saw the ceiling of the Geary passing by, far above me. Then I felt my body leave the stage, the ceiling still spinning. Looking down as I jettisoned through the air, I was simultaneously debating whether an actor could fall off a stage while contemplating the possibility that I was going to land in the lap of the old man sitting in the front row, when … crack! My nose smashed into the man's knee. You can't make this stuff up.

I was sure I had broken my nose. There was a collective gasp from the audience, then a pause. Knowing the show must go on, I hopped back up onto the stage, causing another gasp to ripple though the theater. I took my usual fetal position and, on cue, Polk began to “kick” me in the ribs the way he always did. I bit the blood packet and, when I came up, fake blood pouring down my face, I thought one of the elderly matinee audience members was going to faint. A follow-up X-ray revealed that my nose did not, in fact, break. But those people paid for live theater, and dammit, that's what we gave 'em!

Instincts: Trust Your Gut

The best performances usually occur when supposed accidents happen and people are forced to think and act on the spot. Instinct is a performer's best tool. A mishap allows an audience to witness another human work themselves out of a jam in live time, which is what happened in that particular performance of Speed-the-Plow. This happens on stages and sets as well as sports fields. In high school, playing lacrosse against the defending Connecticut State Champions on their home turf, our game went into overtime. When the best player on our team took a shot, the opposing team's goalie blocked it and the deflected ball seemed to hang in the air in slow motion. Without thought, I reached up with my stick, got ahold of it, and shot it into the opponent's goal. Before I knew it, I was tackled by my teammates and buried on the bottom of a pile. My shot had just won the game. But here's what I remember: while I didn't play horribly, it wasn't my best game ever. In fact, I mistakenly thought the overtime period was five minutes so I didn't realize that we were in sudden death. When my teammates tackled me and piled on in celebration I was just as surprised as the other team's shocked parents. The result may have been monumental, but my “performance” was merely that of a player reacting to a loose ball.

I have observed repeatedly, while watching my son's youth baseball games over the years, that kids who typically don't see themselves as good athletes or baseball players make their best plays when the ball is smashed directly in their direction. With no time for their brains to react, their bodily instincts kick in and, seemingly magically, they come up with a huge play that shocks all of the parents in the stands.

While some people are more naturally instinctive than others, I believe that if one can see the value in using their instinct, they can seek out other likeminded individuals who will help them cultivate it even more. When I interviewed Chip Taylor, the man who wrote the hit songs “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning” on his way to the Songwriter's Hall of Fame as well as putting out an astounding 29 albums over a five-decade span, I mistakenly described what he does as writing poetry and matching it to music. He corrected me and described it like this:

“I would pick up the guitar, or in some manner hum some nonsense things to myself and wait until some words fell in together with some melody. And sometimes it made no sense at all, but if it gave me a chill, then I would continue with it.”

—Chip Taylor

Tony Blauer, the self-defense expert I mentioned in Chapter 2, shared a story with me on 10,000 NOs that described this very phenomenon. He was teaching Special Ops Military Forces tactical moves in removing the threat of a loaded weapon at close range in combat. When one of the operators continued to take slightly longer than everyone else to disarm the gun, Blauer was perplexed. While a split second may not sound like a long time, in this case it was the difference between life and death. When Blauer honed in on what this operator was doing, the man became defensive. After observing him repeatedly, Blauer realized this soldier was taking extra steps that were adding the unwanted time to the maneuver. It was only then, after Blauer pressed the issue, that the operator revealed that he had been a former Judo World Champion. It turned out that he was unaware of the extra steps he was taking because they had become instinctive after years of extensive training. Instinct is learnable.

Perhaps the most famous example of instinct in film history centers on Marlon Brando while shooting a scene with Eva Marie Saint in the classic 1954 film On the Waterfront. Brando plays a tough ex-boxer who is now barely making ends meet by finding sparse work at the docks as a longshoreman. In one scene, he and Saint are walking through a park in Hoboken, New Jersey, as a romance is budding between their characters. In the middle of one take, Saint accidentally dropped her white glove to the ground. Rather than call “cut,” director Elia Kazan let the scene play out. Without breaking stride, Brando squatted down, picked up the dainty white glove and, as they continued to talk, attempted to stretch the glove over his own big meat hook. As the scene continues, this simple gesture of his big hand not fitting into her dainty glove says more about their entire tragic love story than could have been accomplished with ten pages of dialogue. Brando's swift and instinctive gesture shows us that these two won't survive together because they're from different sides of the track. It's held up as one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history.

Brando adapted in the moment. He didn't stop or complain that it wasn't a perfect take. He incorporated the “mistake,” and in doing so, his willingness to allow the chaos of real life to enter the scene made it more authentic than they ever could have planned ahead of time. Filmmakers and actors call this a “happy accident,” and the greats actually look for these opportunities. Lesser artists might have called “cut,” choosing to remain in the safety of their preplanned ideas. Legends like Kazan, Brando, and Saint knew the value of instinct and that's how they gave us movie magic.

While some people look at top performers who have repeatedly produced incredible results under pressure as being different from the average person, these superstars are not exempt from feeling nervous. Every time they take the field or the stage, they are taking the same risk as you and I: they are putting themselves in a position where failure is an option. The quality that they have cultivated better than most, however, is the ability to focus and remain relaxed while under said pressure and to rely on their instincts. It is no easy task, and sometimes even incredible training cannot solve the problem of performance anxiety. It is a psychological battle in which fear never helps you unless it is transformed into positive energy that welcomes risk rather than hiding from it.