Acting Tips: Facial Expressions

On stage, what's happening on your face is as equally important as your voice and your body movement. Your facial expressions can tell the audience exactly what you're thinking without saying a word. By learning muscle control and practicing facial expressions in front of a mirror, you'll be ahead of the game when acting on stage.

Warm up your face muscles before you get started. Stand in front of a mirror and squish up your face as if you just tasted an extremely sour candy. Close your eyes tight and purse your lips together. Now, do the exact opposite and open your eyes wide and your mouth wide, stretching your jaw muscles. Go back and forth between these two silly faces three or four times.

If you have time, give your face a light massage. With your index and middle finger, start at your temples, gently pressing small circles into your skin. Work up and across your forehead, back across your eyebrows, and down your cheek bones. Gently massage your jaw and neck. This will help tremendously with relaxing these muscles.

While still standing in front of a mirror, you can practice facial expressions that correspond to different emotions. Close your eyes and thing "angry." Imagine a time when you were really angry and feel that emotion resurge. Now open your eyes and make the expression with your face. Ask yourself if you really look angry. Maybe you need to bring your eyebrows closer together or purse your lips. If you have a hard time controlling a particular muscle, put your finger on the area you want to change and focus on it. Work at moving that particular muscle until you have mastered it.

Practice different emotions such as love, excitement, wonder, and sadness. Ask yourself if you're really conveying the emotion with every muscle in your face. If you are uncertain, ask someone to help you.

Get a friend or family member to be your acting coach, even if they have no acting skills. Sit in front of them and tell them you are going to express an emotion and you want them to guess what it is. When they make a guess, ask them to give you tips on how could better display the emotion. Getting opinions from other people is very helpful in your acting practices.

You can also photograph your expressions and study yourself. Practice with your camera how many different faces you can make to express the same emotion. You might be surprised to see the results.

Learn what your own habits and mannerisms are by videotaping yourself. You may have a habit of blinking too frequently or cocking your to the side. When you videotape yourself, just sit and talk about anything that interests you, then watch yourself. This is the best way to learn how you look to others and what you may want to change about yourself.

Acting is not just feeling an emotion or some random expulsion of actions. Acting is very controlled with very concise movements of muscles and your body. You will gain much experience from practicing in front of a mirror and you will gain much control over your muscles by working them.