When you’re faced with difficult challenges, find yourself in unfamiliar parts of life, and/or interacting with people that challenge you, it’s important to keep your emotions in check. In this post, Uta Hagen answers some questions regarding her personal experience with keeping your cool, even when things get hot.

This post is part of the series “Uta Hagen’s Advice to Young Actors.”

Q: In the long run, what would you say is the most important factor in maintaining a successful career?

A: I guess it’s keeping your head above water and staying out of fear, anger, and making enemies unnecessarily. You’re not going to be happy every minute of your life, but you should be in control of yourself and your emotions – at least when you’re working. When you’re faced with difficult challenges, find yourself in unfamiliar parts of life, and/or interacting with people that challenge you, it’s important to keep your emotions in check. You only have so much energy per day; don’t waste it on being angry or upset.

Uta Hagen: I suppose that all of us have different ways, different ways of getting into it. But I think we all, or most of us, go through certain things that must be the same. We have to go through certain exercises that are the same. We have to learn how to use our imagination and use it in a particular way – and not just imagine what we would do if this happened or if that happened, but really put ourselves in the situation and then see what happens. It’s a kind of visualization.

Interviewer: Do you talk about this much with other actors?

Uta Hagen: No. Because it’s something you do for yourself. You work out your own methods, your own way of getting there.

Interviewer: Is there one thing that you find particularly hard?

Uta Hagen: Yes. I think it’s hardest when you’re faced with difficult challenges and find yourself in unfamiliar parts of life and/or interacting with people that challenge you – especially when you’re working with them, when you can’t get away from them. In those situations, it’s important to keep your emotions in check – even if they’re not under control all the time. That’s what I’ve found very hard to

You have to keep your cool. You cannot afford to let yourself get rattled. The more technically proficient you are, the less likely you are to be thrown off by a difficult actor.

The audience is the most important thing.

But the best way to get control of your emotions is through technique. It’s not that technique gives you confidence – it gives you mastery, and it takes away fear. Technique doesn’t make you feel powerful; it makes you powerful.

You have to learn for yourself what works for you and then maintain that discipline throughout your career, because there’s nobody standing by as an understudy if you break down in a performance.

Always be prepared: It’s not enough to have learned a part; you have to prepare for each performance every day. The first thing I do when I wake up is go over my lines in my head – even if I’ve been doing the play for years. If I’m going on for someone else, or if it’s just been a long time since I’ve done the play, I can’t go on without doing this preparation first.

Whether you’re performing or directing, you have to be cool. You have to be calm. And that’s what I teach in my classes. If something goes wrong, don’t panic! It’s very simple advice, but it’s very hard to do.

This is how I learned it: When I was a young actress, I went on tour with Eva Le Gallienne in “Romeo and Juliet.” One night, we were about to go on, and Eva turned to me and said, “I’m sorry, daughter, but we are going to have to cut the balcony scene tonight. The boards are rotten up there, and if you stand on them you will fall through!”

I was devastated! How could she do this to me? The balcony scene was my big moment in the play!

But without batting an eyelash she said, “Don’t worry about it. We will just do the scene where Romeo comes in at the end of the play instead. That is one of the most powerful scenes in all of Shakespeare! You will see…it will work out fine!!”

And you know what? We did that scene instead

Question: I’m a beginning actor and almost always get nervous before I go onstage. How can I deal with this?

Answer: Before you go on, you have to make yourself aware of the fact that you will be nervous. Observe it, accept it, and don’t identify with it. When you are uptight, you are not relaxed or free. You must become aware of the difference between tension and relaxation. You must learn to relax your body and then consciously release tension in order to be free.

We have a president who has a bad temper and who loses his cool easily. He cannot help but react to whatever is in his face at the moment. He does not have the patience, or self-discipline, to wait for a more appropriate time to respond. He just reacts!

No wonder he’s having so much trouble with his job! Any person, in any profession, who has such a short fuse and so little control over his responses, is going to be handicapped in anything he tries to do or get done.

On the other hand, there’s another kind of person, who doesn’t lose control when things get tough. He keeps his cool and thinks before he acts. He may even wait until things are back under control before he responds at all.

And this kind of person is usually much more effective than the first kind!

James Madison once said: “It is of great importance that the right of impeachment should be continued. It is essential to the security of liberty in a republic; for if an act be done which merits impeachment, and impeachment ensues not, it later permits the commission of such acts with impunity.”