Chapter 716

“Can I ask how much you earn?”

“Isn’t it strange to ask if you can ask when you asked already?” Joohyun said as she crossed her legs.

She had come down from her chair and was sitting at the edge of the stage.

“I can’t really tell you a specific amount. Actors don’t have a fixed income. Of course, if you sign a long-term commercial ad contract, you will earn money even if you’re resting, but there aren’t that many actors in the country who will get offered something like that.”

“Aren’t you one of those few, unni?” asked a girl with side part hair.

“First up, thanks for complimenting me, and as you said, I’ve earned enough to the point that I won’t starve to death even if I don’t work immediately. Money, yes, it’s important. However, there’s no other job that has as big of a disparity between the top earners and the bottom earners, so speaking from my standards won’t help you in any way, but….”

After blurring the end of her words, Joohyun lowered her voice before speaking,

“You want to get a clear answer, right? I can’t tell you about my contract fees and guarantees because those are sensitive pieces of info, but I can tell you how much I own right now. It would be too long to list everything, so I can pick two things that make me the most money. One is properties and two is stocks.”

“What building in which area? What rank is the company you’ve invested in on the KOSPI rankings?”

Maru turned around to the side. Sora was the one asking and her eyes were shining. The concept of economics for a girl from a well-off family seemed to be more developed than her peers.

“I won’t answer that because revealing that would make me feel naked. Well, I can tell you that there’s one on Gangnam’s main street.”

“That means that you have more than that, right?”

“Probably?” Joohyun smiled and no longer spoke.

“Do you have anything else you want to ask? There are about 10 minutes until the end of the ceremony, so you guys should ask everything you want until then. However, you guys know that it would be your loss if you ask questions that aren’t beneficial for you, right? Even if you guys find out about what’s in my possession, it won’t do you any good. Ask things that can benefit you. I will answer as much as I can.”

Maru quietly raised his hand. Joohyun flicked her eyebrows upwards before pointing him out.

“What should we not do in order to become a good actor?”

“So you’re not asking what you have to do, but what you shouldn’t do, right?”

“I’ve heard a lot about how to become a good actor.”

“I see. But that was unexpected. I thought you would ask about how to get good earnings as an actor.”

“Me? I know that money is important, but I’m not so hung up on it.”

“Really? You sound different to the kid I know. I don’t know whether you had a change of heart or some sort of realization, but I will answer you anyway.”

Joohyun crossed her arms and started pondering. Sora, who sat next to him, poked him and moved her lips. Are you two close? – she seemed to be asking. Maru just shrugged.

“Things you shouldn’t do, huh. To think about it simply, you can think about the things opposite of what you should do, but that would be boring. So, let me tell you the things you would really regret based on my experience. First is, as I said before, to not fall for temptations. You will hit a lot of blocks while doing your work as an actor. You might not get any decent jobs or fail all the auditions you try before running out of them. If you are given an offer at times like that, you will feel really tempted. You should first endure that. Are you so poor that you won’t be able to continue being an actor if you don’t accept such offers? If so, then quit being an actor immediately and start working somewhere else. Anything is fine. Once time passes and you are financially better, and you still want to become an actor, then you should try again at that time. I can guarantee you that people who have gone through such experiences will see dramatic improvements in their acting. After all, what actors are capable of acting comes down to the quantity of life they’ve experienced.”

“Don’t you think it would be too late by then?” one of the students asked as she looked up at Joohyun.

“If your dream is to become an actor or an actress who’s young and is active during his or her most beautiful days, then yes, it would be too late. It is a natural desire to not want to miss the time where your beauty and body are at their peak. However, how many people do you think can debut in the role they want, when they want in this world?”

Joohyun paused a little before making a phone call. After a while, she hung up and spoke again,

“You all know who Park Taeho is, right?”

The students all nodded. Maru did the same. Was there anyone who watched movies in Korea who did not know that name?

“That senior worked for a theater until he was 28 and played a minor role in a film when he was 30 before getting his first main role. That’s probably what you guys want. From the side, it might look like he climbed the ladder without any hardships or experience being nameless. But what do you think he was like when he was young? Didn’t I tell you? The quality of your acting is decided by the life you’ve lived. The role he played in the first film he was the main character in was a murderer. He played the role of human trash who beat up his wife and son ruthlessly. That senior was freakishly good at acting that part out. That act only looked realistic because it contained his youth. He lost his mother due to domestic violence when he was young. Such terrible times filled up the majority of his youth.”

The venue became quiet. Not even a single breath could be heard. Joohyun coughed faintly.

“Actors can only make use of what they have. Just like other creators. People that don’t know him well always say that he must have god-sent talent and luck because his debut was quick and his rise to fame was fast. Yes, but we can’t entirely rule out the presence of talent. He probably survived in this competitive market where tens of thousands of people exist because he had the talent. However, talent cannot replace experience. Senior Taeho was able to show an empathetic act that also looked realistic because he had piled up sadness in a corner of his heart since he was young. He himself said those words after all. Actors need to learn how to use their hardships as fertilizers. Right now, the future might look unclear, so anything you do might feel meaningless, but the moment that experience meets the right role, you will be rewarded for it. You will feel that those hardships weren’t entirely meaningless.”

“But don’t you think that acting doesn’t necessarily require experiences and is possible to do with imitation? You can’t kill a friend in order to long for a dead friend,” a girl asked while staring holes at Joohyun.

She didn’t look like she was trying to nitpick. She looked like she was desperately waiting for an answer.

“It’s called ‘acting’, so you might be asking the question ‘can’t I just copy it off someone else?’. You can start off with imitation, yes. But if you want to keep living as an actor, you should one day realize that you have reached your limits. That limit equals your bottom line. No matter when it is, the day they see their bottom lines is the day their future is decided. There are actors who will rise to become stars, and there will be actors who will stop there. They might even quit acting altogether.”

Bottom line. Maru thought about the conversation he had with Joohyun a long time ago. She said that it was important to get to the bottom of his emotions.

“If you keep continuing your career as an actor, you will definitely gain skills in terms of acting. You are bound to become proficient and improve if you keep repeating one thing. When you just start off, smiling and walking forward might feel awkward, but you will eventually become used to it and will be able to do it without feeling awkward at all. After that continues for a while, you would think – hey? Acting isn’t anything that difficult?; or perhaps – Why don’t I get a good role when I’m doing so well? How am I failing all the auditions I’m trying?”

Joohyun held up two fingers.

“This is the second thing you must not do. It is using momentum in acting. Acting definitely has technical parts, and it might feel easy if you become proficient at it. Make this expression when you’re sad or make that expression when you’re happy. You will gain tricks and methods with time. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing. Every actor goes through that point at least once in their career. The problem is that many people stop there. Acting, which felt awkward at first, would start to obey your will and will look natural like clothes you’ve been wearing for a long time.”

Joohyun nodded once.

“Numerous actors push themselves into environments similar to what the character goes through in order to understand their role better. There are people who even block off all sound in order to understand the world that a deaf person sees. However, you can’t say that you understood all the uncomfortable parts of being a deaf person just by doing that. In the same notion, it would be hard to experience the sadness of losing a friend. Of course, it would be a different story if murder becomes legal,” said Joohyun with a laugh.

Though, not many students laughed with her.

“Well then, what do you do now? Should you just give up since it’s something impossible and just imitate a scene that’s widely considered to be very good? No. That’s not an actor; that is an acting machine. What actors need to do is analyze the numerous indirect experiences he or she had and assimilate them by empathizing with them and understanding them to recreate the emotions necessary for the specific role they’re playing. They can’t become 1, so they have to be a 0.9 recurring that’s infinitely close to 1. The result of that is what the audience experiences as 1. An actor who can only imitate will never even become 0.9. There’s nothing inside them after all.”

The girl who asked that question sealed her lips and nodded. She looked like she was given a satisfactory answer. Joohyun smiled and continued to speak,

“For that reason, the last thing you should not do is this one thing: to be satisfied with one thing and then stopping. Being happy with little things would definitely make you live a happy life. I also wish to live with the bare minimum once I quit being an actress. However, while you still possess the occupation of an actor, you cannot stop. To an actor, a resting period is a period for them to accept new things. New things always bring tension and stress. You have to keep repeating that. Of course, even I sometimes think that I should just throw everything away and just keep doing what I was doing. As long as you are human, you can’t help becoming tired. The important thing is whether you’re being dragged by time while you’re stopped or whether you continue to change along with time. If you want to keep playing similar roles, then it’s fine to stop there. However, if it’s not like that, you must pursue challenges and change endlessly.”

She was right. It was completely in line with the views he had, so he would have been very impressed by those words. The moment he felt a sense of rejection was when he heard the words ‘challenges’ and ‘change’. His face tilted sideways and he subconsciously clicked his tongue. It was quite peculiar. Primitive emotions that ignored his reason were welling up inside him. Maru raised his hand.

“A person specializing in one thing doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re bad though, does it?”

“Generally, yes. I’m not saying that specialists are bad. I’m just saying that it doesn’t fit my ideals of acting.”

“You might lose what you already have if you take on challenges and lose the image you originally had. Is there really a need to do that?”

Maru sighed as he finished his words. He was blurting those words out subconsciously. Challenges and change. Why did he feel a sense of disgust towards the two words that he admired?

Just as Joohyun was about to speak again, the host, who had been watching quietly until now, approached her.

“Uhm, our rental time is over.”

He smiled awkwardly.

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