ACTING isn’t the preserve of the good-looking, the talented, or even their nepo babies. Ordinary people like you perform, and these six turns in particular deserve an Oscar:
Sober at work
The Academy would be blown away if they’d seen your convincing portrayal of a sober person at work the morning after a heavy night. Your liver was still metabolising 12 pints, but like an Equity card holder you didn’t keel over and throw up once. With these talents you should be performing Shakespeare. Hamlet’s soliloquies would be a piece of piss in comparison.
Delight at receiving gift
Traditionally a difficult role to nail. Overdoing your enthusiasm looks hammy, underplay it and people get suspicious. You threaded the needle perfectly when your wife got you that spa weekend gift voucher instead of the Nerf gun you’d dropped hints about. And that ad-lib about how you’d already been thinking of buying a relaxing hotel break for yourself? Inspired.
Interest in other people’s exercise regimes
Meryl Streep has never pretended to look fascinated as someone drones on about their 5K personal best. That’s because it’s beyond her abilities as an actor. You made it look effortless though when you nodded through your colleague’s tedious explanation while thinking about Terminator 2. Have you ever thought about getting an agent? Your talents are going to waste in the office.
Happy to stay friends
When you were in a relationship you gave a convincing portrayal of somebody who wasn’t boring. Once your ex saw through your charade and binned you off though, you gave an even better performance as ‘man happy to stay friends’. It’s hard for actors to cry on cue, but it’s even more difficult to hold back tears when you’re heartbroken like you did. Bravo.
Fascinated by friend’s young children
Parents are allowed to find their kids irritating or tedious, but other people are expected to be enthralled when they throw food on the floor. You went full method actor by feigning interest in a child’s crap finger painting when they weren’t even in the room. Either you’re this generation’s Marlon Brando or you have no artistic taste.
Pretending to be fine
The toughest of all acting roles. It would’ve been so easy to slip out of character when your friend asked how you are, but nobody wants to hear a Brechtian monologue of despair and alienation. Smiling and saying you’re fine is your career-defining part, but now you’ve been typecast into doing it every day until you die.
