Student Blog: How Cosplaying Helped Me As an Actor

(All photos in this post were taken by me!)

Acting has been my passion for years. There’s no greater feeling for me than stepping onto a stage, and getting to embody someone new. But within the past few years, I’ve been able to get this same feeling somewhere else. About three years ago, I discovered that I can expand my love for acting and performing by combining it with a new obsession: cosplay. 

The word cosplay comes from combining two words: costume and play. Essentially, I just still play dress up as an adult. You know the people who dress up for ComicCon? That’s me! Sometimes I buy costumes, sometimes I make them, sometimes a bit of both! But overall, it’s just about celebrating your favorite pieces of media and having fun.

Cosplay, and making cosplay content on social media combines so many skills: makeup, video editing, photography, art, all the way to acting. And cosplay has surprisingly become one of the most useful tools in my acting journey!

I started cosplaying when COVID hit, and I was about to be stuck in my room for a “two week vacation” (what a crazy thing to think about, huh?). This was back in the day when TikTok POVs were super popular, and I needed something to pass the time. So I threw together a “modern day” version of Megara from Hercules, and got to work. And I immediately fell in love!

Slowly I started making more videos, and once COVID calmed down a bit, I was able to attend my first convention. Flash forward to now, where I have over 50 thousand other nerdy people following my cosplay journey on TikTok, and I’m even cosplaying with groups of friends in New York City! I could have never imagined this would have turned into such a huge love of mine.

But what in the world does this have to do with acting? 

I love doing transitions, or fun montages, but one of my favorite kinds of content to make are acting videos. Re-enacting scenes of whatever character I’m doing has been so insanely helpful for me as a young actor. 

For one thing, as someone who had exclusively done stage acting prior to starting my account, this was such a great way for me to see what I looked like on camera, and how my choices read. I had never really recorded my acting before, as crazy as that sounds in the current era of self tapes. But it’s true! This was a very new thing for me! And I cannot stress how helpful it was to try out a New Medium in the safe, low-pressure environment of my bedroom.

A lot of times cosplayers have a unique acting style: some people are incredibly animated, while others take a more understated approach, usually depending on the source material of your character. For me, I tend to lead towards more of the realism side, but finding my style definitely took some trial and error. (If you saw my videos back when I was severely under-acting… no you did not).

But having a safe space to experiment, and play around, without it being for a job or audition, was so beneficial for me. TikTok became my playground. I can play whatever character I want, in whatever way I want, and can discover what I like and what I don’t. This also allowed me to get way more comfortable in front of a camera than I ever had been. 

It’s super important for me to embody the character I’m cosplaying when acting out their scenes. I study the physicality of the character, and attempt to mimic their mannerisms and body language. Some characters are much easier than others: some are fairly similar to myself, while others are more outside of my comfort zone. Some are more exaggerated, but others are more stark and stoic. Sometimes I cosplay male characters if they were women, and create my own physicality that still stays true to the essence of the original. Or sometimes I cosplay animated characters, and have to figure out how to portray them in a live action medium! Physicality has always been one of my biggest challenges as an actor, and what has scared me the most about performing. But somehow, through cosplay, has become one of the most exciting challenges! Figuring out a character’s mannerisms, or mimicking and studying some of my favorite actors, is one of my absolute favorite parts of what I do. And it helped me realize how important physicality was to bringing a character to life! 

The most impactful character for me has been cosplaying Wanda Maximoff (pictured at the beginning of this post). When Wandavision came out, I was instantly inspired, and became absolutely obsessed with recreating her scenes. This show gave Elisabeth Olsen the unique opportunity to play the same character throughout multiple decades of television, from a 1950s sitcom all the way to a modern day comedy. Watching this show, and watching her adapt her mannerisms and acting style ever so slightly to fit into the context of that week’s episode, I knew this would be an absolute dream to play. So I decided… Why not give it a shot? And while I am in no way even close to Olsen’s genius portrayal, I learned so much going through the decades alongside her. To this day she’s one of my absolute favorite characters to film.

Now obviously I am not using this as a replacement for my training. I am now going to school for acting, and recognize that I have a TON to learn from so many people with experience and wisdom. But getting to kind of critique myself in a way I never had before, and growing from simply just practicing was an amazing way for me to start gaining confidence before I began classes.

It also is so amazing getting to create what is essentially my own sizzle reel. While I do make a lot of my older content private, now that I’ve been doing this regularly for over three years, I still have access to everything I’ve made. And I can go back, re-make videos I made when I was first starting, and see my progress by putting them side by side! This alone has been amazing for my confidence as a performer. It’s so easy to compare yourself to others, or feel like you aren’t improving at the same rate as your peers. But I have physical proof that with patience and practice, I have only gotten better! This is so reassuring, and I can apply that lesson to my training and performances as well. 

Even if the costumes and makeup aren’t your thing, I highly recommend making some acting videos as practice. Find an audio of a scene you love, and lipsync to that! Of course, this is different than delivering the lines yourself, but watching your own facial expressions and practicing a wide variety of characters is something that can help you immensely. You don’t even have to make anything public if you don’t want to! 

I am so happy I found a hobby that can allow me to continue discovering my love for acting, and combine it with my love for my favorite fandoms. This passion has helped me grow so much as a person and performer, allowed me to meet so many incredible people, and been my escape through a lot of tough points in my life. 

Not to plug my own TikTok, but if you’d like to check out some of my stuff, you can find me @ starksnova. I haven’t been doing as much acting content recently as I have in the past, but I’m constantly cooking up new ways I can combine my passions in the future.

Take care of yourselves,

K

(Instagram: katiesgleason , TikTok: starksnova)