The Difference Between a Choice and a Result — And Why It Matters for Your Audition

Ask most actors what they’re working on in a scene and they’ll tell you something like: “I’m playing sad,” or “I’m trying to seem desperate,” or “I want to come across as confident.” These are results — emotional states or impressions they’re aiming for. They sound like acting choices, but they aren’t. Real choices create behavior. Results just create performance. Understanding that difference is one of the most important shifts an actor can make.

What a Result Actually Is

A result is an end state you’re trying to manufacture — an emotion, a quality, an impression. When an actor decides to “play sad” or “be nervous,” they’re working backward from where they want to end up. The problem is that the audience can see the effort. They watch you trying to arrive at a predetermined destination, and it reads as performance rather than experience.

Results also tend to be general and fixed. “Sad” is a concept, not a state. It tells you nothing about what’s actually happening in your body, your relationship to the other person in the scene, or what you want from this moment. Actors who chase results often end up performing the idea of an emotion instead of genuinely experiencing anything — and that gap is exactly what audiences and casting directors notice.

What a Choice Actually Is

A choice, by contrast, is something you do — an active verb, a pursuit, an intention. Instead of deciding to “be nervous,” you decide to convince someone you’re fine when you’re not. Instead of “playing sad,” you pursue one last chance to make things right before it’s too late. These are actable. They give you something to do in every moment of the scene, and they engage you in a genuine relationship with the other person.

Notice that when you pursue a genuine choice, emotions tend to arise naturally as byproducts. You don’t have to manufacture sadness if you’re truly pursuing something and genuinely failing to get it. The feeling shows up because the situation produces it — not because you decided in advance that it should be there. That’s the difference between acting and performing.

How to Identify When You’re Playing a Result

The simplest diagnostic is to ask yourself: what am I doing right now? If your answer is a state (“I’m being angry”) rather than a pursuit (“I’m trying to get him to admit he was wrong”), you’re likely playing a result. Another sign is that your attention is on yourself — monitoring your own emotional temperature, checking whether you look right — rather than on the other person and what you need from them.

Results also tend to make actors stiff. When you’re trying to maintain a predetermined emotional state, there’s no room to respond to what’s actually happening in the scene. You become closed instead of open, executed instead of alive. The scene starts to feel rehearsed in the worst sense — like you’re delivering a performance you already decided on, rather than living through something real.

Making the Shift in Your Next Audition

Before your next audition, go through the scene and replace every result with an active choice. Swap “I’m playing desperate” for “I’m trying to stop them from leaving before I can explain.” Swap “I want to seem confident” for “I’m trying to make sure they never doubt me again.” The more specific and personal the choice, the more alive you’ll be in the room — because you’ll have something real to pursue instead of an impression to maintain.

This works in self-tapes too. When you’re alone in a room with a reader or a camera, the temptation to monitor your own performance is even stronger. Active choices pull your attention outward — toward the imaginary other person, toward what you need, toward what’s at stake. That outward focus is what makes self-tapes feel alive instead of flat. It’s not about working harder. It’s about working in the right direction.

The shift from results to choices is one of those changes that sounds simple but transforms everything about the way you work. Once you feel the difference — the aliveness that comes from genuinely pursuing something instead of performing an emotion — you won’t want to go back. If you want help making that shift and building a consistent approach to your audition prep, learn more about private coaching sessions.