Meet Zac Looker | Actor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Zac Looker and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Zac, can you tell us about a book that has had a meaningful impact on you?
The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins. Indonesia looked at through the modern lens may be reduced down to the beautiful beaches of Bali, a regular tourist destination for affluent Europeans and North Americans. Spas on every corner and smiling local labour waiting inside. Behind this modern colonial facade lies a dark and messy history involving the early years of the CIA, the massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and an ill-fated fake sex tape. This book exemplifies one of my favourite kinds of narrative (fictional or otherwise), constantly cropping up everywhere once you start looking for it. An at-times-satirical story that reinforces a dire truth. This majorly under reported perspective on the Cold War encapsulates everything from the macropolitical truth of US interference in foreign elections and the change in the meaning of the term ‘third world’ over the past century, to the individuals forever traumatized by its aftermath. It’s a fascinating, terrifying incredibly well researched book that tells so many stories that have been too long hidden for the sake of first world comfort.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
One of the things I’ve come to learn about acting over the past few years is that it is a fundamentally inefficient process. The fact is, once your on set, saying the lines, in costume surrounded by talented cast mates in front of a camera a huge amount of the work is done for you. You’re already 95% of the way to being believable in your role. You spend all the rest of your time, researching, studying, rehearsing, living and breathing your part trying to find and/or earn that final 5%. And it’s in that crucial 5% that the difference between a ‘fine’ performance and a brilliant one lies. Sometimes hours of work whether it be physical exploration or detailed note taking will only inform a tiny fraction of what you actually see on screen. Conversely a huge chunk of your character can be formed by a tiny detail(from literally anywhere) you noticed moments before the camera’s roll. This process can be finessed to a point but since you never know what will lead to inspiration and what will lead to a complete dead end. And sometimes it’s just right there in the moment regardless of the work you’ve done and all you need to do is take care of your own emotional state enough to give the best performance you can and NOT OVERTHINK IT(in itself a daunting task). All of this before an editor who needs to get an edit that fits into a run time, even if it alters your performance massively, even gets a hold of the footage.

Bare in mind, I’m also 20, fairly inexperienced and trying to make myself sound interesting for a press opportunity so take everything I’ve said here with massive grain of salt. One of the things I quite like about my job is that tomorrow I could be confronted with a new reality or character that throws all these ideas out the window, forcing me to start from square one. Accepting that I’ll always feel like I barely know what I’m doing is part of the fun.
As to how I got where I ‘am today’, I have truly no idea. So much is outside of my control that I can’t possible say what lead me here other than the fact I kept trying (for quite a long time now), worked at it, and got very lucky every now and again, and I’ve barely gotten started. Outside of this I can’t say. There were certainly difficult moments which I overcame through sheer stubbornness and a love for the work and finding my own ways to do it. One of the most important things I’ve learned (or am starting to learn) is how to listen (often the answer to everything, acting or otherwise-really actively listening, to the script, your scene partners or even to yourself) and how to be open, and that feeling like you know nothing is one of the best ways to know you’re finally getting somewhere. These things at least ring true in the little bubble of life I inhabit where I get to tell interesting stories, meet interesting people and make a career out of extreme imagination and extreme empathy. How I’ve managed to make this my job I have really no idea. But it’s pretty great, most of the time.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I’ve been blessed to have been inspired and guided by several remarkable people in my relatively short existence on this planet. One of them was my A-level (the last 2 years of high school in the UK during which time you specialize in three subjects) Maths teacher, Danielle. The connection between Maths and acting might seem strained at best. For me it feels like using the same muscle in two different ways. Both are fundamentally questions of creative problem solving, though at times I do miss the politeness maths provides you in assuring the existence of a definitive answer, a difference in the disciplines I still struggle with in my work today. But Danielle helped me discover something crucial to both. The specific nuanced manner in which you mind- and your mind alone-works is your greatest tool, not your greatest hindrance.

Another formative person in my life was my first and really only ever acting teacher Marie, who still runs The Young Creatives Portsmouth, a youth drama and theatre organization in the area where I grew up. Her approach to nurturing creative interest in young people is one that has shaped me as an actor in more ways than I can articulate. I’ve seen youth theater at almost every level varying in funding, prestige and age range and I can tell you one thing. It’s a fucking shit show more often than not(feel free to star that out but I cannot fathom a more accurate, less expletive phrase to use here. My apologies). The fact Marie has been able to maintain a successful drama program for over a decade given the many often ridiculous givens of the sector without (to my knowledge) suffering any form of cardiac arrest is miraculous.

(My mother would also be an obvious answer here. I’m incredibly lucky to have had such a dedicated, thoughtful, pragmatic and understanding parent as she and her support in my pursuit of an acting career has been obviously vital and affirming. I mention this as a seeming afterthought not to downplay her importance in my development but simply to keep her from getting too cocky).