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Acting for Life
By Demore Barnes, California
Hector Williams is dead. He fell at the hand of an unknown sniper. Now I sense this sniper has turned his attention towards me. I begin to think about my own mortality. As he has me in his crosshairs, the burning question I ask myself is how does one define a valuable life purpose?
"Ironically, it is Hector’s death that will ultimately help me create life for the next character I portray. It is what Hector gave me through his death that will be an inspiration for my future roles." -Demore Barnes
While Hector Williams is the character I portray on David Mamet's television show, The Unit - a drama dedicated to the fighting men and women of Delta Force - he has significantly impacted my life. The role of Hector Williams got me to think about how I measure and appropriate a value to the meat and cheese of our existence that occurs between those slices of life and death.
While the makings of everyone's sandwich is different, we all have the same two slices in common - life and death. Although the search for the ultimate protein-style sandwich of life rages on, it remains elusive: perhaps not unlike my point, should I continue to squeeze more from a sandwich metaphor.
But think about it - if a valuable life purpose is defined by the consumption of food, most people in the United States, including myself, would have consumed food with enough purpose to cover everyone on the planet many times over.
So the question remains, how does one define a valuable life purpose for oneself? I feel the eye of this question peering down on me through the scope of his rifle, and suddenly my heart is heavy. I feel like I'm having an out of body experience. In my mind I replay the scene where Hector is dead. He's dead and I am alive. I am sitting on a bench inside a truck looking down at my character's lifeless body.
As I write this, I am reminded of the often peculiar nature of my line of work. We actors, and for that matter writers, teeter awkwardly on a line that separates fact from fiction and that line is not easily defined.
With Hector Williams dead, my time with The Unit has come to an end. But as I move on in search of my next fantastic project and character, I catch myself thinking that, while I will go on Hector will not.
The truth is Hector will continue to live in the place where loved ones lost never die. He will remain in the hearts of the viewers who loved him, the hearts of the actors who portrayed his fictional family, and he will especially remain with me. What an unusual thing it is as for an actor to share a body, mind and heart with a fictional character that at first was a figment of another's imagination, but was then brought to life through an actor.
Thankfully, the inverse is not true. Although I did not die when Hector breathed his last breath, I immediately began to experience how even more unusual and difficult it is to define the places where Hector and I join and where we part. How will I pinpoint the places we meet and divide?
Ironically, it is Hector's death that will ultimately help me create life for the next character I portray. It is what Hector gave me through his death that will be an inspiration for my future roles. Hopefully in watching The Unit viewers will think about what constitutes a purposeful life.
I believe the hallmark of a life lived with purpose is one that seeks the benefit of others before oneself. It is to serve rather than be served; it is what we give rather than what we receive. It is important to take stock of our own needs too, but far too often the needs of others are overlooked. We have no guarantee, or promise that the gestures we make on another person's behalf will ever be reciprocated. But in order to lay hold of a purpose that is true, noble and admirable, we must be willing to sacrifice. Hector's sacrifice for his country was valiant.
We must be willing to lay down our sense of entitlement. We must be willing to lay down our ego and our pride. We must put to rest our drive for fame and acclaim, because all of these things are about what we do for ourselves. Generosity and sacrifice is about what we do for others. This is what I believe defines a purpose that is not only valuable, but also honorable.
The Unit can be seen on CBS-TV Tuesdays at 9:00 p.m. EST/PT
