... is why the hell would you take advice from someone who is not qualified?
For example just over a year ago while filming Drona in Mumbai (Bombay) in India I was training at a small studio gym near my hotel. Now the gym was very sparsely equiped with a circuit of machines and a rack of lighter dumbells and one barbell with little weight.
As such I was loading up the arm curl machine to work my biceps but found the machine had a very hard lower movement but an easy top 1/2 of the range of motion - ie my biceps were only being 1/2 worked.
To get around this I put all the weight on the machine and was doing 1/2 repetitions in the 'easy' range of movement in an effort to fully work my biceps.
An Indian Personal Trainer came up to me and very politely pointed out that I was not using the machine correctly, just as politely I looked at my massive and pumped arms, then looked at his fatty, soft 15" arms and replied "I think I know what I am doing".
Obviously I Did Not Need Bicep Advice In India
Similarly on Youtube I have my first showreel up which includes me doing some heavy (at the time)(60kg) arm curls with a barbell, now in the video my body sways back and forth as I lift the weight repeatedly. One smart young fellow commented "Arm curls work better if you don't swing (cheat) the weight".
My response to this was, when you start moving around heavier weights it throws your centre of gavity out and you need to move your body to compensate. Obviously this guy giving me advice had never lifted a weight heavy enough to require such an effort.
So my question to these advice givers is why the heck should I listen to them? They obviously do not know as much as I do, they obviously do not have the experience, nor do they have the results... yet they feel qualified somehow to tell me how to train.
When I was training 100% and preparing to make it in Wrestling I would take advice from an IFBB Professional Bodybuilder, a National Powerlifting coach, a National Benchpress Champion, and the few older established bodybuilders who had been around the traps for quite a while with impressive past successes of their own.
Who would you listen to?
Similarly I now receive a few emails telling me how I should go about improving my acting career. People who are not actors, who seem to have never walked on a stage in their lives, nor appeared in front of a camera bigger than their mum's new 7MP Digital Nikkon Camera with video capture that she got for Christmas.
The problem with email is a lot of these people will go on about their high positions within the industry but a quick search via Google fails to find any details, now this does not mean that they aren't who they say they are but it does show a lack of evidence as nearly everything successful is documented somewhere on the Internet these days.
So again I have these unqualified people who have no idea about the industry giving me their advice on how I should get ahead in my acting career.
Should i take their advice or ignore it?
I'll tell you who's advice I would take in regards to my acting career - Jean Claude Van Dam, Dolph Lundgren, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jet Li, Jackie Chan - people who have climbed to the top of their professions and are extremely successful.
In other words I only take advice from people I would like to be more like or who have showed that they have what it takes to get to the top and therefore their advice is probably good as they are speaking from experience and a formula that has previously worked for them.
The other people I listen to are producers, directors, casting directors and people who have a LOT of experience in the industry (though maybe not as actors). From these people I can learn what is expected from an actor when the camera is switched off, I can learn what they need from an actor, and can hear stories of others past experiences, many of which can prove very relevant to my career as I can avoid the mistakes others have made or I can emulate theri successes.
For example recently onset with True Legend I was working with Big Mike from Hong Kong who has worked with many, many major celebrities and has good working relationships with the biggest and best producers/directors in Hong Kong and China. Now listening to him I learned so much info that will be absolutely valuable in my ongoing career, I heard some stories of some difficult situations other actors had made in their careers and how production thought about it (since it is production that does the hiring this is very important), I heard how some actors though their actions put themselves in an extremely good light and were hired repeatedly as they delivered both onscreen for the camera and offscreen for hte director, producer and the crew.
As you can easily guess Big Mike is someone that I took advice from instantly, several occassions on set I was mucking about and Mike gave me a shake of the head and I stopped immediately and thanked Mike afterwards.
So back to the title to takle advice or not to take advice - well seek a professional, seek someone you look up to, someone more successful and more experienced and listen to them.
Ignore the nobody wannabe's who tell you how to live their lives with very little thought going into what spews out of their mouths, these people seem to think that something has to come out of their mouths at all times, just like the TV, ignore it or switch them off by asking why you should take their advice when they are not a success in this area themselves?
I have seen in my life some of my friends listen to some idiot spew forth his crap then my friend will spend hte next day or two worrying and fretting over this thing that the idiot has already forgotten as he has spewed sh!t all over another 50 people in that time while he has gone back to his normal everyday nothing life with a normal everyday nothing job earning mimimum wage. Don't waste your time on these idiots, ignore them or ask them never ot open their stupid mouth around you again.
One other place I do take advice from is from close friends who have what they consider your best interests at heart, but friends and family usually offer the most poisonous advice of all so again take it with a grain of salt.
I have some good friends from Paris and another from London and a couple in Australia who call me occasionally to make sure I am doing alright, they have concerns and offer their suggestions to help me and give me a perspective from outside Thailand. Sometimes i see what is OK by Thai standards is not OK with Western standards and I do appreciate sometimes being pulled into line by this close group of friends.
Just question the authority of those giving advice and try to stear clear or at least ignore the advice coming from those who you would not reasonably expect to pay for their advice if it was offered as a service.
