AIBU to wonder how busy actors memorise so many lines?

I think I read that there is a higher ratio of people with ADHD in the Arts, because it's a career that required hyperfocus for a short time, then moving onto the next thing and the next thing.

That should be costuming!!

Nope. I have ADHD and have been performing since I was 4. It literally comes down to repetition and knowing your blocking and being able to move. Once you’ve done a scene a few times, you will “lock” it in place.
I did Drama GCSE, so we did 2 individual performances, one scripted, the other improvised but rehearsed. I was also in the school show as Hope Harcourt in Anything Goes, did my local am drama production of Cinderella as Cinderella and was Juliet in Romeo and Juliet all at the same time. Consuming helps. Cue lines help. But it’s second nature if you’ve done it all your life. I’m about to start Frozen and I already have begun choral training which is going to be harder as there’s less movement!

They say the more they learn, the easier it gets. It’s a skill like gymnastics.

I was really very good at this as a child. I went to drama school for a while and then did drama GCSE. I was a bit of a tearaway teen and hadn’t learnt my lines over the school holidays as everyone else had so I had 2 weeks before crunch time to learn an entire script. I pulled it off. I was Oberon as well so not a small part. Not sure I could do it as easily now, out of practice.

I wonder if having ADHD makes this harder. When your brain is acting like a badly behaved monkey bouncing from one thing to another several times a second memorising text seems impossible to me.

My dad was an actor and we all used to have to test him on his lines to help him remember - playing the other parts to give him his cues. I agree training but some people do just have better memories than others.

Repetition. Times tables, verb tables, poems, plays. You keep repeating them till you get it right. It gets easier with practice. Things like places can help - if I'm standing there, it must be this line, If I'm holding this prop, it will be this line, etc. Probably every actor has their own ways of doing it, things that help them.

I can still quote some of the A-level Latin poetry I needed for an exam 26 years ago... And I still know my times tables after endless repetition in class around age 6/7. Rote learning has been unfashionable, but for getting things into your head so it sticks, it works.

I bet most of us can sing along with many '80s/'90s/'00s/whenever tunes from our teenage years - it's because you heard it over and over. Repetition.

Yanbu

I was thinking about zendaya saying shes doing several movies

It is a lot of work, even if they are paid well

Kids in school plays can learn lines. It’s not difficult, you just have to keep going over it.

I suspect it's not that hard. Have you ever taken a drama class?

The only real problem is if the speeches don't have some kind of narrative, logical flow. When I took a drama class in school, one girl gave a mesmerizing performance of the opening monologue from The Adding Machine. It's a long, deliberately dull speech, and she was phenomenal. But afterward she said it was really difficult because it's kind of rambling and disconnected, without any flow or arc.

Because it's a skill their livelihood depends on. Like Black Cab drivers in London and The Knowledge. If you do it again and again it becomes second nature.

It’s unexpectedly easy! I have a memory so I walk to x point, say y, sing Z. Then I move to A position, look like B emotion and say C, sing D. It’s really really easy when you have done it all your life!

DD is amazing at memorizing, I think it's partly practice (she's been acting - at her insistence - since she was barely potty trained )

But I am convinced it's also partly that she has severe dyslexia and it's how she coped when she was little (I only realised with hindsight). She would memorise a bunch of books and pick those ones wherever possible so she could read them quite fluently

She's currently learning two scripts and has learnt all her lines swiftly. I''ve been helping her and can still barely remember the opening words

I saw Rosamund Pike in Inter Alia at the theatre recently and came away thinking the same thing. She doesn’t leave the stage for the entire production and has about 85% of the lines. All acted brilliantly too. I suppose it’s just yes training and lots of repetition?

It's a skill, and a photographic memory. I've seen interview with child actors. Drew Barrymore, macaulay culkin and Cole Sprouse when he did friends. They said they easily remembered their own lines and the rest of the cast often correcting the other actors

When my daughter does shows she ends up memorising the whole script! She has always done this since about the age 5. Amazes me how her little brain copes.

Remembering lines is not the issue for actors. Inhabiting a character, so the words they say sound fresh and immediate and natural and varied - that's the issue. It's not a matter of memorising, like a recital, it's a matter of inhabiting the role and performing each response to what occurs on stage as if it was just happening for the first time.

I think I could do it OK. It’s not like they’re random lines with no context. They make up a dialogue, a story.
When I was at school back in the day, I could recite the Shakespeare play we studied for O level from start to finish.

I'm amazed he fits it around all his other extra curricular activities [redacted for legal reasons]

But yeah - it's his job. I presume you have many skills none of the rest of us could do after years of doing your job?

Across a half hour episode, it's going to be a few lines per person per day max, surely? Your average school nativity isn't any longer than that.

I suspect it's a number of things. Given that remembering lines is a skill needed to be a good actor then if you can't do it you're probably not going to get a lot of work.

Soap operas tend to have big casts so even if there's a lot of episodes it's shared out among a lot of people.

Films you get as many bites of the cherry as you need (or the director will tolerate) and plays you're doing the same thing every time and you've probably had a lot of rehearsal time.

It’s not so hard even for non-professionals. I was Rosalind in As You Like it once and it was easy enough to learn. I also learned a few epic poems and the entire lyrics of an opera off by heart for an exam (literature degree). I bet if you tried learning a poem you like you’d find it much easier than you think.

I often wonder how soap actors memorise so much when they have new lines every day.....
I know others are saying its training- but how exactly?!

I think this about singers too. I’m going to a concert tomorrow night and I don’t know how he remembers all the words!! I wonder if that’s why they let the audience join in sometimes? Because they’ve forgotten the words? 🤔