Taking the time to develop a character background can be a game-changer for your performance. By understanding your character’s past experiences, beliefs, and motivations, you can bring depth and authenticity to your portrayal that might not have been possible otherwise. Not only does developing a character background enhance your performance, but it also helps you connect with your character on a deeper level. By empathizing with their experiences and understanding their thought processes, you can fully embody their persona and bring their story to life. It’s important to remember that every character has a unique background, even if it’s not explicitly stated in the script.

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Here is my guide to some of the techniques you can use in order to develop a character background.

Justification

Look at the character’s actions and choices in the script. Do they lash out? Do they lie a lot? Discover some choices they make and jot them down. Then think about what events or experiences in their childhood may have affected them in order to make that decision. For example; if they lash out, maybe you create the idea that they grew up in a violent home and they lash out because they now have grown to expect violence. See how the feelings that are coming up for the character in that moment in the script are the same as the feelings that happened in that circumstance when they were a child. There is so much vulnerability in childhood emotions, that thinking about this can help us discover further vulnerability to the character in the scenes we play.

Research

One of the most important things to do to understand your character’s background is to do some research. The first thing you need to do is go through your script and write down all the facts you can find about your character. This includes where they live, the time period they live in, what they do for work, and anything else you can discover that gives you an insight into how the character lives

A good place to start is to go through the 5 W’s – Who, What, Where, When, Why. If you’re unfamiliar with these, I cover them in my guide on Script Analysis.

When you’ve collected all the information you can on your character, start to do some research. Find out everything you can about your character’s experience with these things. Be creative about it. Searching for things on the internet is a great start, and accessible to us all, but try and broaden your research field. Try heading to the library, finding some documentaries, or heading to museums or educational centres where you can talk to experts and get a real insight into what you’re looking into.

Character Biography

This is a classic method of character creation and a great way of starting to think about your character a little more deeply. A character biography is where you take a selection of questions and fill them out from the point of view of your character. This will help you to think of details you may not have thought of otherwise, and simply colour your interpretation with more specific details.

Here is a great character biography template from myactorguide.com

While this is a great way to be more detailed and come up with new ideas about your character, it’s not my favourite. The reason for this is it can cause us to simply think up interesting facts about our character, but it doesn’t encourage us to connect with them on a personal level. It keeps our character separate from us, rather than helping us to find them within ourselves. So, while it is definitely a helpful tool, I don’t think it should be the only one you rely on in order to build your character’s backstory. Here are a couple of ideas for tools you can use in order to form more of a personal connection when it comes to how to develop a character background for actors.

Daydreaming

This is a tool that really engages your imagination – one of the most important tools in your arsenal when it comes to how to develop a character background for actors. The great thing about this tool is that it stops you from relying too much on trying to make the right decisions. As we know in acting, there are no right decisions. The most important thing you have to offer as an actor is your unique perspective. This tool allows your imagination to run wild without your logical brain getting in the way, meaning the content you build will be entirely unique to you. By using this tool, you will create a character with lots of depth and one that is entirely different to anyone else’s interpretation of the character.

How To Daydream Your Character’s Background:

1. Sit down and take some deep breaths. Try and focus on your breath. Run your awareness over your body and notice how it feels. Return to your breath.
2. Now turn your attention to your character. Invite your mind to show you a moment in their past.
3. Don’t overthink it. Whatever your mind delivers to you is perfect. Do not think that whatever it gives you isn’t right or good enough because it is. The trick here is to try and let go of control and just follow what your imagination gives you. You are not creating the story. You are simply watching it play out like a film in front of your eyes.
4. Now all you have to do is let your imagination run away with you, sit back and enjoy. Let your imagination daydream about any part of the character’s history that it wants to. Our brains are great and making up stories, even without any logical guidance from us. If you simply let your imagination run wild, it will offer you ideas about the character’s background that a powerful and personal to you. Ones that you simply could not come up with if you attempted to be in control and come up with something clever.

You can return to this tool over and over in order to keep connecting with your character and their history.

Sum Up

This is a great tool to use after you’ve done all your script analysis and other character background work, such as your research and daydreaming. It encourages you to see the play from your character’s point of view, and it’s very simple. All you need to do is go through your play scene by scene and describe what’s happening but entirely from your character’s point of view. It should be coloured by their perspective, their background and their way of seeing things.

For Example:

So for instance, the actual events for a scene may be: Character A walks into a room. Character B asks where they’ve been, and Character A tells them they’ve been at a friend’s house before saying they’re heading to bed and leaving the stage.

However, doing the sum up of the same scene from your character’s perspective may look more like this: I walk into the room, hoping I don’t bump into anyone. Character B is sat my favourite chair and they look annoyed. I know I’m going to get the third degree and I just wish they’d stay out of my business. They ask where I’ve been and I lie and say I’ve been at a friend’s house to get them to leave me alone. I don’t want them to ask anymore so I quickly make an excuse to leave and go quickly before they can say anything else.

This means you can look at your scenes specifically through the lens of your character. I’ve advised you to do this after all your other background work so you can use the information you’ve found in order to inspire your sum up. Their perspective will be coloured by the way their background has influenced them, and you can use this to sum up your scenes from their point of view.

Throughline

This is similar to your sum-up, but a little more broad. It is a great idea to do this after your sum-up, as it should be inspired by the information you find here and through your background development. Here you are going to write a throughline for the entire play from your character’s point of view. So this is a bit like your scene sum-ups, but you are summing up the play as a whole instead.

Write a synopsis of your entire play from your character’s point of view. See how they see the events of the play. This will all be coloured by your character’s background. Use the information you’ve discovered to write this. How do their class, their job, where they live, and all the specific details you’ve developed, influence how they feel and behave over the course of the play? This is a way to connect your background development to the actual events of the production so that you are able to communicate this information during your performance and make clear choices about your acting.

Conclusion

So, there we have it! Here are a number of exercises you can use to answer your question about how to develop a character background for actors. Using these techniques you should be able to gain a deeper insight into your character, as well as forming a personal connection to them from your unique perspective.

If you want to learn more about how you can build on this to create a character, go and check out my character creation guide HERE.

Thank you so much for reading and feel free to message me if you have any questions.