Episode Details

What happens when the mask you wear for a living starts wearing you?

Bill Marchant has spent nearly four decades inside the craft of acting — on screen in Chappie and Stargate SG1, behind the camera on his own feature Everyone, and for 35 years training actors at Vancouver Film School before recently retiring from the role that shaped his life.

In this conversation we explore men's inner work and the mask every man wears without noticing it, how three decades of coaching actors taught Bill to tell the difference between real vulnerability and rehearsed emotion, what Buddhism and non-attachment revealed to him about suffering, shame, and the roles men are conditioned to perform, and why the loneliest thing about masculinity is being seen for the performance instead of the person underneath it.

This is a conversation about what's left when the character is gone and you're just standing there as yourself — and why that's the hardest role any man will ever play.

If this conversation moved something in you, a rating or review helps more men find this work. Martin's book, The Weary Traveller's Guide to a Life Worth Living, is available now.