"Acting is an odd profession. Let’s all admit it. Beautiful, thought provoking, challenging, powerful—yes, all of those things, but also odd. We willingly subject our souls and imaginations to situations and experiences most people spend their entire lives avoiding. Actors typically love to ‘dig their teeth into a meaty role’, which usually means portraying a character who has experienced significant trauma or challenges in their life.
Storytelling since the beginning has been primarily concerned with the dramatic and the extreme. This affords us, as actors, the privilege and opportunity to wear the shoes of characters whom we will never meet in real life, and to experience things within the safety of a dramatic structure which we will (thankfully) never actually experience. Whilst this is wonderful, special care ought to be taken by actors when performing particularly intense roles. That way they will be able to jump from role to role unscathed by their performative experience and stay safe in the process."
Read more at Stage Milk.