The art of imitating life

What's in a name?

If a rose by any other name smells as sweet, as a love-struck Juliet tells her love Romeo in Shakespeare's tragic romance, what of a role?

Is a role by any other name still a role, and still as real?

What's in a role anyway?

Play along with me for a while, if you will.

We've often heard actors talk about how they prepare for a role, haven't we? How some of them have had to learn a new language or to play a musical instrument to be able to portray a character convincingly.

Forest Whitaker, who won an Oscar for his role as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada in the film Last King of Scotland, not only gained weight to play the part, but learned to speak Swahili and to play the accordion.

Whitaker said he read books about Amin and watched news and documentaries about the dictator.

He travelled to Uganda to meet Amin's friends, relatives, generals - and victims.

He spent countless hours practising his Amin accent.

Hilary Swank takes her acting just as seriously.

To prepare for her role as Amelia Mary Earhart, the American aviator who went missing in 1937 while attempting to circle the globe, the Oscar-winning actress took flying lessons so that she could get a pilot's licence.

The Million Dollar Baby star said about her commitment to her role in the biopic Amelia: "You can't play Amelia Earhart and not learn how to fly. That's just wrong in every way."

Jim Caviezel, who portrayed Bobby Jones, the short-tempered lawyer turned golfer, in Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius, had to stretch himself for the role.

Caviezel, who played basketball in college, had to learn not only to play golf, but also how to swing like Jones, who is the only player to have won all four major championships in the same year; that year was 1930.

Caviezel, in an interview for the book Bobby Jones - Stroke of Genuis: The Movie and the Man, talked about how he hated watching basketball movies because he could spot the real players from the actors.

He said his contempt for the actor who didn't at least try to learn the nuances of the movements to be able to play the game convincingly, motivated him to perfect Jones's swing.

So, dear reader, if some actors, while preparing for the different roles they are going to play, study so much, read so much about the character and get into character by practising the role, then how different is the preparation for a role in a company?

Aren't we all just performing roles?

Some, even as I write, are acting in their various positions.

Put another way, do the 16 years Connie Ferguson spent in Generations - playing the role of Karabo Moroka, who had climbed the corporate ladder in her family business, New Horizons, to eventually become CEO - qualify her to play a real-life executive?

The decisions Moroka had to make about the direction of the company and keeping it at the top surely involved more than just reading a script.

Ferguson surely came to understand the advertising industry and the business of an advertising agency?

So my question is: If Ferguson were to apply for a position at an agency based solely on her role as New Horizons' CEO, would she get it?

Given what we know about how the likes of Swank and Whitaker prepare for their roles, Ferguson's many years on a soapie set in a thriving advertising agency that has evolved with the economic climate, and has made decisions in line with those conditions, would surely be experience enough to qualify her for an interview? At least?