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The purpose of this book is to introduce actors who want to work in the film/television industry to a practical, proven technique. This technique, this way of working, with a few notable exceptions, also applies to actors working on stage.
Today there is a great deal of emphasis placed on naturalistic, instinctual acting. There is also a misconception that technique and instinct are not compatible. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Science, for our purposes, isn’t about formulas or equations or the periodic table; rather we’re talking about a systemic yet flexible body of knowledge you can employ throughout the course of your career. You will see how the science of this technique can enhance instinct and thereby produce art.
A shortstop on a baseball team will spend countless hours fielding grounders, practicing, working on his technique. With each ball hit in his direction he reminds himself, “Keep my eye on the ball. Put my body in front of the ball. Watch the ball into my glove.” He does this hour after hour, day after day, transforming what are initially awkward, erratic actions into graceful, fluid movements. When game time comes he knows what to do and how to do it. It’s ingrained in his consciousness and he no longer has to think about it; technique, the science of creating a body of knowledge, has transformed itself into art.
The same is true after he fields the ball. Before the batter steps into the batter’s box, the shortstop has already worked out all the possible scenarios; he has planned in advance what to do in each situation. One out, runner on first, throw to second to start the double play. No outs, runner on second, check the runner and then throw to first.
The difference between actors and ball players is that actors know well in advance where, metaphorically, each ball is going to be hit. That doesn’t mean we (and I include myself here as I am proud to say I made my living as an actor for nearly forty years) can relax, but rather the opposite—we need to be fully engaged at every moment. Our tools are more intangible than the bats, balls, and gloves of a baseball player. We are story interpreters, and to play our “game” we use words, movement, and action. We use these things to evoke emotions, not only in ourselves but in others as well. If our actions aren’t carefully planned and executed we will be regarded as bush leaguers, unworthy of the price of admission.
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WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE AN ACTOR?
Actors are the hardest working people I know. When we first start out we often have to juggle a full-time job or several part-time jobs around audition and/or rehearsal schedules. Factor in an acting class once a week and you’re rapidly approaching overload. Yet we do it. We work eight hours at a temp job or wait tables at two different restaurants and then go to a rehearsal where we spend four to six hours each night blocking, running lines, digging into the emotional lives of our characters, which also means dredging up our own emotional experiences. It staggers the mind. And yet we do it. Every actor I’ve ever known has done it.
The workday doesn’t get any easier once actors break through and start “getting paid” for their work. The average day on a film shoot is ten to twelve hours. Sometimes sixteen. One project I worked on, we shot for twenty-two hours. And the conditions aren’t always great. If we aren’t working under blazing hot lights in a studio, we could find ourselves in the middle of a snowstorm, real or manmade. If a scene takes place in a blizzard we still have to say our lines, hit our marks, produce the right emotions, take after take, to insure the director gets his coverage. This isn’t an occupation for the faint of heart.
Acting is also deceptive. When the work is good, everybody watching thinks, “What’s so hard about that? I could do that.” When the work is bad, those same people say, “Those people are getting paid to do that? I know I could do better than that.” The reality is that acting is damned hard work. If you don’t have a technique, a science you can rely on, then creating art, which is already difficult, becomes impossible.
ACTORS ARE SOME OF THE BRAVEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD
I don’t say this to diminish the heroic deeds of many other professions—police and fire personnel, the military, etc.—but actors, in order to do our job properly, do something every time we work that most people, given the choice, wouldn’t do in a thousand years. We do in public what most people won’t/can’t do in private. We allow other people to see what we’re feeling.
This isn’t easy because from the day we’re born we’re assigned certain roles to play and we’re programmed to act accordingly. Girls play with dolls; boys play with guns. It’s okay for girls to cry; it’s not okay for boys. These attitudes are deeply ingrained in our consciousness. Yet in order for us to do our work we often have to break those molds and venture into uncharted territory.
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If you’ve been cast in a film as a father whose children have drowned in a boating accident and you have to cry, can you do that? On cue? Repeatedly? In front of strangers?
In order to honor the emotional needs of the character, the actor playing the father has to overcome those stereotypes and go against the social conditioning he received while growing up. That takes a certain amount of grit.
WHAT MOTIVATES ACTORS?
What is it that drives us to do this sort of dauntless work on a daily basis? To swim against the tide? To work exhausting hours at every stage of our careers? What sets actors apart from most other people? The answer, in a word, is PASSION. The dictionary defines passion as “extreme, compelling emotion; intense emotional drive or excitement.”
Thousands of years ago the religious leaders in ancient Greece realized their citizens needed an outlet, a public forum where they could express the intense emotions they were feeling. To accomplish this they created theatre, large interactive events where the combined efforts of the priests and the audience would culminate in a “play.” This emotional channel was so important those early “plays” became a form of worship.
Today human beings feel those same emotions, but our inhibitions, our fear of being inappropriate, hinder us from expressing them in public.
The audience (and I was a member of the audience long before I became an actor) goes to see a film or a play because we want to laugh; we want to cry; we want to be scared. We want to be moved in some way. We go because we have the same needs the early Greeks had. Only today, instead of playing an active part in the story unfolding before us, we get our emotional hit from the safety and security of a darkened theatre where nobody can see us as we are guided to those emotional places by a company of actors.
I say “guided” because that is exactly what good actors do: they guide the audience; they take them up to, but not quite through, the final experience. That part of the journey, the final part, is up to each individual member of the audience. The actor’s job should be to stimulate but never to dictate.
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WHAT IS THE ACTOR’S FUNCTION?
We’re interpreters. We bring the writer and director’s visions to fruition. We’re also the gatekeepers of emotion, the torchbearers who hold up the light so each member of the audience can peer into his/her own soul. And because of this, the actor’s job is more important now than ever before. The more intricate and complex the world becomes, the more meaningful our work is.
Our job, first and foremost, is to serve the story, the script. In order to do that, we need to understand the arc of the story. Once we know what the arc of the story is we then need to determine the emotional journey our character is going to take in order to fulfill that arc.
Then, in order to fulfill the character’s emotional journey, we must have the craft necessary to successfully navigate the endless series of pitfalls the writer and director have intentionally created for us. Merely skimming the surface, getting from Point A to Point H without touching on the emotional peaks and valleys along the way, isn’t very interesting. But getting from Point A to Point H with a fully developed character who understands the emotional journey—who dives down into the depths and soars up to the heights—is both interesting and exciting. And while we’re plunging into those dark holes and finding those bright shining moments, we also have the responsibility of delivering not only ourselves but also a group of strangers—the members of the audience who have put their trust in us—safely on the other side of the last hazard.
To compound this issue: we must display those emotions in the precise amount at the exact right moment. Too much, too little, too soon, too late and we have failed.
To successfully complete this journey we can’t simply report the events. That’s what a newscaster does. As actors we have to live them. We are the scouts, the trailblazers, and if we don’t lead the way, if we don’t go on the journey ourselves, the audience can’t go either. It’s as simple as that.
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FILM VS. STAGE
There are a variety of ways that working on stage is different than working on camera. In theatre we’re trained to reach the guy sitting in the last row of the third balcony, not only vocally and physically but emotionally as well. We want him to see, hear and feel the things we’re trying to convey. After all, he’s the guy who really wants to see the play and the nosebleed seat he bought is the only one he can afford.
Much of that changes when an actor prepares for a role in film or TV because everyone in the audience, whether they’re in a movie house or at home, is metaphorically moved up to the front row. Actors have to adjust accordingly; otherwise, they’ll be guilty of the biggest sin of all: overacting.
While watching a play, the audience have a lot of things vying for their attention: the actors, of course, and the set; but the audience will also see the curtain, the lighting grid, the interior of the theatre itself, other audience members, etc. In a film or a TV show the director not only dictates what the audience sees but also the size of what they see. If the movie is about a guy gambling away his fortune, the director will probably start off with a wide shot of a casino, cut to a single of the protagonist, then to a close-up of the worried look on his face, then to an extreme close-up of his right forefinger nudging his last poker chip into the pot. In a large theatre this move might require the stage actor to use his arm, perhaps his whole upper body, to convey the same physical gesture.
Additionally, on stage the images are more or less constant. In film, images change quickly. There are a couple of reasons why this happens. One, because with film we have the ability to do it and, two, the film/TV audience have learned to absorb and assimilate the information presented to them at a faster rate. So, in order to keep the audience engaged, the director, working with an editor, pieces the scene together from the different angles he/she shot. And now, thanks to the advent of MTV, things have sped up so much that there’ll be a cut approximately every three seconds. You can test this by counting how often cuts occur in a film or TV show. This again reflects how much the director dictates the viewing experience.
This is why the work you do, especially at the beginning of the process, when it’s just you and the script, is crucial. Not only do you have to know what you’re doing but you’ll have to be able to repeat it take after take, often from a variety of angles so the director can get his/her coverage.
This is how Mark Rylance (multi-Tony Award and Academy Award winner) explains the early part of his process: “I like to do all this work before, which to my mind is like turning the soil in a garden . . . [Then when rehearsals start] the soil is all very turned, it’s all bouncing around in my psyche.”1
My grandfather was a farmer and I remember helping him as a kid (as much as a five-year-old child can help an adult) while he worked the fields. He was unbelievably patient as he explained how a single kernel of corn could grow into a 7-foot-tall cornstalk bearing many ears of corn. He told me, “First you’ve got to turn the soil. You got to break it up so when you plant the seeds they have a better chance of growing.” And that is what this process is about: tilling the soil, laying the groundwork so your crop—acting, developing a character—has a better chance of succeeding.
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WHAT IS ACTING?
Ask any actor, or acting teacher for that matter, and you will get a different answer. Some acting teachers think acting, especially acting for the camera, is reacting. And while I basically agree, there is much more to it than that. An actor’s reaction happens because the character he/she created stands for something or desires something. So, before you can have an honest reaction you have to know, your character has to know, what he/she stands for or what he/she wants. That is what this work is all about: developing your characters so you know these things. You simply can’t “react” without having first done the homework. This technique shows you how to explore your characters so that you’ll know what they want and why they want it and how they plan to get it.
We will get into this later, but an essential component to every scene is that one character wants something, either from another character or from the situation. And the other character, or the overwhelming circumstances of the situation, works against that happening. This creates conflict and tension, two of the cornerstones for good storytelling.
Years ago, when I was first starting out, I stood in for Jeff Bridges (Academy Award winner) on a short film, The Girls in Their Summer Dresses. He likes to develop his characters by improvising his way through the script. Meryl Streep (winner of three Academy Awards with nineteen nominations), whom I have never worked with but would like to, does tons and tons of homework before the cameras ever roll. Mel Gibson (Academy Award winner) likes to wing it and not rehearse. I recently heard Robert Downey Jr. (multiple Golden Globe awards) tell a story about working with Mel on Air America, an action-based film about helicopter pilots flying illegal missions into Laos. Just before shooting the film’s most harrowing scene, where their helicopter crashes, Mr. Downey, a more studied, traditionally trained actor, kiddingly said to Mr. Gibson, “I don’t need to rehearse this. Let’s just wing it, okay?” To his dismay, Mel said, “Yeah, great. Let’s do it.” Different strokes for different folks.
It’s important, as you read the following chapters, to remember that the intention of this process isn’t to restrict you to a set of choices but rather to open you up to the idea of making choices. Once you start working with your scene partner and a director, you will find yourself making new discoveries based on their input. You may also discover that what they brought to the party isn’t as good as what you brought and, if that happens, you’ll be very happy you did your homework.
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WHY IS TECHNIQUE IMPORTANT?
Technique is the science that turns your acting into art. During the course of our careers we will all encounter a role or two that fits us like a glove. We don’t have to do a lot to master those roles because they sing to us and instinctively we know what to do. The technique described in this book is designed to provide you with a foundation so you can successfully create the hundred or so other roles you will get to play in your life.
The information contained in this book gives you an array of tools that will help you at every phase of your career: from the very first moment you thought you wanted to be an actor to those early, often difficult days when you knew what you wanted to do but didn’t yet have the skills to do it, to your first professional job and, finally, to the time we all strive for, when you’ve reached the point in your career where you’ve mastered the science of your craft and you’re making a real contribution to the world through your art.
Anyone who has seen HBO’s Angels in America knows what I’m talking about. The stellar cast, headed by Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Emma Thompson, Jeffrey Wright, and Patrick Wilson, along with director Mike Nichols and writer Tony Kushner, not only created a masterpiece, but they also helped the world look at the global crisis of AIDS with new, more compassionate eyes. That is the power of art.
THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED
If you’ve made the choice to be an actor, to go on this very complex but rewarding journey, I salute you. Acting is an honorable and noble profession. It is also a profession that will test the limits of your courage and endurance. Along the way there will be laughter, tears, frustration, and great triumphs. In the end, however, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve done your part to make the world a better place. You’ve made this decision because there’s a passion stirring inside you. You hear the beat of a drum few people hear. Celebrate that. It means you’re alive!