Habits, Part 3: No Looking Down

It’s prevalent to the point of cliché, seen in countless gag reels: an actor loses focus and starts to laugh, so he stops to gather himself. He comes back into the scene and only gets a word or two out before falling apart all over again.

I’ve seen this move from actors countless times: when our focus goes afield, we close our eyes, look down, turn inward for a moment, and take a deep breath. Some even add a meditation gesture, touching thumbs to fingertips.

It’s a behavior born of instinct and observation, and it offers no real help at all. Which brings us to our third habit: stop doing that. If you are rehearsing and your focus is eluding you, don’t do anthing that takes you out of the scene. Take a deep breath, take your pause, but stay focused on the other.

What could be the reason to leave the scene and look at the ground to find your focus? It can only be a need to reinvest yourself in the fiction of the scene: “Okay, get it together. I’m not me, being amused by my partner’s funny accent; I’m Hamlet . . . See myself as Hamlet. Okay, here we go . . . .” And back into the scene you go, no more convinced that you are Hamlet than you were five seconds ago, and now even more stuck in bad-pretend-acting mode.

You are not there to play the fiction of the scene. Your focus should never be on trying to believe something that isn’t true. Your focus must be entirely on your partner: what do you want from them, and how are your tactics affecting them? If you begin to lose your focus because some new element enters the rehearsal – a stray thought or unexpected interruption – you have two choices for dealing with that, and neither of them involve leaving the scene. The first choice is to play the moment as it’s happening; if you begin to laugh or your partner begins to laugh, see what that does to the scene. Even if it’s an angry break-up scene, you’ll be surprised by what trying it while laughing will teach you. The second choice is to pause and gather yourself before moving on. But in that pause you look at your partner, acknowledge what they are doing, and remember what you need to be doing to get what you need from them. But at all costs, keep that connection alive. Find your focus by staying invested in the scene.

This instinct to step out of the scene for just a minute to recover is natural and understandable, and you may be convinced that it’s helping. But it is destructive. Fight it, stay in the moment, and stay on task. Make it a habit to keep your energies from folding inward, even for a moment.

The “look down” is but one of the ways I see actors take themselves out of the scene, so my next post will address the bigger picture: staying in the scene from action to cut, even when rehearsing.  

Habits, Part 2: Time with the Page

So you have avoided the character breakdown, you started by reading the script out loud, and you’re ready to start really digging in. At this point, many actors will highlight their lines in the script.

I’ve always had an aversion to highlighting scripts. My students know my mantra, “The words are your friends, the page is your enemy,” and highlighting feels like making a commitment to something I want to get away from as quickly as I can. But worse than that, highlighting might reinforce the ideas that the scene is about the lines and the scene is all about me – two terribly misguided notions.

But Tony Barr offers some sage advice about highlighting, and it is the core of our next habit: Don’t highlight your lines, highlight the stimuli that make those lines happen. Look at the other person’s speeches and business, find what triggers the next response, and highlight it.

You’re achieving the practical goal of finding your place while working with the pages, but you’re doing something far more valuable: you are learning the role, asking questions, and focusing on the other. Even at this early stage, your energies are focused outward, and you’re not thinking about what you are obligated to say, but instead exploring what kinds of stimuli you have to play with.

Any habit that fulfills a practical goal while keeping you philosophically on track is worth putting into practice. Try it the next time you highlight a script, and I’ll bet you never go back.

Next up: Keeping focused when rehearsing. 

Habits, Part 1: The Character Breakdown

This is the first in a series of posts on habits that can be practiced every time you work. On its own, each habit is small – just something practical to keep in mind. But practicing enough small habits of craft can lead to big breakthroughs of artistry.

These habits apply to film actors, but the underlying principles carry across disciplines. To keep things organized, let’s begin with the first time you see the script and work our way toward the final performance. Which makes the first habit this: avoid reading character breakdowns.

(A quick aside: this post is aimed at actors who are represented by agents. If you self-represent, it will hopefully still point to ways to separate the agent and actor parts of yourself.)

Most film auditions begin like this: your agent sends an email, which often includes a character breakdown – a brief description of the role for which you are reading.

The obvious choice here is to read that breakdown right away. It’s right there, the first thing you see, and you want to know all you can about the character, right? It may seem counterintuitive, but avoid reading that breakdown.

Go first to the script. Read it – out loud – and start to make your choices. Play with it, experiment. When you feel you’ve found your unique and most compelling approach to the role, only then can you peek at the character breakdown.

Why? Why would you stay willfully ignorant if that breakdown can tell you what they are looking for? Because that’s the last thing you need to be worried about: what they are looking for. This is what is wrong with how so many actors approach auditions, and it’s the first and foremost reason to avoid the breakdown: start your process with you and your instincts, not with some notion of what is “right” or what others want.

A character breakdown is most often written by a casting agent, and it is intended for a talent agent, who reads it to see which of her actors she’s going to submit for the role. So the breakdown is written by and  intended to be read by somebody looking at the role from the outside. Your job is never to look at the role from the outside, so of what use could that breakdown be?

You didn’t necessarily get the audition based on your similarity to that breakdown. Or perhaps you did. Either way, your only concern is this: they want to see you. Any information in the breakdown at best doesn’t change that and at worst guides you off course.

Some breakdowns are fairly innocuous, but I’ve seen many examples of how they can misguide you. Because they describe the role from the outside, breakdowns sometimes include judgments about the character: “He’s a real nerd; He’s a total letch; He’s really uptight.” That’s a terrible place from which to start to make your choices, and it puts you at great risk of showy clichés.

And there are times you are called in despite the breakdown, because they want to broaden the scope. I once was called in for a role described as “short, fat, and ugly, with a handlebar mustache.” I’m 6’3”, fairly lean, and clean-shaven. So ugly was my only match. If I were try to hew to that description somehow, I would look like an ass, and I’d miss discovering how the role worked with someone quite different from that description; someone like me.

And sometimes the breakdown is just wrong. I once got a callback for a film where my agent told me, “They want to see you again, but you got it all wrong. Luckily, so did everyone else.” The casting agent had misinterpreted the style of the film, and the breakdown had led every single actor down the wrong path. The second audition was what I would have done the first time had I not tried to mold myself to the breakdown. It was a lot more fun, and I got the part.

The worst information offered by breakdowns shows up more frequently in the commercial world: “A So-and-So Type,” where so-and-so refers to whichever celebrity they wish they could have gotten instead of you. If you’re a comedian doing impressions, this is valuable information. But to the actor, it’s a terrible distraction that calls out the worst habits. In truth, you will win far more roles by convincing them that they’re looking for a “you” type than by trying to become someone else.

For all of the times that a breakdown has been disruptive and misleading, I can think of very few times that it has been helpful. The best breakdowns offer a simple physical description and some context for the scene. You should discover the context by reading and playing with the script, and any physical clues not offered by the script don’t concern you. Remember, if you are being asked to read, they want to see you. Even if you are quite different from the breakdown.

I don’t believe that I can convince you not to look at the breakdown at all. You’re convinced that there’s some important piece of information – about wardrobe, about the film’s style – that you’re going to miss out on. So I only say this: discipline yourself to always go to the script first. Spend time there, make your choices, have fun, and feel ownership. Then, when you return to the breakdown, you’ll have a context from which to take or leave any information it offers.

But I dare you to try this once: ignore the breakdown altogether. It wasn’t written for you, and it offers no help. Your deliberate avoidance will give you a sense of empowerment – shirking any notions of looking for what they want – and lead you to make choices that are bold, fun, and, above all, true to yourself.

Your habits are not about finding approval or chasing jobs. They are about making you a better artist and giving you a strong sense of self. The work will come as you develop your craft, and it will be work you can take pride in.

Next up: Time with the script, and the highlighting habit. 

The Acting and The Performance: Know the Difference

It’s a bit ironic that our art, which is the most collaborative of all art forms, can be so quickly poisoned by ego.

Andy Serkis has caused a bit of a dust-up over some comments he’s made in recent interviews. He sums up his argument in this article, but the essence of the controversy is his claim that acting for performance capture and live acting are the same: “Acting is acting. Performance capture is a technology, not a genre; it's just another way of recording an actor's performance.  . . . all the things that go into making that character -- when I see that up onscreen, I see my acting choices.”

I agree with Serkis that performance capture and live acting are no different, from the actor’s perspective. But the teams of animators and visual effects artists who worked on films with Serkis are rightfully upset. They hear him saying that he is solely responsible for the character, and they are essentially digital costumers. This is hugely offensive, both to animators and to costumers.

Because this is where ego can start to muddy the argument. Mr. Serkis begins by talking about his acting, but he too quickly evolves into talking about the performance. And for film actors, those are two very different things.

The actor is but one part of a final performance that affects an audience. This is especially true for film actors, and we must never forget it.

In performance capture, some enhancements to the actors work are obvious: Serkis acted like a chimp, and the animators made those actions look like a real chimp. But live actors can’t stake more of a claim on the final product: our actions are also enhanced by the work of a huge team. Writers who give us words, cinematographers who find the right angle, directors who place us in a whole, and editors who make our rhythms work are just the beginning of a long list of people who can say they are a part of the final performance. Just as traditional animators take an actor’s voice and create a whole character, there are many people who will take your work and make choices that shape it into the final performance the audience sees. And that performance is as similar and dissimilar to you as a gifted chimp is to Andy Serkis. It is the best part of your choices, your actions, and your individuality, polished and enhanced and crystallized by a team of artists to whom you owe a great deal.

Knowing this will make you a better actor for two reasons. The first is obvious: it will keep your ego in check and make you more pleasurable to work with. The second and more significant reason is that it will let you focus on your job. The actor who equates her or his work with what will finally be up on the screen feels a great burden and tends to overreach, trying to be that version of “extra awesome” that we perceive all movies stars as being. But that is not your job. You are to keep it focused on the moment and tell the truth. There is a whole team of people who are worried about what the performance will look like from the outside; your only job is to see it from within.

So let us quell the concerns of Mr. Serkis by acknowledging his acting but not giving sole credit for the performance. When the Oscars are given out later this month, take note that the award is for “Best Actor,” and not “Best Performance.” Such an award would lead to a very crowded stage.