The Dynamic Actor Blog

The Acting and The Performance: Know the Difference

2012-02-15T07:48:00.000-06:00

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

Andy Serkis has caused a bit of a dust-up over some commentshe’s made in recent interviews. He sums up his argument in thisarticle, but the essence of the controversy is his claim that acting forperformance capture and live acting are the same: “Acting is acting. Performance capture is a technology, nota genre; it's just another way of recording an actor's performance. . . . all the things that go into making thatcharacter -- when I see that up onscreen, I see my acting choices.”

I agree with Serkis that performance capture and live actingare no different, from the actor’s perspective. But the teams of animators andvisual effects artists who worked on films with Serkis are rightfully upset. They hearhim saying that he is solely responsible for the character, and they areessentially digital costumers. This is hugely offensive, both to animators andto 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 intotalking about the performance. And for film actors, those are two verydifferent things.

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

In performance capture, some enhancements tothe actors work are obvious: Serkis acted like a chimp, and the animators made those actionslook like a real chimp. But live actors can’t stake more of a claim on thefinal product: our actions are also enhanced by the work of a huge team. Writers whogive us words, cinematographers who find the right angle, directors who placeus in a whole, and editors who make our rhythms work are just the beginning ofa long list of people who can say they are a part of the final performance. Justas 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 itinto the final performance the audience sees. And that performance is assimilar and dissimilar to you as a gifted chimp is to Andy Serkis. It is thebest part of your choices, your actions, and your individuality, polished andenhanced and crystallized by a teamof artists to whom you owe a great deal.

Knowing this will make you a better actor for tworeasons. The first is obvious: it will keep your ego in check and make you morepleasurable to work with. The second and more significant reason is that itwill let you focus on your job. The actor who equates her or his work with whatwill 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 starsas being. But that is not your job. You are to keep it focused on the momentand tell the truth. There is a whole team of people who are worried about what theperformance will look like from the outside; your only job is to see it fromwithin.

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

The Ed O'Neill Parable

2011-10-05T00:00:00.000-05:00

I would like to now tell you the parable of the actor who got the audition right. It’s a perfect illustration of the points in my last blog post. It was told to me as a true story, but I cannot speak to the veracity of its details. I can only say that it teaches a great lesson.

In 1987, the producers of a new show called Married With Children were seeking a lead actor. The role was a boorish father and husband who was at once offensive and lovable. The audition scene began with him entering the house and saying, “I’m home.”

Actors reading for the role were quick to see him as the Archie Bunker “type,” and they aimed for that as they tried to impress the producers and give them what they wanted. They would barge in and declare “I’m home!” in a sort of rough-around-the-edges, king-of-the-castle style. It seemed to be what the script called for, as every actor was making the same choices. But the producers were bored, again and again.

Then Ed O’Neill came in. After initial greetings, they started rolling and called “action.” Ed stepped in, but before saying a word, he took a deep breath and let out a quiet sigh that ended in a defeated slump. He then declared, with a hint of despair, “I’m home.”

In that moment, he had the role. This was something interesting. He wasn’t king of the castle; he was weary and held down. He could be brash and overbearing, but he could also be defeated and self-deprecating. This was not an imitation of a cliché of a character. This was an actor owning the role and making it something personal and new.

Why? Because O’Neill didn’t try to guess what they were looking for or try to fit that image. Instead, he drew on his experiences – the script reminded him of his Uncle Joe – and formed his own take on the role. He didn’t audition, he acted.

This is what the best actors do. Not because it will get them the job, but because it is what makes the job fun. Whether he had booked the role or not, this would still be a great story of an actor getting it right.

Now go and do likewise.

Best. Audition. Advice. Ever.

2011-10-03T14:01:00.003-05:00

Prepare yourself. I am about to give the best advice on auditioning that you will receive:

Stop auditioning.

I did, some time ago. My agent might tell you that I go out on auditions, and casting agents frequently see me at auditions, but I have long since given up on auditioning. Instead, I will happily work for free for a few minutes. If we enjoy working together, we can sign contracts and keep going. If not, it was fun and we’ll do it again sometime soon. No more auditions, just short-term pro bono work to see if we’re a good fit.

The difference is far more than semantic. Auditions make me nervous, while work gets me excited. Auditions make me think about what they want; working makes me think about what I do best.

An actor’s greatest poison is the urge to impress. I think I’ll type that again, in boldface: An actor’s greatest poison is the urge to impress. It is ruinous to our craft at every step of the journey, yet it is, to many, an inherent part of this thing we call an audition.

Your agent emails saying you have an audition. You look first at the breakdown, hoping to decipher “what they’re looking for.” You make a guess and read the script with that in mind. You begin to prepare an audition that you hope will impress them and be this thing they are looking for. You go in and do your best to convince them that you are a good actor and right for this role, and then walk out feeling at best ambivalent and at worst like a failure. Sound familiar?

Imagine instead you are given a role without an audition. You don’t need to read a breakdown; you know they want you. You read the script to get all the clues you need, and your preparation process is invigorating as you puzzle out how you will bring your unique personality and skills to fighting for this character’s needs. As you begin to work with director and other actors, you make adjustments, big and small, always excited by the chance to further explore. When the work ends, your only regret is that you have to let go of the exhilaration that comes from practicing your craft.

Why can’t this describe the audition process as well? It can, if you rid yourself of the need to impress. Your job is never to figure out what they want or to convince anyone that you are a good actor.

Look at those actors with you in the waiting room. Do they seem like your competition? They are not. They cannot be. Because they cannot go in and be you playing the role. And that is what you are there to do. To be you, playing.

This is the true picture of what is actually happening. It is impossible to compete with another actor, because two actors can’t play the same character. We may use the same words, but a character doesn’t exist on the page. A character is a combination of the writing, the actor who uses those words as tools, and the observer. The actor’s singular perspective creates a character that can be played by no one else. Many actors have played Hamlet, but, because they were all unique individuals, we cannot say they all played the same character.

And that’s what makes acting fun: solving the puzzle from your own original point of view. Think back on auditions that have gone well. You’ll probably recall that when you first read the script, you were flooded with instincts and ideas. You instantly had your own take on the character, or perhaps you found it after some work. You knew how to own the part, and you took that into the room.

That’s the kind of actor every director and casting director wants to see. If your instincts don’t kick in right away, don’t get sidetracked by thinking about what someone else wants, or what might impress them the most. Stay on the course to find your personal approach to the scene, and let the judgment of others be damned.

I’m often asked how actors deal with all the rejection. I’m not sure, as I haven’t been rejected for a very long time. Sometimes I work for a few minutes, pro bono, and sometimes I work several weeks. I may have successes and frustrations as I work, but for that time, I am the character that only exists while I am playing it. The reasons for not hiring someone else are innumerable, but none of them involve rejecting me, because I have not offered myself up for approval.

You may have heard that auditioning is like constantly going on job interviews. It is not, it is not, it is not. It is like constantly working for free while hoping paid work follows. Job interviewees are hoping to get the job; you need to go in as if you’ve been hired.

This mind set, I know, is no easy trick. Many of the best actors I know have it instinctually. When I speak of this desire to impress, they give me blank or confused stares. But I think most actors have that part in them that seeks approval, and this business certainly can bring it out. Getting past it is a mind trick that takes some practice. But from the first time you try it – the first time you think “I’m going to go to work now” before entering the casting agent’s office – you will know it is right. You will know it feels better. And you will know that it is the key to both success, happiness, and longevity in this business. And so you’ll keep getting better at it, until it’s your second nature.

Become the kind of actor you want to be by forgetting about what kind of actor they may want you to be. Stay true to the story, the character, and, above all, yourself. Stop being nervous, stop trying to impress people, and please, stop auditioning.

Memorization Is Your Friend. I Promise.

2010-08-26T23:36:00.001-05:00

The Problem

It’s an old dilemma: how do you perform memorized lines in a way that is fresh and in the moment? There are two dominant schools of thought:

1. Memorize you lines by rote, without any intention, so as to not lock in a specific line reading or tactic. Then rehearse the scene and “fill out the lines” within the playable moments.

2. You know, those lines are really just a guideline. If you really want to be fresh, you’ll need to improv all of the time and make them into words that feel right and natural coming out of your mouth.

The second school of thought is a cheap excuse born of laziness. And not just laziness regarding memorization, but the laziness of always “making it new” by changing what you’re doing to create a false sense of risk and vulnerability. It makes you, at best, consistently mediocre. But, wait, I was talking about memorization . . .

Memory and Association

The first method, going first by rote, has its dangers. Memories always come with associations. You can’t remember the halls of your elementary school without also remembering scenes from when you walked those halls as a kid. Similarly, when you memorize by looking at and then up from a piece of paper, you associate reading a page with saying those lines. How many times have you seen an actor go up on her lines and watched her eyes shift slightly down and to the left? She’s looking at the page in her head. How many times have you not known your line, but could say exactly where on the page you would find it? Rote memorization creates the danger of you going back to the page when you forget a line, which is poison, because the page is not a part of the scene.

A Better Way

Let me start with a radical notion: don’t start by reading your script in your head. The very first time you read the lines, say them out loud, with a partner if at all possible. You don’t know where they’re going or what you want, but it doesn’t matter; you are associating saying the lines with performing an action (speaking out loud) and trusting your instincts (and even allowing them to fail). Enjoy the risk and surprise.

From there, keep saying them out loud, to another. If you don’t have a scene partner to work with, talk to a pillow. Talk to your dog. But put your energies away from yourself and out into the room. Don’t associate inward reflection with saying your lines – you’ll never want to do that in the scene, right?

Keep practicing and exploring how the lines help you get what you want. Try them many different ways. If you're working alone, be sure to take time to “listen” to the other lines, so you in a reactive mode. Remember, lines are just tools for you to perform your driving action; puzzle them out as such. If you always work with a sense of purpose, you won’t run the risk of getting locked into a line reading. You should try them while trying to accomplish completely different objectives, ones that may not fit the scene at all. The idea is not to associate the lines with specific tactics, but to associate them with the drive to get what you want.

As you are able to put down the pages, practice the lines out loud, totally away from the scene. Say them as you make some eggs or sort through junk mail. Again, it’s about association, this time with the interaction with an “other.”

This is rote memorization, in that it is repetitive and not focused on what the end result in the scene will be. It's just building the proper associations. Never say the lines when you are not either a.) fighting for what you want or b.) interacting with some other. If, in the course of the scene, your line escapes you, you won’t go back to the page in your mind. You’ll stay in the moment of engagement and struggle, and it will come back to you from there, without you ever needing to leave the scene.

But what if I’m told to improv?

In the film world, there will be plenty of auditions where you need to be able to play around and go off the script. But memorizing the lines in the way I’ve described above doesn’t preclude your ability to improv; it improves it. Whether saying the prescribed words or not, you are engaging the other while fighting for what you want. If you’ve worked on the myriad ways that you can do that, the lines are not a crutch, but one of many tools you have at the ready to accomplish your goal. You can and should practice improvising the scene, just don’t do it in lieu of knowing the words as written. Either way, the moment is the same: you play your driving action with the tools available.

An example from the real world

By knowing the lines as written, your preparation is more complete. I have found that puzzling out how to make a line work gives me insight that I would’ve missed if I had lazily decided to “make it more my own.” I once played a cowboy who was rough and mean, but the script had him speak without contractions: “We do not have that. We are not prepared.” It didn’t make sense at first, and I wanted to say “don’t” and “aren’t” like a “real” cowboy would. But as I worked the lines as given, I began to see that the character was exerting a certain control over his chaotic world, and his speech was an expression of that control. If I had been asked to just use the contractions, I could have easily done so, but my specific engagement in the character’s struggle would have remained enriched by the work I had done with the lines as written.

Don’t know your lines. Know your purpose, and know well the tools you have to achieve that purpose. Stay honest, stay on task, and keep acting.

Inception and the Craft of Acting

2010-08-16T23:25:00.006-05:00

I have an annoying habit of turning anything I find interesting into something about acting. So you can imagine what I was thinking when I saw Inception.

You can’t? Well, then, allow me to elaborate. Let’s look at the rules for planting an idea by way of a dream:

1. Keep it simple. A complicated idea just won’t take.

This is a common hurdle when getting beginning actors to pick a driving action (the verb form of your objective; what you are doing to get what you want). It is not complicated, and it does not require complex explanation. It is simple, direct, and compelling, and it will infect everything you do in the scene.

2. Think positively.

When deciding on the most clear and simple idea, Cobb says, “I think positive emotion trumps negative emotion every time.” Indeed.

In the world of film acting, we so often see character breakdowns with phrases like “He’s kind of sleazy and obnoxious,” “She’s overbearing and strident,” or, my most recent favorite, “He’s basically an asshole.” Of course, if you see the character that way, you are doomed. You must find what is positive in the character and fight for that, and the best way to do that is by defining a driving action that has you working for something positive in the others. The overbearing mother is not selfish or mean; she loves her child and is trying to get the best for him. The fighting ex-lovers only continue the fight because of the attraction that lingers between them.

Watching Cillian Murphy play Fischer drives this point home. If he simply hates and resents his father, who was apparently quite horrible to him, he becomes petulant and boring. But because his hurt is born of a deep need for his father’s love, we become invested in the character’s struggle.

This is an easy concept to forget, because it seems fun to play the asshole, to be mean, to be sleazy. But every time, it is shallow and showy. Fight for the good in everyone.

3. The subconscious knows when you are messing with it.

In the dreams, the subconscious projections begin to turn on the dreamer when they sense that something is false and that the dreamer is manipulating their world. The subconscious knows and resents when it’s being screwed with.

If you bring something into a scene that doesn’t belong there (a la Emotional Recall) or force a moment in order to meet some emotional checkpoint, the audience will resent it. Perhaps not at first. They may even offer shallow praise: “Wow, you were really crying (or yelling or acting terrified)!” But the subconscious is smarter than that, and it knows when it’s being extorted. If you try to manipulate, if you aim to make your audience feel a certain way, they will resent it and they will resent you. As they should. Stick to your actions and fight for what you want. You have been trusted with some power in telling this story, and if you abuse it to serve your own ends, the world will turn on you in revolt.

4. Get some physical training.

Okay, so this doesn’t really come from the rules of the inception. But watching Arthur dance/fight in zero gravity was among the more beautiful images I’ve seen this year, in part true because I knew Joseph Gordon-Levitt had the training to do most of the physical work himself. Never forget that acting is mostly about our bodies, not our minds. These ideas we discuss help fill the time and focus the work, but the work is action. Keep fit, study movement, learn to use your instrument. One day, a director may ask if you're ready to fight someone in a giant rotating hallway, and you’ll be able to smile and say, “I’d love to.”

Stay honest, stay on task, and keep acting.

I Don't Care What You Think or Feel

2010-04-19T15:29:00.006-05:00

Don't get me wrong. Of course I care about what you think and feel. I’m a pretty nice guy and would love to have coffee some time. But as an audience member, I don’t care about what an actor or a character thinks or feels. And neither do you when you are in an audience. Thoughts and feeling cannot be seen, and, as an observer, you can only respond to what can be observed. The last time you cried at a movie, it was not because the characters were sad, but because that sorrow was expressed in an observable manner that resonated with your own experience. We think we are responding to someone’s emotions when the actions we witness trigger some emotion or idea in ourselves. That’s empathy.

This seems terribly obvious, yet many actors begin their process by considering a character’s psychology or emotions, trusting that their actions will grow from there. Which means they use precious time working on something the audience will never see.

The decisions you make as an actor must be actable; it’s there in your job title. You can’t play a character who thinks he’s a hot-shot, but you can play a character who treats everyone like they’re dumber than him. And the difference is far more than semantic: it’s what keeps you focused on what you are doing and engages the other actors. Playing an idea is inherently passive and self-centered, while playing an action drives a scene forward and makes you interesting to watch.

It is true that ideas and emotions will eventually translate into actions, but it is much more exciting and honest to start with the action. If you are truly committed to playing actions that get your character what she or he wants, you will be emotionally engaged in the scene. If you run hard, you will sweat. It is the only way to stay honest in every moment.

So, as a coach, I will never ask you to remember how you felt when you dog died and what your character thinks about modern art. Character development and text analysis must yield results that are playable, or they are just busy work to make you feel like you’ve done something.

If you are new to the craft of acting, this idea might be helpful. But if you’ve been at it a while, this all may seem quite basic and obvious. And it is. But it is also one of the hardest aspects of our craft to keep focused on. It is far eaiser (that is to say, lazier) to fall back on our own psychology and emotions.

An example: I was once rehearsing a physically demanding play, performing an action that involved gathering imaginary leaves and scattering them to the wind. It was early in the play’s development, and I was simply working on the precision of the action, unconcerned with any greater meaning. After close to thirty minutes of repeating a brief action over and over again, I was exhausted. As I entered another repetition, the director came by and said, “Now, imagine that they are not leaves, but ashes.”

Almost immediately, I began to cry. As I began a new round of repetitions, I cried more and more, building to a cathartic sob. It was the kind of breakthrough actors work very hard to find, and it was exhilarating.

To be able to repeat the experience in performance, I’d need to access whatever had happened to me in that rehearsal. When I had heard “ashes,” it triggered the image of a friend of mine who had died when I was very young. It was a defining moment of my psyche, and its most raw emotions came pouring out. So I’d just need to remember that friend every night of the performance, and I’d be set, right?

Of course not. That memory was deeply personal, expressed in the safety of a rehearsal environment, and could not be relied upon when performing in front of a room full of strangers. Even if it could, the memory's effect would vary over time. And by thinking that I should even try to access that memory again, I took my focus off of what was reliable and repeatable from that rehearsal experience: the physical action.

Remember, I had been repeating the mechanics of the action over and over. My breath, my muscular tensions, and my varying postures were all very focused and present. As it turned out, they were the same types of breath patterns and muscle tensions I experience when I feel sorrow. So once that focused physical state was coupled with a playable action – coming to grips with the loss of a loved one – I was communicating a strong emotion through my actions. Crying was not the running; it was the sweat. It could not be faked or reached by shortcut; it resulted from hard work.

The mind and body are inextricably linked, so do not make the mistake of thinking the mind must lead the body. Let your body lead your mind, and you will find it produces more truthful emotions than any manufactured by premeditation. Stay focused always on what you are doing to get what you want. That’s all I or any audience member cares about, and it’s the only way to inspire true empathy. Stay honest, stay on task, and keep acting.