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 Ed O'Neill Parable

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.

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. 

The Best Path To Memorization

Actors often ask how they can get better at memorizing. The short answer is, “Learn the right way to rehearse.” But, of course, there is a longer answer:

Memory and Association

  

Our brains are constantly creating understanding through association. If someone tells you, “John fell off the wagon,” your brain is able to create different meanings for that depending on whether you are at a bar or at a playground. This habit of association is especially true with memory.  You can’t remember the hallway of your elementary school without also remembering how you felt when walked those halls as a kid.

So your approach to memorization should be about avoiding destructive associations and building good ones.

The negative associations:

Some actors can memorize by rote before beginning any rehearsals. And if you are very good at this, it can work. But when you memorize by looking at and then looking 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. And that is poison, because the page is not a part of the scene. Rote memorization only works if you are so good at it that you can quickly break those associations when rehearsals begin.

I prefer not to separate the memorization from the rest of the preparations, but rather to integrate it into the work by making the right associations:

1^st Association: Taking a risk, out loud.

The very first time you read the lines, say them out loud. With your scene partner(s) if possible, or at least with a friend or helpful spouse. But even if you are reading alone, read out loud. As an actor, you will never be asked to silently read the lines to yourself, so why create that association? By reading out loud, you are building the right associations:

• You’re immediately looking at the scene not from the outside, but from the character’s perspective.
• You’re performing an action (talking out loud), not passively reading.
• You can feel the risk. You don’t know where the scene is going, and you are almost certain to make mistakes. Isn’t that great? You are at risk, and you know you can fail. All great actors are constantly finding ways of removing safety nets, so why miss this first opportunity? Read it out loud and see what the hell happens, and revel in the heady rush of brilliant discoveries and utter failures

.

Next assocaitions: Focusing on the other and changing tactics.

The worry many actors have is that memorizing while rehearsing will tend to lock in line readings and not leave them open to the moment. And this is an absolutely legitimate concern; do not associate specific interpretations with the memorization of the lines. If the scene takes an unexpected turn, you will have to go back to your original interpretation before being able to adjust. And you should never have to leave the scene, the moment.

But what I’ve advocated so far doesn’t lock in an interpretation. Your first read out loud will be filled with unclear and misguided choices, so your second reading will need to make adjustments. Your third, fourth, and subsequent readings should be equally experimental.

And from the start, associate saying the lines with interaction with an “other.” If you have a partner to work with, focus your energy on her or him. Reference the page only to get the words into your head, then look in her eyes as you speak and listen as she says her lines.

After you’ve read the scene a few times, put down the page and give it a try. You may only get two lines in before you go off script, but stay on task and finish the scene. Make some decision about what the character is fighting for, and fight for it. You will be improvising, but with the script in mind. And when you pick up the pages again, you’ll be in the mode of fighting to get what you want. And that’s a key association.

As you work, put down the pages every few reads and give it another go. Each time you will have more of the script and less improvisation, but it will be entering you head as a tool to get you what you want, not as an obligation on a page that most be honored. Lines are 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.Try the lines while trying to accomplish completely different objectives, ones that may not fit the scene at all. The idea is not to associate the words with specific tactics, but to associate them with the drive to get what you want.

Once you are mostly off book, you can run 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.” Saying the words while accomplishing a task that's separate from the scene will ensure that you haven't locked them into a specific interpretation. 

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.

Interaction when working alone

There are times when you can’t begin your work with a partner. Your agent sent you the script and the audition is tomorrow. This is very tough to do without building negative association, so you must be disciplined.

Begin as you always should, reading out loud from the start (even the goofy commercial scripts that are less than Shakespearian in writing quality). As you re-read and begin to make choices, work with an other: anything you can look out to get you gaze and energy outward and focused away from yourself. In the absence of another human being, I’ve often borrowed my kids’ stuffed animals so I can at least make eye contact.

The key is to always imagine the rest of the scene fully and not get pulled back to the page simply because it’s real and the rest is imagined. I often use a voice recorder to playback the other lines, read flatly with plenty of silence for me to say my lines. But this is only for timing, to make sure I am taking the time to listen. I have to imagine the different ways the other lines may come at me. Just as I don’t want to associate with a single line reading for myself, I don’t want to associate with just one interpretation that I’m responding to. Again, working alone is far less than ideal, and it takes your disciplined use of your imagination to be sure you’re associating interaction with an other.

What if I’m told to improvise?

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 that you are leaning on, but one of many tools you have at the ready to accomplish your goal. Using to words of the writer will offer important clues to what you want and how you work to get it, as well as the overall style of the piece. 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 fight for what you want with the tools available.

What was the short answer again? 

From the moment you pick up the script, make the right associations, and you will hardly notice that you are memorizing. 

Don’t know your lines. Know your purpose, and know well the tools you have to achieve that purpose. Then take risks and fight.

Stay honest, stay on task, and keep acting. 

Inception and the Craft of Acting

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.