THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
“Everything should be as it is in real life.”
- Anton Chekhov to the original cast of The Seagull
“Find your mark, look the other fellow in the eye, and tell the truth.”
- James Cagney
“The American actor is very lucky. Why? Because so little is asked of him.”
- Sanford Meisner
“No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a
queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes
us more alive than the others.”
- Martha Graham
“Art is life revealed.”
- Daniel Foster
“Grant me on earth what seems Thee best,
Till death and Heav’n reveal the rest”
- Isaac Watts
The Great Tradition
“Acting wasn’t born today. It’s a tradition of 2,000 years.”
“A civilization isn’t defined by how much money somebody made or how many BMWs
people have in their garages. If you visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you won’t
see exhibits of people’s bank accounts. The currency of civilization is Art.”
“You have the possibility of carrying these riches of two millennia inside you. But you
cannot transmit what you have not received. So you must study theatre the way a
priest or a rabbi studies scripture. You have the privilege of forging our link from that
history to the future.
“If the theatre today is debased, it is because we are debased. If we look around at
America, we see a place where people steal for a nickel, where people kill without a
deep sense of guilt, where people have no respect for religion, where people dress
carelessly, where people don’t respect their bodies.”
“If you like, you can mix your dates up. You can even double-cross people on the
outside. You can say you can’t go to a party, because … I don’t care. But you can’t
miss class. Don’t for any reason, except death, stay away from class. Don’t get a
cold. Don’t get a backache, and don’t go to your psychoanalyst. It doesn’t belong in
the theatre.”
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On Constantin Stanislavsky, one of the great actors, directors, and teachers of
the 20th Century and founder of the so-called “Method” school of acting:
“When I worked with him in Paris, he said, ‘I cannot see you in the morning. I’ve got
to work on my lisp for two hours.’ This was a man in his seventies, the head of the
Moscow Art Theatre, two years before he died. He knew he had this problem, and
he worked on it. Everybody here has work to do. It is a privilege to have this
opportunity to work.”
- Stella Adler, The Art Of Acting
Exchanging Discoveries
Rod Steiger is famed for performances in On The Waterfront, The Big Knife, and
The Pawnbroker.
“I believe the actor can, through the medium of acting, exchange his discoveries
about himself, and his beliefs, with his fellow man. I believe that any actor who disregards
this responsibility, that of truthfully attempting to communicate, and ‘acts for a living,’
ceases to exist as a creative artist. I know that all of us fail over and over again when we
attempt to communicate, but we must always insist on attempting it. If an actor has one
inspired moment in a performance, I’d say he’s good. If he has two inspired moments, he’s
great.”
- Rod Steiger, The Player, Profile of an Art, by Lillian and Helen Ross
Don’t Judge The Character
We always urge actors not to see themselves as separate from their characters,
never to comment or condescend, never to think they’re better or smarter than
the people they are supposed to be. Glenn Close talks about her role in the film
The Safety Of Objects:
“She’s a great, great character, and she’s rare for film because she’s so big and
very theatrical . . . and yet there’s a basis for Cruella. I tried not to be too over the top.
“And with someone like Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction or the Marquise de Merteuil
in Dangerous Liaisons I really tried to figure out what would cause behavior like that. I really
believe that an actor should not judge the characters that they’re playing. If you judge them,
you separate yourself. The audience won’t be engaged if you’re not totally committed.”
- NYT
“Life is short, art is long, and success is very far off.”
- Novelist Joseph Conrad
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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The Death Of The Sweetheart
Jack White and Meg White of The White Stripes are troubled by the easy,
nitwitted nihilism of America’s mall culture, and say their record White Blood
Cells is about the “death of the sweetheart.”
JACK: “The sweetheart, the gentleman – it’s the same thing. These ideas seem to be in
decline, and I hate it. You look at your average teenager with the body piercing
and the tattoos. You have white kids going around talking in ghetto accents
because they think that makes them hard. It’s so cool to be hard. We’re
against that.”
MEG: “The message everywhere is it’s O.K. not to care about anything. Everything
can be judged, everything can be trashed.”
JACK: “ . . . I don’t want to be considered old-fashioned or Luddite or conservative.
But it’s sad to see young kids today – they’re sitting around listening to hip-hop
or new metal, with a Sony PlayStation, a bong of marijuana. This is their life.
It’s a whole culture. And the parenting is so relaxed about that.”
- New York Times Magazine
Believe What You Act
Eli Wallach acted in the premieres of several plays by Tennessee Williams, as
well as in notable films such as Baby Doll, The Misfits, The Good, The Bad, And
The Ugly, and The Godfather Part Three.
“Laurence Olivier once said to me, ‘Isn’t it greater artistry when you can communicate
emotion but you don’t feel a thing?’ It’s an old argument. A lot of English actors say, ‘Never
mind about all the talking, just get on the stage and do it.’ We say, ‘Do what?’ Acting is the
most alive thing I can do, and the most joyous. The old-fashioned actor develops a facility
that is predictable. When he wants to show anger, he’ll clench his fists, and so on. We say,
‘Believe what you act.’
“What an actor learns, eventually, is that everyone has to find his own method and
has to do what is right for himself. That’s all that really matters in the end. The trouble
today is a lot of young people in acting go around saying that they’re Method actors, and
they don’t understand that they are merely technicians, doing what they think is Method.
They’re losing all the joys of acting . . . . Lee Strasberg would be the first to agree with such
criticism. He’s always told us that technique is there only to help you, and if it hinders you,
don’t use it. All good actors aspire to the same end. True simplicity in art is what we all
strive for.
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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“I’ve used at least a small part of my real self in every part I’ve played. Sometimes
you use things inside yourself that you didn’t even know were there . . . . Acting is always
looking, always searching out the behavior of people. It’s always wanting to know why
people do things the way they do.”
- The Player, Profile of an Art, by Lillian and Helen Ross
Making McQueen Cry
Director Don Siegel had a hard time bringing tears to Steve McQueen’s eyes for
an important close-up in Hell Is For Heroes.
“He needs direction very much, but he’s very talented. He can’t cry. When he runs
away from the front, I had this marvelous concept where he is stony-eyed – as he is through
most of it [the film]; he comes closer and closer to the camera, and when he comes into a
big close-up, he stops and tears appear in his eyes. For the first time you see him break up.
“It was fine, except that he couldn’t cry, so I told him not to worry about it. We blew
onions at him and nothing could make him cry. Then I took a tremendous chance, because
he is violent-tempered: just before the take I slapped him in the face as hard as I could and
ran. He had enough discipline to go through with the shot, but he still didn’t cry. Because
there was too much lapse of time from him being slapped to when he came close.
“So I finally had to make a cut, which I didn’t want to do, a huge cut of his eyes, and
then I blew a lot of stuff in them. It wasn’t what I wanted, but he was willing to go that route,
any amount of pain, anything to do a good job. A very exciting guy to work with that way, I
think.”
- Who the Devil Made it? by Peter Bogdanovich
A High Calling
One of America’s greatest playwrights, David Mamet, reminds us of why we act.
“People, though they may not know it, come to the theatre to hear the truth and
celebrate it with each other. Though they are continually disappointed, the urge is so
inbred and primal they still come. Your task is to tell the truth. It’s a high calling.
Cultivate the habit of pride in your accomplishments, large and small. To prepare a
scene, to be punctual, to refrain from criticism, to learn your lines cold – these are all
accomplishments, and while you pursue them, you are learning a trade, a most valuable
trade.
“You bring on stage the same thing you bring into a room: the person you are.
Your strength, your weakness, your capacity for action. Dealing with things as they are
strengthens your point of view. A most valuable lesson for an actor.
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“Cultivate a love of skill. Learn theatrical skills. They will give you continual
pleasure, self-confidence, and link you to fifty thousand years of the history of our
profession.”
- True And False, by David Mamet
“The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenalin
but rather the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.”
- legendary pianist Glenn Gould
How To Play A Speed Freak
Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore), discusses his preparation for the role of a drug
addict in the film Spun.
“ ... the option of doing drugs never entered my mind. It seemed kind of boring –
too easy. I just did stupid little tricks to get me there. When I’m around reptiles I feel
creepy and nervous, so I constantly surrounded myself with National Geographic videos
of animals eating other animals.”
- DMN
Independent Spirit
Filmmaker Justin Lin’s independent film, Better Luck Tomorrow, was a smash at
the Sundance Film Festival and a hit in the theatres. He used his life savings
and his ten credit cards to finance his film.
“I maxed out all ten of those credit cards. My credit right now is so bad, I don’t think I
could rent a car .... Even if it [the film] bombed, I would feel that I succeeded. My dream was
just to get the film made .... When I hear audiences complain about the cookie-cutter films
that often come out of the studios, I want to ask them what was the last indie film they saw.”
“Today’s kids have personalities that are not developed. They shop for
identities. They’re preoccupied with labels. I hate labels.”
- DMN, 4-03
“I like to provoke in any spectator the sense that it is marvelous to be human,
and that it is possible to know oneself with others.”
- actress Teresa Ralli
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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Adding Depth
Eugene Landy reveals the process behind the mock-documentary, A Mighty
Wind.
“We scripted an outline and did a massive amount of research. On Best In Show, we
went to a lot of dog shows. And on this movie, we listened to hundreds of records. Then we
wrote characters, but no dialogue. We did elaborate histories for each character, where they
came from, who played with whom. None of that ever ends up in the movie, but it adds
depth. If we think of a funny joke, we’ll put it in, but the movies have no written dialogue.
They are totally improvised.”
- New York Times Magazine
Being John Malkovich
Actor and director John Malkovich laments what he sees as America’s
commercial obsession:
“In the America I grew up in, art wasn’t merely an investment opportunity. We had a
family newspaper and we would never have been vulgar enough to print the weekly film
grosses, as if profit had anything to do with quality. If you talked about success and money
around my father, he would have knocked your teeth out. He wanted us to be good at what
we did. And certainly money would not be the goal.”
Gary Sinise, a friend and partner in the Steppenwolf theatre, remembers
Malkovich’s early work:
“He was an unusual, unpredictable, bizarre performer, making psychotic choices.
We were interested in visceral, aggressive theatre, and the people that signed on were
adrenalin-based performers. John was this weird paradox – he could be louder than just
about anyone and quieter than a small rodent. In both cases, he was surprising.”
- New York Times Magazine
Han Solo To A Friend Of Mine
A friend of mine ran into actor Harrison Ford in a department store in Los
Angeles, and after they had talked for a few minutes, Ford left him with this bit
of wisdom:
“Just remember, perseverance is everything in this business.”
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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Preparation: Warming Up The Motor
Sanford Meisner explains preparation to actors at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
MEISNER:
“In the nineteenth century there was a great English drama critic, William
Hazlitt. He said of the great English actor Edmund Kean, that watching his
emotion subside after a big scene from Shakespeare was like watching the
tide go out. Mrs. Siddons, another great actress, was so strong as Lady
Macbeth that women in the audience were terrified and would run out of the
theatre ....
But the emotion of Kean and Mrs. Siddons did not, I think, come from
preparation. Preparation is what you start with. Preparation is to acting what
warming up the motor is to driving a car on a cold day. Could anything be
simpler? Do you understand what I’m talking about?”
STUDENT:
“.... But on one hand you explain how simple preparation is, and on the other
you talk about great actors in a way that sounds like they have tons of
emotion.”
MEISNER:
“But their emotion arises from the given circumstances of the play, the
situation they imagine themselves to be in.”
- Sanford Meisner, On Acting
Trying To Live
Charlotte Rampling gives an exquisitely moving and true performance in the
French film Under The Sand.
“We all have loads of information. What an actor does is bring it to the surface.
I jump without a net because that’s how I am. The information comes out because I
am brave enough to allow it. I’m not brave as a human being in everyday life. I’m
brave when I’m acting.”
Director Jonathan Nossiter says this of Rampling’s work:
“She brings everything she is feeling and exchanges it with you, with the other
actors, with everyone. She is not play acting, she is trying to live.”
- NYT
What a phrase! She is not play acting, she is trying to live. And by live, we
mean live fully, truthfully, bravely, richly, live with the highest poetry of our
personal being, live in a way that the ordinary circumstances of our life do not
always allow. Acting at its best really can be life at its best!
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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Real Things
Luis Guzman (Boogie Nights, Traffic, Punch Drunk Love) talks about his craft,
and remembers one of his first directions from a casting director:
“Kill me with your eyes.”
Guzman started training seriously after he started working professionally:
“I was like a dull knife – I had the tool, I just needed to sharpen it.”
But he regards his own experience as important as his training:
“My life is my reference. I know what it feels like to laugh. I know what it feels like
to cry. I know what it feels like to feel pain, I know what it feels like to bury somebody. I
know what it feels like to be loved, I know what it feels like to not be loved. I know what
it feels like to be hungry and have only a dollar in your pocket. Those are real things; you
can’t fake that stuff.”
- NYT, 5-03
Tribute To Wendy Hiller
The world lost one of its marvelous actresses when Wendy Hiller passed on to
glory at the age of ninety years. Here Dame Wendy recalls working with George
Bernard Shaw, who chose her to star in film productions of two of his plays,
Pygmalion and Major Barbara:
“He’s a wonderful actor. He used to act out all the parts, and he always put us to shame ...
Once, it was three in the morning when we finished rehearsing, and Shaw came up on the
stage and said quietly, ‘If you’d like to go through that again, I’d like to listen.’ We were pale
gray, and he was pink and fresh and blooming.”
Shaw was eighty-one years of age when he gave this lesson in youthful passion
and purpose.
Hiller always said she was only interested in parts that were “undull.” She was
“noted for carefully shaping and defining memorable characters,” and Basil
Rathbone – the greatest Sherlock Holmes on film – once remarked that he had
never rehearsed with an actor who worked with such concentration: “She shuts
everything out in a most absolute way.”
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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Brando Speaks
“The American theatre has never been able to present Shakespeare or classical
drama of any kind satisfactorily. We simply do not have the style, the regard for language or
the cultural disposition that fosters a tradition of presenting Shakespeare or any other
classical drama. You cannot mumble in Shakespeare. You cannot improvise, and you are
required to adhere strictly to the text. The English theatre has a sense of language that we
do not recognize and a capacity for understanding Shakespeare that we do not. In the
United States the English language has developed almost into a patois [a form of language
differing from the standard, a local dialect].”
Brando uses Kenneth Branagh’s magnificent filming of Henry V as an example of
how Shakespeare should be acted:
“He did not injure the language; he showed a reverence for it, and followed
Shakespeare’s instructions precisely. It was an extraordinary accomplishment of melding
the realities of human behavior with the poetry of language. I can’t imagine Shakespeare
being performed with more refinement. In America we are unable to approach such
refinements, and of course we have no taste for it. If given the choice between Branagh’s
production of Henry V or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Terminator, there’s hardly a question
of where most television dials would be turned. If the expenditure of money for
entertainment in America is any indication of taste, clearly the majority of us are addicted
to trash.”
Brando’s thoughts on Laurence Olivier – a great actor – will be of interest to
actors who like to “pre-design” their scenes.
“... when I think of him as an actor, I perceive him mostly as an architect. He
designed his parts beautifully, but they were like sketches engraved with an etching
tool on a sheet of copper. He said every line the same way every time. He hated the
thought of improvising and said, ‘I’m an “outside-in” actor, not an “inside-out actor.”’
Everything he did had to be structured in advance, and he always stuck to the
blueprint. He was uncomfortable with me and other actors influenced by Stella Adler
and the Russian school of acting, and probably felt a much deeper kinship with
performers whose roots were more traditional.”
- Marlon Brando, Songs My Mother Taught Me
“If people act because they want to hide something of themselves, I’m not
interested. They should go lie on a couch and see a shrink. Acting has nothing
to do with personal comfort.”
- Jeanne Moreau
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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True Versatility: Insight
America’s greatest film critic, Stanley Kauffmann, on actor Jack Nicholson:
“He has shown as well as any actor in our history that film can, at its optimum and
with some good luck, be a medium for artistic growth. And he proves that true versatility is
fundamentally insight. This actor, whose sheer personality was his mode of entry into fame,
proves that, through insight, the asset/burden of personality need not be a bar to
surpassing that personality.”
- TNR
The Real Source of Life
Great actor and director Constantin Stanislavsky writes about the necessity
of being truly yourself in your work.
“Never lose yourself on the stage. Always act in your own person, as an artist. The
moment you lose yourself on the stage marks the departure from truly living your part and
the beginning of exaggerated false acting. Therefore, no matter how much you act, how
many parts you take, you should never allow yourself any exception to the rule of using your
own feelings. To break that rule is the equivalent of killing the person you are portraying,
because you deprive him of a palpitating, living, human soul, which is the real source of life
for a part.”
- Tortsov, An Actor Prepares, by Constanin Stanislavsky
Your Great Opportunity
“We should be grateful we live in a time when the general imagination has
been impoverished, a time when people read novels that are neither very rich nor
very deep, when they go to movies aimed at the mentality of teenage boys, when
they watch endless television banalities, all of which accustoms them to a very
trivial kind of entertainment. They’re used to very routine cooking – macaroni and
cheese. They’re happy with ‘fast food.’ You’re in a position to give them banquets.
That’s your great opportunity.
“Your curse is that you have chosen a form that requires endless study ....
It means you have to read, you have to observe, you have to think, so that when
you turn your imagination on, it has the fuel to do its job.”
- Stella Adler, The Art of Acting
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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Listening: The Key To Concentration
The three ladies who star in Horton Foote’s play, The Carpetbagger’s Children,
are on stage for ninety minutes as they deliver alternating monologues. When
one speaks, the other two sit in chairs, listening. Writer Wilborn Hampton
notes:
“It would be easy for a lazy actor awaiting her cue to use those periods of
silence to go over her list of things to do the next day or decide where to go for
dinner after the show.”
However:
“... as every good actor knows, listening is the key to a credible performance.
But it’s not a lesson that every actor learns.”
But these three actresses, Jean Stapleton (the former Edith Bunker), Hallie Foote
(daughter of Horton), and Roberta Maxwell, actively listen, and after a year of
playing sisters on stage, they still make new discoveries and feel and believe in
the moment.
JEAN STAPLETON:
“Listening is the key to total concentration. You listen as the
character would listen, closing the door on everything else.
Then you are ready to respond.”
HALLIE FOOTE :
“I listen to the play very carefully every night. And then I get
involved with the story all over again, the happy times and the
sad times they all went through. So that later, when I hear
Roberta tell how Cornelia had to go out and tell all the farmers
she couldn’t pay them anymore, and they would have to leave
the farms, I have to fight back tears every night.”
ROBERTA MAXWELL:
“I am constantly hearing something new, or feeling something
more deeply.”
- NYT
First Build the Canoe
“I don’t care when you learn the lines. And don’t try to learn them in relation to the
emotion you think you should have. First build a canoe and then put it on the water, and
whatever the water does, the canoe follows. The text is the canoe, but you must begin by
putting the emphasis on the stormy river. I can’t be any clearer than that.”
- Sanford Meisner, On Acting
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
Brando Opens Up
Famed director Harold Clurman recalls directing the young Marlon Brando in
Truckline Cafe, the explosive “cameo” role that started Brando on his way to
legend:
“He read poorly, his head sunk low on his chest as if he feared to divulge
anything. Yet there could be no question: he was peculiarly arresting. We decided to
use him.
“He mumbled for days ...
“The author’s agent and wife suggested I recast the part ... I said I had faith in
the boy and would continue to work with him. But I was worried: the boy couldn’t be
heard beyond the fifth row.
“His difficulty, it seemed, was that he could not give vent to the deep well of
feeling which I sensed in him. He could not overcome some inner resistance: he
would not ‘open up.’ The use of affective memory – a term I shall explain in a later
chapter – did not help.
“One day I asked everyone in the company to leave the stage and retire to
the dressing rooms. I turned to Brando and said, ‘I want you to shout your lines.’
(For this I chose the crucial scene in which the young man tells how he drowned his
unfaithful wife, whom he still loved). Brando raised his voice. ‘Louder,’ I ordered.
He complied. ‘Still louder,’ I insisted. This was repeated several times and my
command for ever great vocal volume began to exhaust the actor and to rouse him
to visible anger. Then I yelled, ‘Climb the rope!’ as I pointed to a rope which was
hanging from the gridiron above the stage. Without hesitation he began climbing
the rope while I urged him to keep shouting his lines. The other members of the
cast came rushing onto the stage, alarmed at the terrifying sounds they had heard
while still in their dressing rooms.
“When Brando let himself down, he looked as if he were ready to hit me.
‘Now,’ I said quietly, ‘run the scene – normally.’ He recovered his poise and did as
I bid him. He ‘spoke up’ – effortlessly. In a few days he played ‘the moment’
beautifully. On opening night – and every night thereafter – his performance was
greeted by one of the most thunderous ovations I have heard for an actor in
the theatre.”
- On Directing, by Harold Clurman
“I’ve disagreed with a lot of people I played. Sometimes it’s more interesting
to play people you disagree with.”
- Clint Eastwood, DMN 10-12-03
12
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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Completely Free
British actor Michael Redgrave (father of Vanessa and Lynn) discusses true
acting partnership, and I think his description of working with the marvelous
Edith Evans should serve as an ideal for the memorized work we do in the
workshop.
“The late Michael Chekhov said once that there are three ways to act: for yourself,
for the audience, and to your partner. Some of the new theorists say if it’s true for
yourself, it’s truthful, which is not so. The majority of actors act for themselves or for the
audience. I believe that the only way to act is to your partner.
“As a partner, Edith Evans was like a great conductor who allows a soloist as
much latitude as is needed but always keeps everything strict. Strict but free. Never
is anything too set, too rigid. The stage relationship always leaves just enough room to
improvise. For the first time in my life, acting in As You Like It, I felt completely free.
For the first time, I felt completely unself-conscious. Acting with her made me feel, Oh
it’s so easy! You don’t start acting, she told me, until you stop trying to act. It doesn’t
leave the ground until you don’t have to think about it. The play and our stage relationship
in it always had the same shape. It was entirely well-proportioned, and yet in many
respects it was all fluid. In the forest scenes between Orlando and Rosalind, she would
encourage me to do almost anything that came into my head. Yet if I had done anything
excessive, she would have stopped it by the simplest means. Somehow it didn’t occur
to me to do anything excessive. For the first time anywhere, onstage or off, I felt
completely free.”
- The Player, Profile of an Art, by Lillian and Helen Ross
On Wings
The lovely Claire Bloom describes the feeling of being “on wings,” when an
actor forgets herself and lives the moment so vividly that she speaks an
author’s lines as if for the first time:
“It’s very hard to act truthfully, but if you have the feeling that you are another
person, and you’re playing that person, and yet you’re in complete control, you’re able
to express something that is in you and only in you .... When it happens you’re
absolutely on wings. You’re carried. You’re doing something that is coming out of you
and yet you have control over it. You’re in the part, and the part is with you. What the
author is saying, you’re saying aloud for the first time. Sometimes it’s there, and
sometimes it isn’t, and when it is, it’s marvelous. When it isn’t, you have to work, to
use what is laughingly called technique. When it is there, it’s almost like being
possessed.”
- The Player, Profile of an Art, by Lillian and Helen Ross
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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Line-readings
Some actors always seem a little irked when they get line-readings, which has
always seemed strange to me, since I have received – and followed! – line
readings on the majority of professional productions I have been a part of.
But why don’t we turn to Harold Clurman, husband of Stella Adler, partner
with Meisner and Strasberg in the Group Theatre, and one of the few American
directors who actually knew and learned from Stanislavsky, and see what he
has to say on this subject?
“Though for certain people – theologians of the Method – directing an actor by
reading lines for him is a cardinal sin, it becomes mandatory at times and practically
inevitable. I once apologized to Fredric March for presuming to read a line for him.
‘No! No!’ he encouraged me, ‘your readings help me.’
“When I asked Stanislavski, ‘Do you ever read lines for an actor?’ he replied
at once, ‘Of course, whole speeches sometimes. One does everything, anything to
arrive at the desired result.’ And it is chiefly from Stanislavski that the notion has
arisen that a director’s reading lines to an actor is harmful!”
- On Directing, by Harold Clurman
Risk Actors And Safe Actors
George C. Scott says there are only two kinds of actors, “risk actors and safe
actors.”
“Safe actors hold back, experiment not, dare not, change nothing and have no
artistic courage. I call them walkers. I may stagger a little now and then, but I have
never been accused of walking.”
- NYT 9-24-99
Excellent Advice
Al Pacino has something to say about the importance of theatre to good film
acting:
“Still, I recommend to young actors that they work on the stage because I think
it does broaden them and asks their imagination to go to other places, rather than
being shackled to a kind of film naturalism, you know, confined to the frame and to
the smallness of it. And that sometimes going into the theatre and experiencing other
kinds of literature and asking yourself to go to different places is a revelation to you.
And this can find its way back into your work in movies, in subtle ways.”
- NYT, 4-20-03
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
15
In The Beginning
Al Pacino recalls what first inspired him to act:
“I must have been fourteen, in the South Bronx, and that’s when I was in this huge
movie house, the Elsmere Theatre, and a traveling troupe was doing a Chekhov play, The
Seagull. How I got into this movie house I don’t know. There were about 3,000 seats and
maybe 15 patrons, and I was one of them. I had never heard or seen anything like it. I
think it started there.”
Pacino has worked with the same coach, Charlie Laughton, for over thirty years,
and the men are best friends.
“I can’t say I saw immediately the enormous talent he has,” recalls Laughton. “ …. It
wasn’t for a year or so that he did anything good.”
- NYT
The Fabulous Lunts
For decades Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt – the Lunts – were royalty on the
American stage. Here is an account of how they achieved their “fabled
artistry.”
“Their sophisticated aplomb and naturalistic, overlapping style of delivery was
widely celebrated. It appeared effortless, but was not; the Lunts’ sense of discipline
could be terrifying. For weeks, they would rehearse facing each other, legs interlocked,
and would arrive at the first rehearsal letter perfect. The tiniest gestures would be gone
over endlessly, single lines tried 60 different ways. On the closing night of “Design For
Living,” Fontanne rejoiced to a wondering (Noel) Coward over having finally perfected a
difficult bit of stage business.”
When was the last time you tried a line sixty different ways, believing and
feeling it every time?
In the early 1930s Universal Pictures offered the Lunts 250,000 dollars for a
one-picture deal (a lot of money during the Great Depression), and their refusal
by telegram is justly famed:
“We can be bought, but we can’t be bored.”
- NYT 7-13-03
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
Stanley, Stella, And The Sense Of Truth
Kim Hunter, the original Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire, recalls working
with Daniel’s film acting idol, Marlon Brando:
“We were the untried members of the cast. Marlon kept saying, ‘They should
have got John Garfield for Stanley, not me; Garfield was right for the part, not me.’ Of
course, Marlon was just wonderful for the part. One absolutely extraordinary thing
about Marlon, which makes him my favorite actor of all time to work with, is his
uncanny sense of truth. It seems absolutely impossible for him to be false. It makes
him easier to act with than anybody else ever. Anything you do that may not be true
shows up immediately as false with him; he yanks you into his own sense of reality.
“For example, one thing that made it all so real during my year and a half with
the show was the way Marlon played the scene where Stanley goes through Blanche’s
trunk. Stanley has found out a little bit about her at that point in the play, and is
starting to question her, and he begins to go through the things in her trunk, while
Stella tries to protect her sister’s belongings. Marlon never, never did that scene the
same way twice during the entire run. He had a different sort of attitude toward each
of the belongings every night; sometimes it would lead me into getting into quite a
fight with him, and other times I’d be seeing him as a silly little boy. I got worn out
after many months in the play, but I never got bored, even though it was hard and
painful after a year to keep it fresh, to keep myself stimulated, to make it live.”
“Acting is unquestionably an art. Duse was a creative artist, who could find
meanings in plays that no one had ever found before. An actor takes an author’s
words and infuses life into them. Many actors today are merely interpretive artists,
but they can be more than that. It takes more than talent, or a capacity for greatness,
to do it, however. It takes learning, training, guidance, and experience. What you use
in acting is everything you are as a human being.”
- The Player, Profile of an Art, by Lillian and Helen Ross
Adam’s Credo
“If you can’t feel it, fake it. If you can’t fake it, fuck it!”
- Adam Roarke
16
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
17
Eleonora Duse
One of Sanford Meisner’s favorite acting stories was of the legendary Italian
actress, Eleonora Duse. George Bernard Shaw had seen Duse in a play where
she had lived so completely and intensely in the moment that she actually
blushed as she spoke with her imaginary ex-lover in a scene.
“All of a sudden she realizes that she’s blushing, and it gets so bad that she
drops her head and hides her face in embarrassment. Now that’s a piece of realistic
acting! And Shaw confesses to a certain professional curiosity as to whether it
happens every time she plays that part. It doesn’t. But that blush is the epitome of
living truthfully under imaginary circumstances, which is my definition of good acting.
That blush came out of her. She was a genius.”
- On Acting, by Sanford Meisner
Duse was born in Italy in 1858 and her fame on the stage was rivaled only by
the likes of Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry, Booth, and Irving. For many, Duse
represented a new truth in acting; she was gifted with a radiant naturalism
that expressed the magnificence of the sympathetic and protean soul.
“She produces,” Shaw wrote, “the illusion of being infinite.”
“She is the greatest artist I’ve ever seen in the theatre,” recalled Eva Le Gallienne.
“The Method people talk about how one should be real and true and simple – and they
aren’t, but Duse was. She would sit on the stage and would seem to be doing nothing.
Yet you knew everything she was thinking, everything she was feeling. There was
something that seemed like a ray that came from her and captured the house.”
“I use everything that I pick up in my memory,” Duse said, “and everything that
vibrates in my soul.”
- NYT Book Review
Actors who wish to learn more about this fascinating actress should buy the
new biography, Eleonora Duse, by Helen Sheehy.
“Everything is about to disappear. You’ve got to hurry up, if you still want
to see things.”
- Painter Paul Cezanne
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
18
Bergman Versus Bergman
One of the world’s great directors of the screen and stage, Ingmar Bergman,
wrote a role for his fellow Swede, Ingrid Bergman, the radiant actress of
Hollywood’s “Golden Age,” (Casablanca, Notorious, Indiscreet) for his
masterwork Autumn Sonata. It was the role of her career.
“Ingrid Bergman read her part in a sonorous voice with gestures and expressions.
She had already rehearsed it all and decided in front of a mirror how she would play it.
This was a shock. I got a headache and the script girl went out into the corridor and
wept with dismay. So many false intonations had not been heard since the 1930s. The
star had made her own deletions and refused to say nasty words.
“One morning she turned round violently and slapped my face (in fun?) and said
she would smash me to pieces if I didn’t at once tell her how the scene was to be done.
Furious at her astonishing attack, I replied that I had asked her a hundred times not to
do anything at all and that only bloody amateurs think they have to do something every
single moment. She jokingly but sharply mocked my fame as a director of actors. I
replied in the same tones that I was sorry for producers who had to work with her during
the days of her fame.
“One afternoon we were sitting in the studio waiting for the setting of the lighting
to be completed. It was semi-dusk and we were each in a corner of a shabby old leather
sofa. Ingrid made a gesture very rare for an actress – she ran her hand over her face,
several times. Then she drew a deep breath and looked at me, without friendliness or
trying to make contact. ‘You know I’m living on borrowed time.’ Sudden smile.
Borrowed time.”
- The Magic Lantern, by Ingmar Bergman
The actress was battling cancer. Her doctors had found more metastases and
urged her to come to London for immediate surgery and radiation treatment.
The insurance company refused to insure her. Bergman insisted on staying to
finish the film.
Direction By Lynch
Actor Kyle Machlachlan of Twin Peaks recalls a few of the directions given to
him by director David Lynch from behind the camera:
“Be more like wind.”
“Think of Elvis.”
- NYT
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
19
Watching Your Friends And Fellow Artists
“Acting requires a creative and compassionate attitude. It must aim to lift life up
to a higher level of meaning and not tear it down or demean it. The actor’s search is a
generous quest for that larger meaning.
“That’s why acting is never to be done passively. When I watch some of you I
sense you’re not really involved. Some of you become totally detached from the work
of other students in the class. There’s an unspoken criticalness or indifference, which
is disruptive to the class and hinders you from learning. It’s a trait that ill serves actors.
Instead of being critical and judgmental, we should recognize and honor others’ efforts.
Criticizing others, belittling others only diminishes us. And if our goal is always size,
that’s heading in the wrong direction!”
- Stella Adler, The Art of Acting
“Another word of counsel about watching the creative work of others. Begin
to exercise your sense of truth by looking, first of all, for the good points. In studying
another’s work, limit yourself to the role of a mirror and say honestly whether or not
you believe in what you have seen and heard, and point out particularly the moments
that were most convincing to you.”
- Tortsov, An Actor Prepares, by Constantin Stanislavsky
QUESTION:
How many actors does it take to change a light bulb?
ANSWER:
Ten. One to do it, and nine to say, “I could have done that better.”
- Old Theatre Joke
Another Gem From Adam
My good friend Greg Johnson, actor, writer, sailor, surfer and swashbuckler,
writes to share a great anecdote about Hollywood film actor and beloved coach
Adam Roarke.
That quote from Adam was great. It reminded me of something he told me (1996)
after I did a scene that sucked most of the oxygen out of that tiny room on the second
floor in Los Colinas.
“Don’t do it the way I showed you. Do it the way I mean.”
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
20
Olivier Inside And Outside
We often talk in the workshop about actors who work from “the outside” and
actors who work “from within.” Director Tony Richardson shares a story about
working with Laurence Olivier in John Osborne’s The Entertainer that sheds light
on these two different ways of acting.
“They (the critics) were underestimating his range, as they often have, and they
were confining themselves to externals, as they often do. I think Larry understood Archie
Rice from the very first moment. He could identify with the humor, the cynicism, the
sentimentality of the man. Larry found it all within himself. He didn’t start off with a very
strong physical image of the part, as he often does. He is an exterior actor in the best sense
of the word. He starts usually from some kind of outside observation, and he likes to build
carefully so the performance becomes an artifact. And it’s indestructible.”
“During rehearsals there was one moment that he was obviously afraid of. He was
like a horse coming to a high fence and rearing away from it. It came at the end of the
second act, and it was the moment when he heard of his son’s death and he had to break
down – collapse really. When we were doing one of the last run-throughs he said: ‘Tell me
exactly what you think I should do – go through it step by step.’ So I told him, but when we
went into the run-through his genius took over and it was the most electrifying moment I’ve
ever experienced in any rehearsal. Larry knew he’d done it again, but then we got to the
dress rehearsal and Vivien Leigh [Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche, and Olivier’s wife] came to
see it. He became very nervous because of her; she seemed to have that effect on him at
that time. And when we came to that big moment at the end of the second act he tried
something similar but it wasn’t so good, and she criticized it. The first time he’d allowed his
feeling, his instinct, to guide him, but he couldn’t do it with the same power and intensity.
So just before the first night we sent everyone away and we worked it all out technically,
step by step. We repeated everything he’d done the first time, including all the gestures,
movements, pauses. In other words, we did a technical representation of the moment he’d
discovered in emotion. We succeeded up to a point, but of course it was never quite so
good as it had been in that electrifying rehearsal.”
“I remember he said to me towards the end of the run in New York that he thought
he’d only played the part full out – completely exposed – only three times in the whole run of
about two years. That is part of his greatness – his absolute honesty about his own work.
And it should be remembered that when he’s not playing on true feeling and emotion, when
he’s not playing full out, he’s such a superb craftsman and technician that he’s always able
to give a marvelous representation.”
- Tony Richardson, Olivier, edited by Logan Gourlay
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
21
“I’ve never seen so complete an actor in my life. He has complete control over his
voice, his movements – everything physical that goes into a performance. He knows exactly
what he wants to do and whether one agrees with him or not, he does it to perfection within
his own conception. When he played Othello as a Negro he was a Negro in every muscle
and sinew. As Shylock at the National he was a Jew in every fiber of his being. As Richard III
– which was incidentally one of the most memorable performances of his whole career –
you felt that the physical effects were congenital, not assumed. Then in Henry IV, Part One,
when he played Hotspur, he was virility personified. The following night when he played
Shallow in Part Two you felt that this frail, white-haired little man would be blown across the
stage like a leaf in the autumn wind. You simply could not believe that it was the same actor
who had played Hotspur the previous night.”
- Sir John Clements, Olivier, edited by Logan Gourlay
Preparation Is Everything
William Gaskill, a director at England’s National Theatre, on the importance of
practical preparation.
“The Othello, for instance, was fascinating. He [Laurence Olivier] knew all the
lines in advance and at the very first reading he actually played the part with the all
the stops out. It was an extraordinary occasion. All the other actors were standing
about with their scripts and there was the star playing the part as though it were
the first night.
“Sometimes when I’m asked what makes a great actor I’m tempted to say
simply knowing all his lines at the beginning of rehearsals. The important point is
that if you want to produce the kind of force and energy an Olivier can produce in
the finished performance, the preparation is everything. All the great actors and
actresses I’ve worked with have always done a great deal of homework. Edith
Evans and Maggie Smith, for example, arrive at the first rehearsal with a lot of work
already done on their parts. I think it’s essential to do this, particularly if you’re
tackling a big classical role. You can’t hope just to muddle through in rehearsals.”
- Olivier, edited by Logan Gourlay
Love Stories Make Sean Mad
“It’s love stories that really make me mad. In Mystic River, we’re playing
couples who have been married for years. But most love stories just deal with
the first five days of romance. I don’t know of any relationship that can’t be
romantic for the first five days. It’s what happens after those first five days that’s
important, but most movies don’t look that far.”
- Sean Penn, DMN 10-19-03
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
22
More Punk Than Prince?
“[Ethan] Hawke’s the latest Prince of Denmark, sporting greasy locks and a wool cap
and Bono specs; this Hamlet gazes at the world through video camera and TV screens, living
his life in digital flashback …. Hawke doesn’t act; he mopes, runs his hands through his
crispy hair, stares at images of himself videotaped by his own hand. He’s the ultimate
narcissist, his own mirror. We care nothing for him, because he only cares for himself ….
The notion that the job of running Denmark belongs to Hawke’s Hamlet is as ludicrous as
listening to Bill Murray (as Polonius) reciting Shakespeare’s gutted dialogue; the kid couldn’t
get a job at a Starbuck’s, much less run a corporation. He is no hero, just a hipster club kid
who whiles away his empty moments in discos and coffee houses …. Hawke and his
castmates seem to have no idea what this play’s about. They recite dialogue like gradeschool children dying to get to recess. Planting Shakespeare’s works into modern times is
an old, tired gag: it didn’t work for Baz Lurhrmann in 1996, barely worked for Julie Taymor
last year, and certainly doesn’t cut it here. Almereyda has made a Hamlet in which the
prince’s ‘to be or not to be’ speech takes place in a Blockbuster store, where The Crow plays
silently on the monitors. The kind and pretentious would say it’s a postmodern commentary
on some bullshit; the rest of us just call it bullshit and leave it at that.”
- Robert Wilonsky, DO
Auditioning Gives Confidence
Director Stephen Frears remembers offering comedian Jack Black a role in
High Fidelity.
“Once he realized he’d been offered the part, he panicked and suddenly
said he wouldn’t do it. I said, ‘What do you mean, you won’t do it?’ He said: ‘Well,
you didn’t make me audition. Auditioning gives me confidence.’ I suppose that
has a sort of dotty logic to it.”
- New York Times Magazine, 9-28-03
Everybody’s Selling Something
“We live in a culture now – and we’re immersed in it so much that we don’t even
notice it, like a frog in the water – where everybody’s selling something. Movies aren’t
about the experience; they’re about selling the experience. I see it in the direction, I see
it in the writing, I see it in the acting. I see actors not playing the character, but selling
the fact that they’re playing the character, over and over and over. It’s got to the point
where not only are we not moved, but we don’t even notice that we’re not
moved anymore.”
- Alan Arkin, NYT 5-24-02
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
23
Farewell To Donald O’Connor
“To call Donald O’Connor a song-and-dance man is like calling Shakespeare a
strolling player.”
- Dance critic Anna Kisselgoff
Most of you have seen Donald O’Connor’s amazing vaudeville number, “Make
‘em Laugh” in the MGM musical, Singin’ In The Rain (1952). But did you know
it was improvised on the spot? Directors Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen told
O’Connor to do anything he wanted as the music played, and he drew on all he
had learned as a child of vaudeville. Read what happened next.
“After he completed the sequence with the cameras rolling, he was told that the film
had been overexposed, so he did it all over again, achieving what he thought was a
better take.”
- NYT, 9-28-03
Truth Is Always Original
George Henry Lewes acted with Charles Dickens, and witnessed performances by
the great British actor Edmund Kean.
“Good acting, on the contrary [to imitative bad acting], like good writing, is
remarkable for its individuality. It charms by its truth; and truth is always original.”
- George Henry Lewes, On Actors and the Art of Acting, 1875
Ellen Terry’s Three I’s
“Imagination! Imagination! I put it first years ago, when I was asked what
qualities I thought necessary for success upon the stage. And I am still of the same
opinion. Imagination, industry, and intelligence – ‘the three I’s’ – are all indispensable
to the actress, but of these three the greatest is, without any doubt, imagination.”
- Ellen Terry’s Memoirs, 1932
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
24
Film, Time, and Immortality
This passage from Stanley Kauffmann shows why this brilliantly perceptive,
cultivated, humane, and passionate man is the greatest working film critic in
the English language:
“De mortuis. A few weeks ago Greta Garbo played Marguerite Gautier once more in
George Cukor’s Camille, and, miraculously, she was better than ever. But as I watched the
television broadcast of the film, I quickly realized that every person I saw was dead. And
there I was, transported by Garbo and her companions more thrillingly than ever before – by
people long in their graves.
“Obviously this was not a new experience. Ever since the first music recordings and
the first silent films, departed artists have been moving us. But recordings are not the same
in totality as sound films. Listen to any Chaliapin recording, marvelous as it is, and compare
it with his Don Quixote in Pabst’s film. Silent films, treasures though hundreds of them are,
are not completed acting. Compare Garbo’s silent Anna Karenina in 1927 with her Anna in
the sound film of 1935.
“None of us could possibly remember the number of times that dead film performers
have held us, but in this latest viewing of Camille, Garbo, seemingly even more exquisite and
even more fulfilling, confirmed that the sound film had added a new dimension to the art of
acting. Technology has transmuted the physical into the metaphysical. The long-dead
Garbo was revealing even more of Marguerite’s life!
“Most biographies of film actors treat their subjects in the orthodox birth-life-death
form. Allowing even for the deterioration or disappearance of many films, this view is out of
kilter. The shape of time has been altered by film.”
- TNR, 9-22-03
Kauffmann’s books of collected film criticism belong on every actor’s shelf.
Advice To A Young Playwright
Legendary actress Eleonora Duse to a writer disheartened by bad reviews.
“What a child you are! One lives in a world of frogs, and you don’t want to let
them croak … Go your own way, don’t look back! Don’t dirty yourself with what the
so-called critics will say. Let them all burst! … Time builds and destroys for all …
Think only of finishing your work – that is everything.”
- Eleonora Duse, A Biography, by Helen Sheehy
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
25
You And The Part
“You know, Maureen Stapleton is a wonderful actress, but if you ask her to play the
mother in The Glass Menagerie she’s not very good. There’s something in her temperament
which doesn’t come together with that character. But give her the lead in The Rose Tattoo,
and nobody can touch her. There are some parts we don’t have the temperament for even if
we understand them, and there are some parts we are so right for that we don’t even know
that we understand them.”
- On Acting, by Sanford Meisner
“The first four or five years I was in film, acting was a kind of reflex for me. Thinking
is something you do when something’s not working. When it’s working, you stop thinking.
For that period I didn’t have to think about acting much at all. My work was filled with a lot
of reality and a lot of colors. However, it was also filled with turbulence, anger, and
unfulfilled longing. When it came time to do Catch-22, which was four or five years after
Second City, I said to Mike Nichols, ‘Who is this guy? What should I do with him?’ He says,
‘It’s you.’ ‘Me?’ I didn’t say it to him, but my internal monologue was, ‘Me? I haven’t got a
me. There is no me. There’s going to be a blank hole in the screen.’ I really felt that if I just
walked and talked like me, there wouldn’t be anything on the screen ….”
- Alan Arkin, The Actor Speaks, edited by Janet Sonenberg
John Turturro’s Objective
“It takes a long time for a writer to write a play or a screenplay. An actor can’t read it
and suddenly embody it. Some people have the skill to go fast, but I always think it’s good
to take my time. Begin in the simplest way; between the two actors. I read the material a lot
and see what connects to my own experiences, or experiences I’ve seen people go through.
Then, I try to make it as personal as it can be ….
“There are actors who pursue their objective by playing one action and that’s it. Their
work doesn’t surprise me because it’s too control-oriented. I’d rather give something of
myself away. Once the scene’s dynamic is starting to occur, I’ll go with it and then try to shift
it, too, just like you would in life. The shifting is important. Then, if I can get to the point
when that’s happening and I don’t know what I’m doing, that’s inspiration. I’ve done all my
work and then I try to achieve this other, living dimension, the human dimension. It ceases
being my work and it becomes living.
“My main objective as an actor is to keep people awake. I do everything possible to
make them care, which they cannot do when they’re sleeping. If I have a chance to make
interesting choices, then as long as I’m not grandstanding, I’m willing to go that route. Who
knows? I’ve seen people go beyond anything I would have expected of them. Life can
accomplish anything, any size, any dimension – it’s all human.”
- John Turturro, The Actor Speaks, edited by Janet Sonenberg
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
26
Your True Riches
“Let’s talk about your part. You will work it out for yourself, and what’s more, you’ll
do it right. If you have done all the work you say you have and if the part is within your
range, you cannot fail. Work and patience never fail.”
“Notice everything around you – watch yourself cheerfully. Collect and save in your
soul all the riches of life and the fullness of it. Keep those memories in order. You can
never tell when you will need them, but they are your only friends and teachers in your craft.
They are your only paints and brushes. And they will bring you reward. They are yours – your
own property. They are not imitations and they will give you experience, precision, economy,
and power.”
- Richard Boleslavsky, Acting, The First Six Lessons
Working In The Presence of People
“Of all the arts, I think acting must be the least concrete, the most solitary. One gains
experience continually, both at rehearsals and in performance, from the presence of a large
assembly of people. These people are essential to the development of one’s performance –
they are the living canvas upon which one hopes to paint the finished portrait which one has
envisaged. These fellow actors, these audiences, with their shifting variations of quality, are
the only means by which an actor may gauge the effect of his acting. With their assistance
he may hope to improve a performance, keep it flexible and fresh, and develop new
subtleties as the days go by. He learns to listen to them, to watch them (without appearing
to do so), to respond to them, to guide them in certain passages and be guided by them in
others – a never-ending task of secret vigilance.”
- John Gielgud, Early Stages
“When Gielgud speaks the verse, I can hear Shakespeare thinking.”
- Lee Strasberg
Stage And Screen
“The joy of film is that your choices can be so specific. The camera can record the
exact word or hand movement or eye movement you intend. A 150mm lens can make your
eyes eighty feet wide. The moment you choose to blink or when you choose to inhale or
exhale is what you’re saying in the scene. Let’s say the shot is of three of the fingers of your
hand, and one is tense. It can be that specific in film. It’s just fantastic. You choose exactly
what you want to show because it’s that tight. It’s so glorious. When you act on stage you
don’t get to do all these beautiful, specific, tiny little things that film enables you to do. On
the other hand, I love to be onstage because there’s no one between me and the audience.
Nobody’s going to step in and interpret me or edit me.”
- Kathleen Turner, The Actor Speaks, edited by Janet Sonenberg
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
27
Bergman’s Three Letters
Ingmar Bergman, one of the great directors of the world, whose work at its best
approaches the revelatory art of Strindberg, can be seen in a fascinating
documentary called Ingmar Bergman Makes A Film (available at Premiere
Video).
INTERVIEWER:
This manuscript [the screenplay for Winter Light] is dated Thursday,
August 7, 1961, but farther down on the page there are these three
letters: SDG. Can you tell me what they stand for?
BERGMAN:
That’s my own little secret. It might seem a little unusual. You know
Bach?
INTERVIEWER:
Johann Sebastian?
BERGMAN:
Yes. He wrote SDG on his compositions. It’s Latin, Soli Deo Gloria.
“To God Alone Be the Glory.” Perhaps it’s presumptuous of me to write
the same, but I have a feeling that I in some way, anonymously,
objectively, have done this for the glory of God and would like to give it
to Him as it is – as if we were participating in building a cathedral, you
know. That’s how I feel, and that’s why I have to add those three
letters.
- Ingmar Bergman Makes a Film
After Eleonora
Two renowned theatre figures in states of inspiration after seeing the legendary
Eleonora Duse perform:
“The art of an actor is an ocean.”
- actress Vera Arkadevna
“This is not the place for banal criticism. Here there is only the possibility of
hypnotic charisma, adoration, and study.”
- director Vsevolod Meyerhold
“Our heritage as actors goes back thousands of years, and we have to
feel as comfortable in the clothes, and the language of Sophocles as we do
in our sneakers.”
- Stella Adler, The Art of Acting
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
28
The “Heightened Sense of Performance”
We’ve had many discussions about the danger of being self-conscious and
over-designed in a scene rather than living in it totally and truthfully. Jeremy
Whiteker has heard teachers refer to this self-awareness as a “heightened
sense of performance;” and I well remember my long-time coach Michele
Condrey cautioning me: Daniel, there’s always a part of you that’s watching
and enjoying your own performance. This week two critics talk about
performances that impressed them as less than natural and instinctive.
Flicking On A Switch
Stanley Kauffmann on Sean Penn in Mystic River:
“But for me, there is a burr in the acting fabric – the man who has been most
ecstatically praised. As Jimmy, Sean Penn has the widest-ranging role, from manic
anger to grief, so he gets the greatest chance to impress. But once again, as in all
his films, Penn comes on as an actor. Whatever the character’s clothes, setting,
vocation, Penn is always an actor. It isn’t hamminess, it’s more subtle – the feeling
that he is there to wring our withers and all we have to do is wait. He is closest to
verity in his quieter moments, when he lets his striking aquiline face work for him.
But when he heats up, in fury or in grief, I always feel that he has flicked on a switch.
Imagine a younger Robert DeNiro as Jimmy, and you can feel the surge from within
that would spill forth at the outburst. He delivers the necessary emotion with a kind
of pride in his accomplishment. Another way to put it is that Penn’s outbursts seem
a nightclub comic’s mimicking of Penn’s outbursts.”
- TNR, 11-3-03
Ashley On a Hot Tin Roof
Theatre critic Ben Brantley on Ashley Judd in the new Broadway production of
Tennessee Williams’ Cat On A Hot Tin Roof:
“Ms. Judd, seen somewhat more advantageously on Broadway in a revival of
Picnic in 1994, delivers her aria-like monologues with clarity enough for the audience
to savor their scorching wit and priceless Southern grotesquerie. But it’s the
performance of a self-conscious pupil in an elocution class.
“As Ms. Judd gulps down a breath before taking on the next ornate hurdle of a
sentence, you can imagine the penciled markings in her script. Although she is often
funny (as well as beautiful), when Maggie gets really angry, this actress, so appealingly
effortless in films like Ruby In Paradise, shows little spontaneity ….”
- NYT 11-3-03
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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Watching Through the Keyhole
I often say that the acting I like best seems as if it’s been captured by hidden
camera; the characters are only aware of one another, never of an audience
watching from “out there.” Alan Arkin says something eerily similar to what we
preach in our workshop:
“As a kid I once went to a film and I was bored with it. I pretended for a minute that
I was hiding in a closet watching the event through a keyhole. All of a sudden the entire
reality of the film changed. Up until that point my imagination made the film a real event,
I wasn’t watching a performance. The minute I watched it through the keyhole, certain
performances became interesting and real and others became patently false. I felt that
they [the bad performers] were currying favor from an audience. My feeling was, ‘They
don’t know I’m out here so why are they acting for me?’ That gave me my first gauge, my
first ethos, for good and bad work.”
- The Actor Speaks, edited by Janet Sonenberg
Feel it First – Your Face And Your Figure Will Follow
You’ve heard me say this scores of times in Class Act as we strive for creative
naturalism. Now listen to two wonderful English Actors, Eileen Atkins and Alan
Bates talk about how simply believing in the circumstances will lead to natural
character traits that are different from your own. We don’t have to mug and
indicate!
BATES:
When I did the film An Englishman Abroad, I watched a run of it with a friend,
and he said, “Where did you get that funny little walk?”– a kind of drunken
shuffle, really. And I didn’t know I was doing it. You don’t think, “I’ll do a
funny walk,” or whatever.
ATKINS:
They’re the best things: when you don’t know you’re doing them. I had a tiny
part in the film of The Dresser, and an American said, “The way you marched
across the bridge at the railway station – it was so funny: go on, do that walk,”
and I said, like you, Alan, “I was just walking.” But the point is that it is coming
from how you’re feeling, so I had found this sort of bustle-y-brisk walk with a
much bigger length of stride. And this man said I had busy legs.
- NYT
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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The Former Captain Picard
American mall-walkers will only know Patrick Stewart from Star Trek, but he is
in fact a serious classical actor who is set to appear on Broadway in a revival of
The Caretaker, an eerie, mystical work by a great English playwright, Harold
Pinter.
“Early in his career, he [Stewart] said, he had doubts about his own physicality on
stage. He thought he was too slight to play leading roles, and as a character actor he
might be limited to supporting parts. ‘There is one actor who illustrates for me the
absurdity of that concept: Ian Holm. I watched how a man of small stature could
dominate and ignite a whole theatre.’”
Stewart also talks about the importance of learning your lines correctly to the
syllable, and everyone should read this carefully, because we have been talking
about the morality of learning the author’s words perfectly and speaking them
as if they are being spoken for the first time:
“Mr. Stewart is allowing himself no divergence from the dialogue. ‘What Harold
writes is poetry even though it’s in prose form. The trap is that the text sounds colloquial
and spontaneous. But it is, fact, heightened and defining of character …. I can’t be Davies
until I am speaking Harold’s text exactly, because Davies is what he says.’”
- NYT 11-8-03
And Kevin Kline Becomes Falstaff
Kevin Kline plays Falstaff in Henry IV and director Jack O’Brien describes his
transformation, which is not just physical!
“Kevin’s a big guy, extremely tall, and when you pad him out, he’s huge, not just
fat, not just a joke thing. He’s a big guy. And now that his hair has grown long and his
beard has grown long, we realized he doesn’t have to wear a false beard. And oddly, what
it’s allowing him to do is evolve an extremely intimate real person, that isn’t just a funny
madman coming out. It’s coming out of Kevin. It’s just a Kevin you haven’t seen.”
- NYT, 11-9-03
Don’t Ask The Playwright
ACTOR HANK FORSYTHE:
What does the character mean when he says –
HAROLD PINTER:
I don’t know, I just wrote it.
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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Mark Ruffalo’s Eight Hundred Auditions
Mark Ruffalo, who gives such an interesting performance in You Can Count On
Me, estimates he went on eight hundred auditions before landing his first
important role.
“In Hollywood, none of those people can make a decision. They can only say no.
I’d go to casting directors, and they’d say, ‘You are the best actor of your generation,
but – you just haven’t grown into your face yet, your face hasn’t grown into your
soul’. I had insane things like that said to me all the time. ‘You are one of the
greatest actors I have ever seen, but – ‘ I’d get this great feedback, but I could never
get a job.
“Two things have happened to acting in America. One is that actors think they
have to live the character, which is a huge mistake. Because what they do is put the
character on top of themselves and thereby kill anything spontaneous. The other is
that someone introduced the idea that less is more, so that actors stopped doing
anything at all. They just say the words.”
- New York Times Magazine, 11-03
Otto Brahm
Otto Brahm (1856-1912) was a producer-director and a pioneering champion of
naturalistic acting in Germany. His biographer Herbert Henze gives us a
wonderful vignette of Brahm directing an actor in a scene:
BRAHM:
Do you think this will achieve a grand effect?
ACTOR:
Jawol, Herr Direktor.
BRAHM:
Then leave it out.
“Let the actor study nature, nothing more than that. Let him study nature in all
her spiritual fullness: thus he will avoid banality and triviality. Let him study her outside
himself and within himself, in the world and within his own breast. Then the more
purely and richly he develops his personality, the stronger his temperament through
which, in Zola’s magic formula, he observes nature, the more deeply too will he grasp life
and reproduce life. Like the giant Antaes who grew strong whenever he touched the earth,
the actor, turning from the theatre to nature, from the conventions of the four boards to
truth, will ever win new strength; and he will learn to shun all stylizing, all arbitrary
mannerisms, all stage affectations. As for the ideal, the truly beautiful, he can only feel
that within himself, not outside himself in precepts that have been handed down.”
- Otto Brahm, “The Old and the New Art of Acting,” Actors on Acting
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
Nothing Human Is Alien To Us
“We all bear within us the potentiality for every kind of passion, every fate, every
way of life. Nothing human is alien to us. If this were not so, we could not understand
other people, either in life or in art. But inheritance and upbringing foster individual
experiences and develop only a few of our thousands of possibilities. The others
gradually sicken and die.”
- Max Reinhardt, “The Actor,” Actors on Acting
The Right Kind of Husband
“One of the reasons I married my husband was because when the man I had
been going out with for four years, a very attractive, nice guy, asked me to marry him,
I asked him, ‘What happens to my acting when we get married?’ I was brought up in
a time when women shouldn’t be angry and should take care of the children and the
house and this and that. He said, ‘Well, you give it up, I suppose.’ Well, that settled
that. So, when Tom proposed, I asked him the same thing and he said, ‘What do you
mean what happens to your acting? You keep doing it. You’re good at it.’ I said, ‘Oh,
thank you!’ and I married him.”
- Francis Sternhagen, The Actor Speaks, edited by Janet Sonenberg
The Word
“It still seems to me, that the word, as much as it shifted from the center of
our culture to sort of a side issue, I still think it will have an important function in
the future to keep us sane in this ever-growing, image-driven culture. In this at
least I am an eternal optimist.”
- Director Wim Wenders, NYT 11-30-03
William Macy Buck Naked
“There’s both more and less reality in film. If a scene is set in a church, you
can film it in a church. You get to work with real props. But on the other hand movies
are less real because, in the theatre, there are three walls that look like the place you’re
supposed to be in, and then one big, black wall that you sort of ignore. In a movie I’m
trying to relate to you while there’s a guy standing here with a microphone right in your
face. There’s a lot to block out. It takes a different kind of concentration, a more
difficult one.”
“I was buck naked [in the film The Cooler] and self-conscious about that,
but I just had to block all of that out and try to be bold, to be improvisatory and not
worry about things showing that shouldn’t.”
- William Macy, NYT 11-27-03
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Twyla Tharp and the Love of the Dance
Dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp has created dances for Baryshnikov,
Milos Foreman’s Amadeus, and most recently, the Broadway show Movin’ Out,
for which she won a Tony. Here she works with an actor-dancer auditioning
for the road company of Movin’ Out.
THARP:
Is he doing it yet? No. But is the potential there? Yes.
The actor dances.
THARP:
Try to let yourself go. All right?
The actor dances again.
THARP:
It still looks cautious. It’s like: “Hallelujah, brother! The spirit speaks!”
The dancer moves again, and the spirit speaks.
THARP:
What were you thinking then?
DANCER:
How much I love to dance.
THARP:
Yeah! Yeah! Try it one more time. There’s always one more time in
my repertory.
The actor-dancer gets the job.
- NYT, 11-23-03
“There is so much to be learned by watching some of the great film performances
of this century, as much as anything anybody can tell you in a book, or by anything you can
see today. I’ve never not gotten something from watching the great actors work. Never.
Somebody on film like Spencer Tracy, or Jimmy Stewart, or Jean Arthur, or Montgomery
Clift – or any of the great people whose performances are preserved – to not take
advantage of that is to say, ‘Well, I’m going to limit what I do.’ And I would never do that.
I’ll listen to anybody who’s going to offer a suggestion or give me an idea that I can use in
my work. It doesn’t mean I’ll use it, but I would never cut off a supply line of something
that can make me a better actress. I just feel like I’ve put a toe in the water. I’d be very
sad if this is as good as I’m going to get.”
- Mary Steenburgen, Figures Of Light, edited by Carole Zucker
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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Really Talking, Really Listening
Twelve Angry Men, The Fugitive Kind, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, The
Verdict, Q&A, Night Falls On Manhattan – these are just a few of the films
Sydney Lumet has directed over the years. I can’t think of better words to
commit to heart before actors cold-read and rehearse.
“How can we get actors with totally different life experiences and acting techniques
to look like they’re making the same movie? The answer is remarkably simple, but like all
simple things, it’s hard to achieve. Just as in life, really talking and listening to one another
is very, very difficult. In acting, that’s the basis on which everything is built. By now I have
an almost set speech I make just before the first reading of the script. I will say to the
actors, ‘Go as far as you feel. Do as much or as little as you want to. If you feel it, let it fly.
Don’t worry if it’s the right emotion or the wrong one. We’ll find out. That’s what rehearsals
are for. But minimally, talk to each other and listen to each other. Don’t worry about losing
your place in the script as long as you’re really talking and listening to each other. Try to
pick up on what you just heard.
“Sanford Meisner was one of the best acting teachers of my time. With beginning
students, he spent the first month or six weeks getting them to really talk and listen to
one another. That’s all. It’s the great common denominator where different acting styles
and techniques meet.”
- Making Movies, by Sydney Lumet
Aristocrats Of The Mind
“Today we see nothing that wants to become greater. We suspect that all goes
ever downward, becoming thinner, more sleazy, smarter, cozier, more ordinary, more
indifferent. Exactly here lies our crisis. With the fear of man, we have also lost the
love of man – reverence for him, hope for him. The human prospect wearies us.
What is the current nihilism if it is not that? We are tired of man.
“As actors we have to build a renewed sense that man has power and beauty,
that noble man is not buried in a democratized mob. We must learn to separate
politics from culture, from character. We must be aristocrats in a world of noble
equals. We must find and keep the best of both worlds, the old and the new.
“Actors are aristocrats of the mind! And have been for well over
2,000 years!”
- Stella Adler, The Art Of Acting
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
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You Are Your Instrument
“I love actors. I love them because they’re brave. All good work requires selfrevelation. A musician communicates feeling through the instrument he is playing, a
dancer through body movement. The talent of acting is one in which the actor’s thoughts
and feelings are instantly communicated to the audience. In other words, the
“instrument” that an actor is using is himself. It is his feelings, his physiognomy, his
sexuality, his tears, his laughter, his anger, his romanticism, his tenderness, his
viciousness that are up there on the screen for all to see. That’s not easy. In fact,
quite often it’s painful.
“There are many actors who can duplicate life brilliantly. Every detail will be
correct, beautifully observed and perfectly reproduced. One thing is missing, however.
The character’s not alive. I don’t want life reproduced up there on the screen. I want life
created. The difference lies in the degree of the actor’s personal revelation.
“I worked with Marlon Brando on The Fugitive Kind. He’s a suspicious fellow. I
don’t know if he bothers anymore, but Brando tests the director on the first or second day
of shooting. What he does is to give you two apparently identical takes. Except that on
one, he is really working from the inside; and on the other, he’s just giving you an indication
of what the emotion was like. Then he watches which one you decide to print. If the
director prints the wrong one, the “indicated” one, he’s had it. Marlon will either walk
through the rest of the performance or make the director’s life hell, or both. Nobody has
the right to test people like that, but I can understand why he does that. He doesn’t want
to pour out his inner life to someone who can’t see what he’s doing.”
- Sidney Lumet, Making Movies
Stanislavsky And The Imagination
“Stanislavski and I soon achieved the greatest closeness between director
and actress, and very soon it was just actor and actress! We worked together for
many, many weeks. In those periods there were certain things he asked me to do.
Particularly, he made clear that an actor must have enormous imagination,
uninhibited by self-consciousness. I understood he was very much an actor fed
by the imagination. He explained the enormous importance of the imagination
on the stage.
“Mr. Stanislavski told me, very much actor to actress, how he had suffered
when he played Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. He didn’t know where to touch
it. He said it was difficult for him, that Ibsen was difficult for him. He told me it
took him ten years to find the part.”
- Stella Adler, The Art Of Acting
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
Marcia Gay Harden On Acting
Marcia Gay Harden’s work ranges from the Broadway premiere of Angels in
America to films such as Miller’s Crossing, The Daytrippers, Pollock, and
Mystic River. This is a marvelous conversation that should be read again
and again.
Simplicity, Knowing You’re Enough, Using Your True Voice
“I desire to be able to act with greater simplicity; unfortunately, that’s not my
penchant. I tend to want to do more. One of my teachers, Ron Van Lieu, told me many
times, ‘You are enough. Just you, Marcia.’ How many times do we think, ‘I want to be
anything but me. I am not enough. The character is interesting but I’m not interesting
onstage.’ I can remember a scene in Month in the Country in which I had to say, ‘I love
you.’ Ron said, ‘Do it on your voice.’ I resisted and said, ‘I love you,’ using a breathy,
‘sensitive’ voice. ‘That’s not sensitive,’ Ron said. ‘That’s boring. Now, get on your voice.’
I did, and suddenly I was sobbing and the scene worked. I’d made a connection to
myself and to the other actor because I had allowed myself to be enough.”
Say it the Way it is Written
“ … I inverted the words! Tony Kushner, the playwright, twice gave me the
note that I was inverting, but I kept making the same mistake until finally he said,
‘It’s much more beautiful if you do it the way it’s written.’ Well excuuuuse me, Mr.
Kushner! So I went back and learned it properly …. I had been onstage performing
that line with great feeling, but my feeling wasn’t enough. The line was more beautiful
than my feeling. Applying technique opened the door on that moment. I didn’t have to
do so much work. I didn’t have to think, ‘Did they see my tear on that line?’ It no
longer mattered, because if I hit the triangle and put in the final period, the moment
was a billion times more powerful than my puny tear alone.”
A Line Reading
“George [Wolfe] said, ‘Marcia, I want you to go bat ta ba – ba.’ I’d say, ‘I know
exactly what what you mean, but I feel it should go ‘ba ta ba ba.’ He’d say, ‘Okay,
try it, but make the ta stronger.’
The Merge
“I face the same struggle every play: the struggle to allow myself to be. To
allow self to become character and character to merge with self.
“An actor’s personal shit, the stuff you take great pains to avoid, is exactly what
is going to make something exciting happen to the character.
“A release happens when you quit saying, ‘My character wouldn’t.’”
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Acting On Film
“It’s interesting to me how different the process of film is from theater. Working
in film, you’re always moving right on to the next setup. It’s not as intensely a personal
experience as theatre. In film, you’re expected to come in having worked out emotional
transitions and character. I’m particularly glad for my training when I work on a film
because it enables me, on my own, to find the truth of a scene. Unlike theatre, you must
give over almost all other control to the director and producer to make the film they want to
make. When I saw the final print of Miller’s Crossing, produced and directed by the Coen
brothers, I was surprised that my character, Verna, was as flat and stoical as she was. I’d
given them many takes that had greater scope, shape, and emotion and lighter music.
But the Coen’s chose the low, base tones. However, in the context of the whole film I saw
that I was an instrument in this director’s symphony. I love the music they recorded.”
Always At The Drawing Board
“As actors, we’re always at the drawing board. It’s always the beginning. You’re
always learning the same things again and making the same mistakes. Acting is not a
linear progression. I don’t think you reach a point at which you don’t even have to think
about what you do because you just do it. I think you take the same steps over and over
again. Certain steps do become condensed as you know a way of working. It no longer
takes me a week to figure out my objectives or the beats; I see them, smell them, and
feel them immediately. But I always have to say, ‘Play the scene, not the laugh; play the
character’s intention, not your idea of the intention; don’t play what it “should” look like,
play what you’re doing; don’t play the how, play the what; put your attention on your scene
partner; listen, did you hear them say that?; let it resonate within your body; get on your
voice; can’t you be innocent in your own voice? It’s always the same equations. With
experience you do reach the point where you can sight-read the music. But how to
play it?”
- The Actor Speaks, edited by Janet Sonenberg
Art Is Born
“An artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn’t
exist. For the artist doesn’t live in a vacuum; some sort of pressure must exist. The
artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were
perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony, but would simply live in it. Art is born out of
an ill-designed world.”
- director Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublev, Poet of the Cinema
“You act with your soul. That’s why you all want to be actors, because your souls
are not used up by life.”
- Stella Adler, On Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov
THE ACTOR’S FORUM, VOLUME ONE
DMN – Dallas Morning News
DO – The Dallas Observer
NYT – The New York Times
TNR – The New Republic
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