Acting is about sharing yourself, not “getting away” from yourself. How does that statement sit with you? Have you fallen into the trap of trying to transform yourself into someone completely unrecognizable with every character you play? Sometimes there is a lot of pressure from other actors to do this.
The worst situation is an acting class in which all the other student actors are encouraged to give their critique of your performance. A lot of times, student actors don’t have the vocabulary yet to give you a truly useful critique, and so when a performance isn’t working, you will hear the criticism that it was “too much like you.” Put another way, it could be: “you didn’t get away from yourself enough.”
Is this a valid criticism? It usually comes from a good place, but is not necessarily verbalized accurately. Let’s not forget that the purpose of an actor is to entertain the audience. The audience does not care whether or not the actor is “getting away from himself” or not, as long as he enjoys the performance. The real question becomes, how do you deliver an exciting performance?
The one thing you have to offer is your humanity. Every human being is capable of experiencing every emotion in life. When you come to a role, you bring your unique perspective to the character. If your main goal is to eliminate every part of yourself, what do you have left? Nothing!
Instead, when you approach a role, you should embrace the uniqueness that you bring to the role. Your fresh perspective is what makes your performance different from any other actor who may perform it. When you bring the emotional truth to it in that way, then you can begin to layer the physical and vocal changes on top of it. As long as that layer of truth is there underneath, you can transform the external attributes as much as you want.
The bottom line? People may or may not say “Wow, I didn’t even recognize him!” But don’t worry about it. Captivate your audience by baring your soul, and they will respond with gratitude and love.
who would u say is the best actor of all time?
ReplyDeleteAlthough he is very widely known a one of the best; I will say Leonardo De Caprio. He has a way of characterization that is unmatched.
ReplyDeleteI disagree a little because I always enjoy actors like Gary Oldman who slip from role to role and totally envelop themselves in each character to the point where you can't recognize them from movie to movie.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post nonetheless. :)
You really seem to know your stuff about acting, and are very well versed. You'll hit it big someday, keep at it.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that I've read about this somewhere. An actress I think had written something that basically said that acting should be an extension of yourself. If I could only remember who. Nice to read about something like it again though!
ReplyDelete