A Screen Acting Workshop E-Book

Mel Churcher

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 362

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

A comprehensive training course in screen acting by an internationally renowned teacher and acting coach who has worked with actors of all backgrounds and experience – from drama school students at the start of their careers to Hollywood stars, including Daniel Craig, Angelina Jolie and Keira Knightley. Mel Churcher has developed a series of five workshops which take actors step by step through the process of creating, developing and delivering assured performances on screen. Accompanied by ninety minutes of online film clips, showing all of the work in action, this book builds on these workshops and lets you progress through them at your own pace: - Workshop 1: Keeping the Life encourages you to find what is unique about yourself and how you can preserve this vitality when acting on screen - Workshop 2: Inhabiting the Role focuses on the emotional and psychological steps required in preparing your performance - Workshop 3: The Physical Life introduces a series of practical exercises to develop the physicality and imagination of the actor - Workshop 4: Through the Eye of the Camera explains the technical skills you must master to act in front of a lens - Workshop 5: Off to Work We Go covers how to prepare for auditions and then how to handle specific challenges when you get the jobEach exercise, technique and tip is vividly illustrated in online film clips taken from the author's actual workshops. The result is a vital masterclass in every aspect of acting on screen. Foreword by Jeremy Irons. 'When the whole business seems to have gone loopy, dip into Mel Churcher's book; somehow she always makes sense' Bob Hoskins

Leseprobe

Foreword by Jeremy Irons

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

To Chris and Ben

Contents

Dedication

Foreword by Jeremy Irons

Acknowledgements

Using this Book

Epigraph

Workshop 1: Keeping the Life

Introduction

The Natural versus the Unnatural

You are Unique

What About the Character?

Staying Alive

Nature and Nurture: You ‘As If…’

Stepping into the Role

Differences Between Stage and Screen

1. There is No Audience

2. You Work Out of Order

3. You Rehearse Alone

And the Other Differences…

Text – What Text?

Big and Small

Workshop 2: Inhabiting the Role

The Power of the Lens

Close-Up and Personal

The Eyes Have It

Thoughts and Wants

The Picture in Your Head

Letting the Words Fall Out

Connecting Up with the Script

Learning to Unlearn

Emotional Truth

Finding the Core

Breathing Life into the Role

Recipe for STAR Quality

Straight and Strong

Instant Posture

The Power of Preparation

How to Rehearse Alone

The Need – Raising the Stakes

Beware of the ‘How to’ Demons

Get Out of Your Own Way

Building a Life

Pictures and Memories

Unconscious versus Conscious

You Gotta Have Attitude

Being in the Right Subtext

Uncovering the Truth

When Subtext Disappears

Workshop 3: The Physical Life

The Actor’s Crucible: Physiological Alchemy

The Power of the Breath

1. Fighting Lions

2. Tics and Tensions

3. The Connected Voice

4. Emotional Release

5. Inspiration

6. Vital Energy

7. Empathy

Ongoing Posture Work

Shoulder Workouts

The Actor’s Toybox: Physical/Psychological Games

The Pavlov’s Dog Effect

Improvisation as a Rehearsal Tool

Physical Metaphors

Psychological Gestures

Emotional Props

‘Gestus’

Patterns of Energy

Circles of Need

Mask Work as a Rehearsal Tool

Chakras, Secondary Centres and Archetypes

The Animal Inside You

Triggering Emotions

Sensing Your World

Waking Up the Senses

Brain Games

Nodes

Workshop 4: Through the Eye of the Camera

Filming the Script

Every Picture Tells a Story

Public versus Private

The Camera Bends Space

Coming into Focus

Shooting to Edit

Continuity

Continuity of Energy

Props

Sound

Post-production

Round-up of Technical Tips

Workshop 5: Off to Work We Go

Getting the Work

The Casting Director

The Casting Process

Audition Nerves

Round-up of Casting Tips

The Working Actor

Checking the Monitor

Corridor Acting

Filming a Series

Cheating the Shot

Terrible Dialogue

Costume Dramas

Action Movies

Health Hazards

The One-Day Job

Accents and Dialects

Those Tears Again

Prosthetics and Extreme Physical Changes

Extremes of Imagination

The Never-Ending Story

The Actor and the Director

Making Your Own Movies

What Kind of Film Are You In?

Fine-tuning

Stereotypes

Action for Actors

Sample Scene Rehearsals

Scene 1: The Silence

Work to Do on Scene 1

Scene 2: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Work to Do on Scene 2

Scene 3: The Constant Gardener

Work to Do on Scene 3

Resources

Viewing the Videos

List of Film Clips

About the Author

Copyright Information

Foreword

Film acting has traditionally, in the UK at least, been rather looked down on as being something that the Americans do and which really doesn’t need the technique of a theatre actor. In England, we’re mainly theatre actors, and film actors have been historically regarded as overpaid and under-talented.

But in reality, film acting can give you a real insight into acting in the theatre, because you can’t lie on film whereas you can get away with lying in theatre. In other words, the camera will see you if you are pretending. You have to be. Now, I believe you have to be in the theatre also. You have to have a technique to enlarge that state of ‘being’ so that an audience, whether it’s two hundred or two thousand, can understand what you’re saying and what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling. And you have to be able to transmit that. But in order to do that honestly, you have to be able to be in that moment – with no pretence. And if you come to film and think that you can ‘pretend’ in front of the camera (which you can get away with on stage, and which you see a lot of actors doing) – it doesn’t work.

In life, we recognise the difference between someone pretending to be angry and someone being angry. We can tell whether they really find something funny or if they’re pretending to find something funny. So, if we ‘pretend’ on stage, a perceptive audience can sometimes tell. Well – they can always tell on camera.

So I think film is a real testing ground for actors. You have to find ways to get, very quickly, into your role – to learn the techniques that you need when you’re going to shoot, probably, in short little bites. You have to understand what the scene’s about and what the arc of the scene is, as you would in theatre, but then you have to be able to get immediately into the right bit of that arc for the particular shot that’s being done. These days, people tend to shoot longer takes, shoot wide and use multiple cameras, so things are easier than they were. But you’ve still got to have tricks to make sure that – very fast – you’re ready. You don’t want directors to have to do more than two or three takes. The old days of fourteen or fifteen takes are over.

The misunderstanding arises, I think, from people assuming film and television acting is no more than being ‘real’. Hopefully you will seem to ‘be’, but you are being someone else in a different situation. You have to get yourself into that situation. Now some work doesn’t require very much. Some work requires much more, requires you have to make a huge leap – into maybe a different century or to a personality that’s completely different to you, the actor. I think great acting should be seamless. It shouldn’t show. It’s a god-given talent that some people have. I watch the great actors and try to learn from them.

Training is important. I think it’s useful to get used to the situation on set – to get used to dealing with the pressure. People will say so often, ‘Real people are so much more interesting than actors – let’s have a real person playing that role.’ And so you bring in a real person and you put the lights on them, turn on the camera, and they just collapse with nerves. What you have to do, as an actor, is to be used to all that tension and the time pressure, and learn not to worry about it.

Keep your own space. Know the jewel that you carry – what you have to offer, that no one else can do. Make sure you are in a completely calm space that is the right space for that moment in the scene. So that you don’t see the camera, you don’t see the lights, you don’t see the technicians watching. That’s clearly very important, and you will learn to do that with practice and training.

You have to allow the lens into you. You have to be open to it but not play for it. It’s an attitude. When I say ‘Keep your own space’, it’s about making the space to allow us to see what you’re thinking, see what you’re going through. Because storytelling is what we do in a film – sharing experience, sharing emotion. And people who put things out to you tend to make you, as an audience, pull back…

I’ve always thought that making a character is like making an advent calendar. In each scene, you open a window and you just show a bit of life inside that particular room from that angle, and then the next scene you open another window…

But invite us in. Don’t feel you have to justify yourself or show yourself. You don’t. Just intrigue us…

Jeremy Irons

Acknowledgements

I am deeply indebted to all my teachers and directors as an actor, and all my actors and colleagues as a teacher and director – with special mention to friends at the BritishVoice Association; to Cicely Berry, who is always my mentor; to Tim Reynolds, who gave me my first chance to direct; and to Luc Besson, who has provided me with some of my most exciting film projects.

A special thank-you to all the actors who bravely allowed me to use their private rehearsal work on the DVD and film clips, and to all the actors whose work it would have been wonderful to use if space had permitted.

Thank you to my publisher Nick Hern and to my editor Matt Applewhite for their tireless support and encouragement.

Thank you so much to Jeremy Irons for his clear and thoughtful Foreword.

Thanks to the Actors Centre (www.actorscentre.co.uk) and my colleagues there for all their help and assistance: Matthew Lloyd, Michael John, Diane Shorthouse, my long-suffering film editor Daniele Mercanti (who also devised the complex navigation system for the DVD and uploaded all the film clips online), and DOP Ivan Dalmedo.

Thanks to Holger Borggrefe, Johanna Schenkel, DOP Andreas Kohler and sound mixer Gerd ‘Ide’ Lödige and all my colleagues at ifs international film school Cologne (www.filmschule.de).

Thanks to Interkunst e.V. in Berlin (www.interkunst.de) and my colleagues there: Til Dellers, Arkadiusz Zietek and DOP Matthias Kremer.

Thanks to Penelope Cherns at LAMDA and DOPs Alvin Leong and Nayla El-Solh.

Thanks to Amanda Brennan and Catherine Alexander at Central School of Speech and Drama and DOP Keir Burrows.

Thanks to Drew Stocker at Alleyn’s School for providing the means for a workshop and to Ben C. Roose for organising it.

Thank you to sound mixer John Rodda and his kind colleagues for providing me with real studio sound effects.

Thank you to actors Daniela Holtz and John Keogh for permission to use extracts from their e-mails.

Thank you to Kevin MacLeod (www.incompetech.com) for the use of his music as credited on the DVD and films clips, and to Kirsty Mather for the use of her song.

…Last, but always first, love and thanks to Chris and Ben Roose.

Mel Churcher

The author and publisher also gratefully acknowledge permission to quote from the following, in the book and on the DVD and film clips:

China is Near by Marco Bellocchio, translated by Judith Green (copyright © 1969 Grossman Publishers, Inc.), published by Calder and Boyars (Publishers) Ltd; Playing by Heart by Willard Carroll, by kind permission of the author; Savage in Limbo by John Patrick Shanley, published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.; Junebug by Angus MacLachlan, by kind permission of Epoch Films; Girl, Interrupted by James Mangold, The Spider Men by Ursula Rani Sarma, in Shell Connections 2006: New Plays for Young People and Victory by Harold Pinter in Collected Screenplays: Vol. 2 (copyright © 2000 Harold Pinter), published by Faber and Faber Ltd; ‘Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices’ by Sylvia Plath in Collected Poems, published by Faber and Faber Ltd in the UK (copyright © 1989 The Estate of Sylvia Plath), and in Winter Trees, published by HarperCollins Publishers in the US (copyright © 1968 Ted Hughes); ‘Burnt Norton’ from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot, published by Faber and Faber Ltd in the UK, and by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company in the US (copyright © 1936 by Harcourt, Inc., renewed 1964 by T.S. Eliot); The Freedom of the City by Brian Friel, by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press; To the Actor by Michael Chekhov, published by Harper and Row; clips from Ministry of Information films, by kind permission of the Imperial War Museum; The Naked Civil Servant by Philip Mackie; The Silence from A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman, translated by Paul Britten Austin (copyright © 1963 Ingmar Bergman, this translation © 1978 Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd), and Face to Face by Ingmar Bergman, translated by Alan Blair (copyright © 1976 Ingmar Berman, this translation © 1976 Alan Blair), both published by Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd; Beautiful People by Scott Rosenberg; Building a Character and Creating a Role by Constantin Stanislavsky, translated by Elizabeth Reynold Hapgood, The Cut by Mike Cullen and The Memory of Water by Shelagh Stephenson, published by Methuen Drama, an imprint of A&C Black Publishers Ltd; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Charlie Kaufman (copyright © 2004 Universal Studios Licensing LLLP), Honour by Joanna Murray-Smith, Low Level Panic by Clare McIntyre, and The Treatment by Martin Crimp, all published by Nick Hern Books Ltd; On Acting by Sanford Meisner (copyright © 1987 Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell), published by Random House Books; cartoons from Will Write and Direct for Food by Sir Alan Parker (copyright © 2005 Alan Parker), published by Southbank Publishing, by kind permission of the artist; Departure Lounge by Lorna Holder, by kind permission of Lorna Holder of Tuareg Productions; and The Constant Gardener by Jeffrey Caine (copyright © 2005 Focus Features), by kind permission of Universal Studios Licensing LLLP.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. The publisher will be glad to make good in any future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention.

Using this Book

What follows in this book is based on my five-day Acting for Screen workshops. Please refer to the Viewing Video Clips section at the back of this ebook for details on how to view the videos.

These film clips show real moments that happened during some of my workshops. The filming was not set up for the purposes of this book – hence the variable technical quality of the clips. Because the actors were genuinely involved in their work, the examples have an immediacy that would not have been possible to replicate in a controlled environment.

The clips are designed to enhance and elucidate the text by providing examples and visual references. You may view them as you wish but, initially, I would suggest that you watch each entire workshop after reading that chapter in the book. Alternatively, you can watch the exercises and examples as they are described in the book.

A symbol will alert you to relevant clip so that you can return to it whenever you wish. Separate sections are indicated by Workshop Number then Scene Number, so that [Click here 3.8], for example, refers to Workshop 3 (‘The Physical Life’), Scene 8 (‘Toybox: Circling’).

From time to time, I shall also add clips to my website that might be of interest: www.melchurcher.com On Twitter you can follow me @MelChurcher.

You’ll hear a few instances of strong language as the actors use examples from modern scripts, so please be aware that you might not consider it appropriate for younger viewers. It’s infrequent, though, and shouldn’t cause any worries for anyone familiar and comfortable with the average television drama after 9 p.m.

‘Qui vit sans folien’est pas si sage qu’il croit.’

‘He who lives without follyis not as wise as he thinks.’

Rochefoucault (1613–80)

Workshop1

Keeping the Life

Workshop1

Introduction

I was an actor once, so I know what it’s like to go in front of the camera. I know about the actor’s nightmares the night before filming, the butterflies in the stomach, the panic that rises when you forget your lines, the dry mouth, the racing heart, and the performance that’s over before it began.

A long time ago, I started teaching and directing and trying to calm other people who were going through what I used to experience. I began to see how the responsibility of trying to be ‘good actors’ was getting in their way. How seeking a feedback that they were really ‘feeling’ was leading to the opposite effect. How when they said it felt ‘too easy’, it had suddenly become real and powerful.

I first worked as an acting coach on a film around twenty years ago and since then I’ve been standing around on a set for months at a time, watching the monitor for twelve hours a day on more than forty major films and television productions. I have been lucky enough to see many different directors at work and to watch how the actors’ performances grew and changed with the input of those around them. I have also taught thousands of actors and would-be actors in workshops and studios both in groups and in one-to-one sessions. Out of this work came my first book, Acting for Film: Truth 24 Times a Second, which is a thorough overview of all aspects of film acting. Now, I want to share my practical workshops, designed to prepare you further for your work on camera – work that is not only magic and instant but also long and tedious.

Marlon Brando said, ‘Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts. Whenever we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend, we’re acting. Most people do it all day long.’

Drama schools are a wonderful way to train, but they also fill you with so much information that it is sometimes hard to let it go in the moment of performance. You have to trust that, once you have done all the homework, you simply need to believe in the situation and ‘be there’. Just do what you need to get what you want – like life. And let the preparation take care of itself. You need to be able to go back to having total belief in your imagination as you did when you were five and knew that the ghosts were after you at the bottom of the garden, or the spaceship would arrive at any moment to whisk you away, or that the area under the hedge was the hut you had built on your tropical island. [Click here Introduction]

Most of us run around through life worrying about the future or dwelling on the past. Whatever your role is doing, you, the actor, have to be in the here and now in order to inhabit that role. It is a precious accomplishment to stop time. The actor and director Maria Aitken says of comedy, ‘There is only one moment and that moment is now’; D. H. Lawrence talked constantly of ‘the living moment’; Eckhart Tolle wrote a bestselling book called The Power of Now, and to quote T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘Burnt Norton’:

“   What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.

An actor has to find that power – to stop time, to be present in the present. That is the joy of our work. That is why we train.

If training hardens into one ‘technique’ or ‘method’, it ceases to be fluid and personal. You have to find what works for you and create your own perfect mix. Over time, by being eclectic and going down many different routes, I’ve discovered what I find the most helpful advice for actors working on screen:

   You should be as clean and as open as a child. And play the game with the same commitment and energy and total belief as a child. Make no decisions about how to play.

   You need to find ways to engage your whole body in that game, to store specific muscle memory, pictures and sense awareness. It is not enough simply to think about the part.

   You have to separate the preparation from the doing. You add to your subconscious during preparation, and you are solely in the present, engaging with your role’s conscious thoughts, during playing.

   You have, at the deepest level, to be working from yourself. Which brings us back to my first point. Children are not confused. They play their roles as if they themselves are the roles. Then they stop and go to tea.

What would I most like you to experience in the moment of doing your work in front of the camera? A freedom, an ease, a simplicity, a spontaneity and a release from knowing and deciding. To be as free in ‘the moment of now’ as you should be in life. It is as if you stand by a closed door, knowing where you belong in the world, knowing who might be waiting inside, responding to a need that makes you open the door and go in. But with no knowledge of what will happen next.

The Natural versus the Unnatural

Playing, imagining, empathising is natural. The child plays through the imagination and belief in the situation that the game has conjured up. We care for others because our imaginations say, ‘What if I were in this situation…?’

Reading squiggles on a page, learning the words they represent and then having to speak them exactly as they are written is not like life. Being asked to move to a particular spot, gesticulate in a certain way and then speak those lines of love in front of a camera and several hundred technicians is not natural.

In life, we never speak or move without an impulse, a need. To take prescribed words and moves and then to have a need so strong and so precise that it can only result in those words and moves is an unnatural act.

No one can teach you the natural but the unnatural can be learnt. You can wake up the child in you to release the natural and acquire the unnatural craft of the expert you must become. You need to mix the folly and bravery of the child with the wisdom of the sage. And it will be a joyful lifelong endeavour!

You are Unique

Nobody does ‘you’ like you. You are unique. You are your best asset. When you go to an audition, you are not in competition with other actors. Only you can offer your particular viewpoint of the world, your embodiment of the role. The other actors are offering their unique visions. Which version the director chooses to buy is a different matter. You may not get the part but it is as if the director chooses Aphrodite over Athene or Dionysus over Apollo, the Nile over the Tigris or the Thames over the Loire, Brando over Bogarde or Garbo over Monroe. Although only one person can be chosen for the role, no one else will play it like you. So no one is competing with the way you will play it.

What you must do is release the brakes you put on yourself. You need to trust your power of belief and thought. You need to believe that you and the role are one. Then your interpretation of the part will come fully alive and the director can make an informed decision. Directors are not psychic and can’t see the talent inside you unless it is revealed. And when you get the part, you want the role to be as alive and extraordinary and unique as you are yourself. [Click here 1.0, 1.1]

See how alive people’s eyes and faces are in life! As Georgia talks about her quarry dive, the pictures in her head are so strong that she uses gestures all the time to recreate them for her audience and in reaction to what she sees and how she feels about it. Ana’s eyes move upwards as she sees the pictures in her head again. Notice how, as she empathises with the dog’s plight, she actually ‘becomes’ the dog. Will feels his fear again as he sees the bungee jump he has to do. He feels the rope around his ankles and sees the drop beneath him. Marion relives her ordeal moment by moment. Watch her ‘see’ the big ship and then her son and dog in her canoe. Daniela relives the absurdity of her story even before she tells it and the vivid pictures it evokes make her laugh helplessly – so we laugh too.

What About the Character?

Scripts with an Arc

‘…so you see Max, I’m really you and you’re really me…’

‘I’m a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude – you’re a dude who don’t know what dude he is.’ So says Robert Downey Jnr. as Kirk Lazarus in the film Tropic Thunder (2008).

I’m going to be controversial here. I hate the word ‘character’ – as in, ‘finding my character’ or ‘it’s a character part’. I do end up saying it occasionally in the course of a workshop because it’s sometimes hard to find an alternative – but I prefer the word ‘role’.

So often, when actors think of their ‘characters’, it is as if they hold up a cardboard cut-out in front of themselves. ‘My character…’ they say, ‘My character would/wouldn’t do this or that… he or she is not like that… he is a bastard, she is sweet…’ They talk about the ‘character’ as an idea in the third person and often judgementally – ‘She is in love with a romantic ideal’, ‘He is a bit of a nerd.’ Is the role really so self-aware that they could say that of themselves? Or are you simply standing outside looking in at the ‘character’, instead of being in their shoes? What if it was you– you ‘as if’ you’ve led the life they’ve led and are in this situation now?

I’ve lost count of the times that someone has come to me through a casting director or an agent because, although they are so right for the role, they never get cast. This person sits in my front room, beautiful, sexy and a bit edgy and I think, ‘Why are they here when they are already eminently castable?’ Then they pick up the script and the interesting human being in front of me vanishes. Suddenly, there’s a very ordinary, very needy, two-dimensional creature reading a script too fast, a little high-pitched, leaning forward towards me.

‘Why have you changed your posture/voice/attitude?’ I ask.

‘Because the character would be younger/needier/tired/sad and so on…’

But you, yourself, are so much more interesting than that, would be my comment.

So I film them talking about themselves and their recent encounters and they are always exciting to watch. Their eyes sparkle. They light up when they talk about something they are passionate about, or someone they love. And you can see them ‘seeing’ them. There is humour in their eyes, warmth, a little cynicism. They laugh when they tell you the sad things. Their voices are alive and connected.

Then I ask them to go into a monologue they know. Instantly, as I watch the monitor, the face drops, the eyes go dead, the humour drains away and the voice is disconnected.

We play back the recording. They are always amazed. ‘Which is more interesting?’ I ask. But we both know the answer. [Click here 1.3]

You can see the life draining out of people when they begin the unnatural task of speaking text and how it comes back vividly when they allow themselves back into the work. [Click here 1.4]

Thinking of the ‘character’ can block you.

Staying Alive

The trouble is, as actors, we want to be good. We are responsible people and we try really hard. We want to know we are being honest. We concentrate on whether we ‘feel’ real rather than on what we want or what we are trying to do.

But in life, when we have emotional feelings, we generally ignore them in order to pursue what we want. We don’t sit around trying to ‘feel’. The feeling happens anyway but it is a consequence of, or a side issue to, the business of pursuing our actions. We shouldn’t be striving for some reassurance that we are connecting up with our feelings because that sends the energy back into ourselves instead of out into the world.

When we interact with others and the world around us, our energy goes outwards to deal with the situation. When we meet an obstacle, we try to get what we want in a different way. For example, if you asked your lover, ‘Do you love me still?’ your energy would not be directed at how you feel. That would happen of its own accord. What you would be doing would be watching and listening for every lie, every sign of unfaithfulness or for the comforting reassurance of love. If your lover evaded the question, that would be an obstacle that prevented you getting your need, so you would try to get this reassurance by taking a different action. You might try hugging them, hitting out, running away hoping they will chase you, or simply asking the question again. But you would take action in the immediacy of that specific moment. You wouldn’t stop to check you were ‘feeling something’. Yet that is what many actors do all the time, even if they aren’t fully aware of it.

When actors are really connected to the moment, they say, ‘It feels too easy, I don’t feel anything is happening.’ But when they see the work back, they find to their amazement that so much more is actually happening than when they were ‘trying hard’. When I run workshops for directors I always warn them that when they get a great spontaneous take, the actor will come to them afterwards and ask them to go again because they ‘didn’t feel anything’!

   Get a friend to film you talking about a real experience about which you have clear memories and pictures of what happened. Talk to your friend holding the camera, don’t look straight into the lens. Your friend can interject comments and questions as they wish.

   Watch your eyes light up with the memories and when you mention people you love, the way you smile before the words come out. Look how your eyes flick upwards to see the pictures in your head, how geographical you are, how physical you are, your tendency to laugh at the worst part of the story. See how alive you are. See how well you listen!

   Go back in front of the camera and start recounting your real experience again. Now go seamlessly into delivering a monologue you know. Watch for your eyes going dead, how the humour at the side of your eyes can disappear. Is your voice as resonant or has it become thinner in tone, lower in volume? Are you now fixed in a gaze at your friend or are your eyes still seeing those pictures in your head and the world around you? Have you started to crane forward, is your face moving more, are your eyes screwing up?

   Keep going back and forth between the learnt lines and the real story until you can see the life come back. Maybe it was a funny story and the monologue was sad – try it with the same energy. Is that possible? Could it be more interesting? In the role, could you still have a sense of irony, an awareness of the absurdity of it all? Do you prefer to watch it that way? If your real story was sad, did the way you told it surprise you? Would you have told it like that if you had seen it written down for the first time on the page?

   Be brave; don’t go into the monologue with fixed ideas. Try to keep your life and view of the world. Have the same energy on the learnt lines as when you were recounting real events.

Keep seeing how alive people are as themselves. [Click here 1.1, 1.2]

Nature and Nurture: You ‘As If…’

You are your only instrument. When you are running it is your legs, your heart pumping, your blood pressure going up. When you touch the props, it is with your fingers. And when you think, it is your memories, imagination and feelings that are involved.

Stanislavsky talked about the power of the ‘magic if’ acting as a lever to lift us out of the world of actuality into the realm of imagination. So you could change just one element away from your actual experience, such as: ‘If it were three in the morning.’ Or you could change many: ‘If it were 1609, if you had just killed your rival, if you had a humped back…’

You need to ‘endow’ yourself with the qualities you need within the imagined life of the role. For example, you could endow yourself with the quality of beauty or confidence or wealth. You could endow yourself with a limp or a lost love or a house in the country. You could endow the glass of water in your hand with the qualities of wine. Or you could say, ‘If I were now drinking wine…’ The role is you ‘as if’.

Sometimes confusion arises around the concept of ‘playing yourself’. When I say that the role is you, that doesn’t mean that it is necessarily your habitual physical self. The ‘magic if’ holds within it all the changes that would arise within you from being in a different time, having led a different life in a different world. The ‘magic if’ could affect very little or it could affect every aspect of your physical self and completely change the way you speak, hold your body or even your body itself. For example, if you were playing a role of the same age, living where you live and set in the present time, your main ‘if’ might be, ‘If I were in love with my best friend’s wife…’ But if your role were a vampire, your ‘magic ifs’ would be a long list: ‘If I needed the taste of blood like a drug…’, ‘If I knew daylight would kill me…’, ‘If I lived alone in the cold earth all day…’, and so on. And your different needs will affect the way you interact with your new world.

But that doesn’t mean that the core of you, your essence, disappears. And it doesn’t mean that you need to change qualities that you share with the role. If, as is often the case in television, you are playing someone who lives in the same place and time as you, and is roughly the same age with a similar background – then you need only to believe in the given circumstances of the scene. If you are lucky enough to be given a role that is very different to yourself, then you need to find those differences. But you need to find them by believing that it is you standing in the shoes of the role. Not standing outside of the character, showing us an image of them as if you are conjuring up some hologram of the part. The inner life that powers your creation must be you yourself and your imagination.

Of course I’m not the first acting teacher to have said this. Let Stanislavsky explain:

“   Each person evolves an external characterisation out of himself, from others, takes it from real or imaginary life, according to his intuition, his observation of himself and others. He draws it from his own experience of life or that of his friends, from pictures, engravings, drawings, books, stories, novels, or from some simple incident – it makes no difference. The only proviso is that while he is making this external research he must not lose his inner self.

Constantin StanislavskyBuilding a Character

Or, Sanford Meisner:

“   The first thing you have to do when you read a text is to find yourself –really find yourself. First you find yourself, then you find a way of doing the part which strikes you as being in character. Then, based on that reality, you have the nucleus of the role.

Sanford MeisnerOn Acting

Choose a few actors that you enjoy watching in a number of different roles. It might be an actor as chameleon-like as Philip Seymour Hoffman or Alec Guinness. It might be someone who plays across many different genres like Johnny Depp, Cate Blanchett, Emily Blunt or Kate Winslet. Now, ask yourself this: ‘Do I believe them in the many different roles they play?’ If you answer ‘yes’, then ask this: ‘Do I ever go to the movie and feel cheated because they weren’t really there?’

Whether a good actor plays many different kinds of roles or generally the same kind is a different issue. That may be due to market forces or a disinclination to vary roles, but in either case the ‘core’ of the actor is always there.

When watching clips of herself at an awards ceremony, Judi Dench said that she hated watching herself because she felt that she always looked the same. That is because she could see the truth of herself in every clip. But equally, each role showed a different facet of herself: a different physicality and a different view on the world. Whether she is playing an embittered lonely schoolteacher in Notes on a Scandal (2006), Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown (1997) or a modern working woman in the television sitcom As Time Goes By (1992), she is totally believable as the role but still, essentially, Judi Dench. She doesn’t short-change us.

Think about putting on different clothes. They can change the way we look, the way we move, even the way we speak. They can change the way we interact with others. They even make us feel different. But it is always us inside, wearing them.

Look at the way we interact with different people in our lives. How we move between the role of parent, child, teacher and employee. How differently we act, hold our bodies and deal with our status in each situation. And yet, which one is really us? All of them, surely.

A child doesn’t say, ‘This character’s Superman – he can fly.’ The child says, ‘I’m Superman –I can fly!’

When you first read a script, you are allowed to analyse it and to think about your role objectively:

   Write a short autobiography of your role. Use everything you can from your script and fill in the rest. Think about specific incidents that have led you to be as you are. Draw from your own life, experiences of others and your imagination. If your role is afraid of fire – why? If your role finds it difficult to socialise – why? What has made you as you are at the beginning of the story?

   Make a list of all the similarities between you and your role and all the things that are different. You only have to find the differences.

   Work on the differences. If you are playing a doctor, you need to know the life you lead. You need to be able to use the instruments, relate to the nurses, and deal with the patients. You do it every day. Suppose it is set in 1860 – you need to know about that world. What art do you like? What music do you hear? What do you do for entertainment? How do you relate to people of a different sex, class or nationality? What are your political views? Do you have any? How does a corset change your movement? And so on.

   Find pictures, music or objects to inspire you. If you are living in a different period, then you need to research it thoroughly: museums and art galleries are good places to start. If you are somewhere you’ve never been, then go to a travel agent and pick up a brochure on the place to make what you see in your imagination more specific. Or at least search for it online. Or ‘endow’ somewhere you do know with those qualities. If the place doesn’t exist – you must make it exist. Actors who talk about places, people or events in the lives of their roles without having the least idea of what or who they are always amaze me. Be warned – the camera will see no life or light in your eyes if you do that!

Now you need to come out of your head to explore your physical reality. To work through your body and instincts. To know the way of life that has shaped you.

   After your initial digging into the script, when thinking through your part, always say ‘I’rather than ‘she’ or ‘he’. Why complicate your life by separating yourself from your role? By saying ‘he’ or ‘she’ you are standing outside the role, looking in. So, ‘I hate my boss’, ‘It terrifies me to leave the house’, ‘I want him to love me’, and so on… [Click here 1.4]

   You need to explore the day-to-day life you lead. How does it affect you physically? How does it affect the way you speak? The way you move? Which senses are important to your life? A gardener, a watchmaker, a hunter, a pianist, a skater will have developed different senses.

   Find a physical activity that you feel your role would do. Something that allows you to enter the life you will inhabit, such as embroidering, whittling a stick, arranging flowers or collecting stamps. This can also be a useful way of getting back into the role when you have had large gaps in filming.

   Remember that not all roles are naturalistic. (Think of some of Johnny Depp’s!) For these you have to find a heightened physicality – through physical metaphors, dancing, singing or anything else you can think of. Find that child within you – children have no problems with superheroes or fantastical creatures!

Some actors simply feel that they ‘channel’ the ‘character’ through themselves, or act as mediums for the role to take over. That is another way to look at it. It is still using yourself and not imposing a character from the outside. It is still allowing yourself to inhabit or embody this new role and to give yourself permission to enter fully into new, brave territory.

Stepping into the Role

Actors can block themselves by standing outside their roles or having preconceived ideas – by relinquishing these and by taking on the role’s viewpoint, they release their acting. [Click here 1.4]

If you still feel separated from, or judgemental about, your role when you have done your preparation, try this:

   Shut your eyes and see him or her in a magic circle in front of you. View them as if you were standing behind them. Really observe them.

   Now see them as if you were playing the role. Study the back of your imagined self in great detail. See how you are dressed, stand and move. Hear yourself speak.

   Now take a step forward and literally step into the role. Open your eyes. Now you and the role have become indivisible. You see the world from their point of view – as ‘I’. The needs of the role are your needs. The actions you will take are your actions.

   Speak your thoughts aloud. Speak your dialogue. Move out of your circle and into your imaginary world.

This is an excellent physical metaphor to stop you viewing your character as a third person.

All of this work applies to acting in every medium, but for camera work it is crucial. Anything false or untrue will show glaringly on the screen. And the fine work you learn to do in front of the camera will inform your work on stage. Sometimes we get away with things on stage that we can’t in front of the camera. When you return to theatre, you will feel a new power and reality there too.

For further reading, I recommend the chapter in Stanislavsky’s Creating a Role called ‘The Period of Physical Embodiment’, and I quote him once again:

“   An actor can alter the circumstances of the life portrayed… he can develop habits in his role which are not native to him, and methods of physical portrayal as well, and he can change his mannerisms, his exterior. All this will make the actor seem different in every role to the audience. But he will always remain himself too.

Constantin StanislavskyCreating a Role

Differences Between Stage and Screen