Your job as an actor is to be present in the moment. If you are able to do that with an open heart that is all you have to do. An actor has no obligation to the script - no obligation to the director - no obligation to the other actors - no obligation to the audience. An actor's only obligation is to his character - to the truth - and that can only happen through his commitment to himself - his commitment to the moment. And I don't mean this in the selfish, petty sense. When you are truly present you transcend your ego and become connected to something beyond yourself. This job of being present is a simple task but it is often very difficult.

There are four or five transcendent moments in a person's life. (They are often highly dramatic but they as often are quite mundane and seem unimportant on the surface) These moments inform your entire life and often make you who you are. A great play/movie will have that kind of moment - and if you're lucky enough are in such a play/movie you have the opportunity to experience a transcendent moment over and over again in the shooting. If it's a play you get to experience that moment everynight of the run. That's why acting can be so great. It is very good for the soul.

Having to play a character you don't love is like having sex with someone you don't like - it has it's moments but in the end you feel disgusted (you know what that feels like) and you can't wait to leave. And in the case of a long shoot or the extended run of a play, that disgust can hurt your soul.

I believe that acting is a talent that you are born with - it's not something that you can really ‘learn' or teach. Some of you may find that a discouraging thought but it's meant to be liberating. You don't have a lot of control over your process so let go and see what happens. You will either feel it or not - you will either have fun or not, and in the end that's what really matters: are you being fed by your acting. If you are then nothing else really matters and you are a lucky person. If not, move on - don't pursue of something that is not feeding you.

There are two parts to acting as there are to any art. One is you - you are the basic material of your work. How interesting and gripping and human a person you are in life will come through in your work (IF you let it and IF you have talent.) If you are talented and you experience something acting, the audience will get it - you don't have to show them. In fact the process of hiding what you are feeling is in itself dramatic and makes what you are feeling all the more apparent to an audience (and yourself). Make it personal - if it's not personal it's not worth doing in my opinion. Do something else. The Beatles weren't that great musicians - but their work was personal and fun and that fit the era. Be incomparable - Laughton, Jimmy Stewart, Bob Dylan... Don't compete - you can only lose because you are one with

The second part of acting is the skill you learn through working and studying. That is a lifelong process - it never ends. I'm here to help you primarily with the second part of the equation but if I help in the first all the better. Acting is you - your ability to connect to something bigger than yourself.

To me acting is the ability to be believe in the moment. Your main job as an actor is to be as much in the moment as you are capable of. Many people are confused today about what acting is and how it functions in drama. I believe that if a play is well written, all you have to do is be there and say the words. The play will take care of the rest. Your job as an actor is NOT to make the play work (that's the writer's job) - it's not to please the director (leave that work to his friends) - and your job is not to connect with the audience (that's their job) - it's simply to be there - to give this character a chance to exist, and this is his or her only chance to live. Just look around and see what you see - listen to what you hear and respond with whatever you are feeling. Acting is not being sad or being funny or being a character - it's being you - in the situation. The first part of that equation: being you, is what you must work on first. Believing in what's going on around you is a skill you will develop with time and experience.

There is only one you. Your job as an actor is to be that as much as you possibly can. This can be a very difficult process at times but it is essential. If done with commitment and heart, acting can make you a better person. It is a noble vocation. When you go into an audition you are there to show them YOU. Not the character that is on the page - just be yourself and be as present as possible. You may not get the job you went in there for but you will have practiced real acting and the director and the casting director have seen the ‘real' you and when a part that you are right for comes along, they will call you - and then you will be doing the kind of part you were right for.

Acting uses the material of human behavior. That is something you experience (hopefully) every minute of the day - awake or asleep. Pay attention to yourself - pay attention to people around. My belief is that people almost NEVER SAY WHAT REALLY GOING ON WITH THEM. Most of the time people use behavior strategically - to get something. People almost NEVER say what they are feeling. It takes an extraordinary situation for people to speak without hesitation from the heart. People learn to hide what they are feeling - hide what they are thinking. So for me, acting should mirror that. Play against the lines in a script - if, on paper, the character is happy, do the lines crying. If the lines, on paper, seem angry, do them as sweetly as you can. If you are supposed to be one thing, do the opposite. The words will carry the one meaning, you give them the other side. If you echo the meaning of the words with your acting no one will watch you - they don't have to - the script is already giving them all the information. Give the other side of the story. Which is what people do all day long. Their behavior betrays what they say. A friend comes up and says how great it is to see you but he keeps squeezing your arm in a hurtful way...etc.

There are tricks that can come in handy when acting.  Eventually you'd like to get rid of tricks but sometimes they are very helpful.  The main trick I use is the idea of doing the opposite, or playing against the scene as actors call it (I know this goes against everything I said so far - sorry.). If you are supposed to punch your acting partner at the end of a scene, build up to that in a predictable way and then kiss them instead. Or if you are supposed to kiss them, slap them. The unpredictability of your behavior will draw attention to you. A lot of actors make a good living using these tricks - but once that attention is on you we are back to the old question - who are you and what do they have to say. But the tricks can be helpful. Another trick I use in scenes is to seem to start to speak but say nothing while the other actor is speaking.  (Actors call this stealing focus - it's like hogging the ball in a basketball game). The audience will immediately go to you and then when nothing comes out they're going to wonder what you were about to say - the only problem is that you eventually have to have something to say - but often that's beyond your control also, so just have fun.

Another trick for stealing focus in a play is to act as if you have forgotten your lines.  The audience will get very interested in you suddenly.  It only works for a brief moment but it's pretty foolproof.

Audition technique:  Sometimes when I'm nervous or distracted at an audition I use do this to get focused.  I imagine I'm on my deathbed in the future looking back on this audition.  I try to conduct myself in the audition in such a way as to make me not embarrassed or even better, make me smile.

Take your time. It is YOUR time.  You are that character.  This is the only chance he/she will ever have to exist.  You owe it to your character to do your best to let him/her have a life.

I went into acting because of the way it made me feel - and that first time that I was transported to that 'other place' was indescribably amazing and I think it what keeps me pursuing acting - to find those kinds of moments. For me, everything pales when held up against those rare experiences. I would like to encourage actors to never forget those moments and make your life as an actor about creating situations that allow those moments to come alive and hopefully stay alive. It's not unlike life - everyone is looking for that bliss and excitement they felt as children - everyone is looking for that excitement feeling of falling in love, they way they felt it that very first time - they want sex to be mindblowing the way it was when they first had it. And acting is not very different. I don't think the business of acting is geared to this ideal and that's really too bad.  When actors are working on that level they are so interesting and entertainnig.

You can't put what you need on hold. You can't say, "Oh, let me just get work and eventually I'll do the kind of acting I really do - or let me just get the job and then I'll be able to shine in this part". It starts the second you walk into that audition - you have to create a situation where those transcendent moments can happen.

In answer to the last question, it may be horrible to have all this wonderful acting you want to give but have nobody want want to let you to give it.  But it's worse to have gotten an acting job and have to do something that you really don't want to be doing. If you're going to be a working actor, please God, express something personal.  Otherwise, I believe it would be better that you find something else that you are able to find joy and sustenance.

The process of acting is about revealing - discovering - emerging.  All these takes time. Acting is not a mental exercise - intelligence does play a part but it is not what you approach the situation with. You open your heart to a situation and the meaning is revealed in that process. You discover who you are - which to me is the point of acting. To expose yourself in the process of discovering your essence - and in so doing you discover the other actor and the world. Some directors would have those elements go in the reverse order.

You don't start by 'figuring out' a scene.  There is nothing to figure out.  You start by being there and seeing where it takes you. Just go along for the ride.

My experience is, is that drama is conflict. In the case of the scene we worked on last week, I was trying to show you that you're only responsibility is to your character - your job is to be there and say the words when you feel the need to - to move only when you feel compelled. The conflict there is between those words and what you doing and saying. It's a natural conflict - people (almost) never say what's really going on - they (almost) never ask for what they want - they (almost) never express directly what they feel. And when an audience sees an actor doing that it's believable because that's what they experienced trapped inside their own selves and what they see in everyone around them. Now is an actor gets up and is trying to reveal, trying to feel, trying to get what they need in a direct way, I find it phony - they are playing their ‘subtext' as some actors will say. Often an actor will decide what it is he or she needs in a scene by looking at the words and then deliberately hide that and try to get to his objective by acting. Now on the face of it that would seem fine but the part of that equation that is false to me is the ‘decision' - you can't decide what a scene is about for you. If you look last week at the first exercise where I told you communicate the path across the floor to the other actor. Now I noticed that every actor's natural color came out in that scene - there was very little that each of you did in that exercise that didn't do in the scripted scene. The point is that there are things in you that you are probably not conscious of - wonderful, exciting things that are the reasons you love acting that you have to give a chance to live. By ‘deciding' what a scene is about before you've really experienced it is to not be as present as you are capable.

So, when you are first presented a scene at an audition, for example, I would suggest reading it if you must but try primarily to understand the words - can you pronounce them? Is there a rhythm to the speech that's clearly intended? All of this is so you they might sound a little like yours when you speak. But I would discourage your trying to make choices about who the character is. I would discourage your trying to understand what the scene is about. If there are stage directions, I would blacken them out (without reading them) so they will not distract you. If there is an accent or time period described I would make no effort to portray those. I would also discourage dressing for the audition in any way to resemble the character as portrayed in the words or stage directions. (in the case of dressing for an audition, I would dress as you feel most comfortable - as much as who you are as possible. The whole point of acting is to reveal who you are - to discover who you are - not to be someone else or please another person).

When you first read through a scene, concentrate on yourself and the other actor and the ‘feeling' that is in the room. Use everything there that's at your disposal to reveal and discover what the story is about. Hopefully the director is there (in the case of a movie) and the playwright and director (in the case of a play) and use them - try to get a sense of who they are and what's in their hearts. I would not suggest asking them anything about the script such as background of the characters or ideas they have about the story - or what the words mean.   I suggest trying  to connect with the other actors, the writer, and the director as people - take your cues from their reactions to things you do and say, especially when you are reading.

Just be present and say the words and let that take you wherever it takes you. There will be a natural conflict between what you are doing and the words on the page and on one level that's drama - that conflict.

What's great about movies is that a camera seem able to look into the soul of a person - it can really reveal who you are. There are very few actors today who can actually be present and play a character - Gary Oldman, Robert DeNiro come to mind. And there has only been one actor I know who was able to really be present and show who he is in the deepest way and that was Brando. Now if you're like those people I've mentioned you are very lucky but if you're like me, chances are the best you can do is be yourself and believe the circumstances your are acting under and hope that your talent and heart reveal the story. So when you go in for an audition have two things in mind:
        1) Be yourself as deeply as you possiby can, and
        2) be memorable. Now neither of these things has to do with the script. Doing a ‘good' reading is secondary - resembling the image the director has for the part you can't do much about - seeming like a nice person I suppose can't hurt but I also don't think it really matters. If you can help a director tell his story I don't think he would care if you were the most obnoxious person who ever lived. Not that I would go out of my way to be strange but I wouldn't worry about being liked or understood. Just 1) Be yourself 2) and be memorable.

When you are on the set or in rehearsal, your work is (and must be) the product of the whole cooperative effort. You are not alone on stage or in a movie - and if you try to do that and, God forbid, you succeed than there is no greater failure. In it's purest form, real acting is reflective - it expresses the work of every person in the production - from the writer, to the director, to the person who makes the coffee.

You can't act better than you can act. It is you up there - if you are a jerk, you don't suddenly become a wonderful, noble person when you are acting. Your talent can only bring your true nature to the surface. Some people are so talented that they can distract you from that fact - dazzle you so that you don't really see who they are. There are many people like that in life. But in the end it can't be hidden and their talent betrays them, laying bare who they are - which must be a wonderful relief in the end.

In acting, talent is not something that can be created. It is there or it's not. So don't worry about all that. It's out of your control.

THINGS TO DO ON A MOVIE SET:

1) Be able to repeat - practice your 'business' and become intimately familiar with your props. If you are a supporting player, your ability to repeat every time will enable your best performance to remain in the film.

2) Learn lense size to framing relationship so you can ask the camera crew what lense they are using and know how the shot will be framed (tight, wide, etc). It will also connect you to the camera crew (in general - some will be put off by this) which is your second most important relationship on a movie (or sometimes the number one relationship if the director is unhelpful).

3)On the same subject - befriend the DP and the camera crew. The camera operator is really the only person who actually sees what you do in a scene - it is very helpful to be able to get some kind of feedback from him/her if you feel connected to them. All this is of especial importance to actresses. You must be lit and photographed well (beautifully) and if they connect to you (like you) this will happen more naturally.

4) Everything single thing that happens in the course of the making of a movie (or in the rehearsal of a play) ends up screen - a bad meal, a love affair, an argument, a PA with a bad attitude - all these things come through in the movie in some way or another - it's not just what happens when the camera rolls. Everything comes through - that's why it's so powerful a medium.

5) Be positive and self-possessed (as best you can) on a set - you NOT there to make friends (except with the camera crew). It only leads to distraction. It doesn't matter if anyone likes you - this needing to be liked and fit in only disserves your character. Be faithful to your character first and foremost. For example, if you get picked up the first day and you're nervous and you talk to your driver about the baseball game the night before, you are telling the driver that that's how you want the relationship to go and every chance he gets until the end of the film shoot, he'll be talking to you about the Yankees. That can be very unhelpful to your character.

6) Unfortunately, it is the nature of film sets that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The reason many actors grow to become monstrous human beings is that bad behavior is given a lot of positive attention - which makes a lot of dorment bad behavior blossom on a movie set. I do not suggest behaving badly, but I would recommend that you be serious and retain a distance that will keep the crew (the PA and AD's) on their toes, and not taking you for granted. If you are very friendly and accommodating, you will probably not get treated very well (there is never enough to go around on most sets). This is a pity but it is very true. Let the crew know right away what you need and that you will not accept less. And don't do favors for anyone - and ask for none.

7) Eat alone - this a good time to collect yourself and your thoughts. If this is established early on, no one will think twice when you really need to be alone before a big scene. And it eliminates the idle chatter that can be very distracting and destructive on a set.

8) Do not encourage or permit anyone to comment on your character - you are your character and it can be very paralyzing to have people telling you who you are. For example, if you are playing a heavy, the make-up or costume people will often joke about how evil you are. No one ever thinks they are evil and to told you are, only takes you away from your character and does a great disservice to your character's chance to really exist and live.

9) Be positive with all your choices for your character. Never consciously make the choice to be a jerk or think of your character as a jerk.  Do not ‘comment' with your acting on who you are by treating yourself with disrespect.  Don't allow anyone make your character be an asshole. This is your character's one chance to live - don't make a negative. Of course, people do horrible things and as an actor you may well do those things - but this does not preclude you from doing those most horrible, inhuman things with love and out of simple human need.

10) If you learn your words (which I recommend in general) please don't practice them with any ‘reading' or inflection or emphasis. Just understand what they mean grammatically and let the scene give you the reading.

11) The other actors are not your friends - do not get chummy with them - it is a disservice of your character. If you have an extensive rehearsal, you will get to know them in the context of the script and that is the best way to get to know them. Never ask or grant a favor when acting. For example, if another actor asks you to hold off saying your line until he completes some sort of business or she asks you to do something to help her in the scene, do your best to not do that. And do not ask another actor to do anything to make your scene easier. It's a very slippery slope and generally leads to disaster. Get what you need from the other actor IN THE SCENE, not off camera. If you really need something in an scene, go to the director and let him handle having it happen. That's his job.

12) Pay very strict attention to your costume, your make-up, and your hair. Do not wear anything you do not enjoy wearing. Do not do the costumer a favor by wearing something that doesn't fit the way your character would want something to fit. Do not let make-up or hair do anything to your appearance that you don't love. Fight for what you need - look the way you need to look. In the end your costume, make-up, and hair style is all you really have - it's how you look. I cannot overemphasize this. If you have to ruffle feathers in these areas be courageous and fight.

13) Do not argue withe director - especially in front of the crew. It will not serve you. If you sense the director doesn't like what you are doing, have back-up choices ready to go - give him everything you have and let him choose - don't let go of your character - don't let the director use you as a prop. You are an actor - you are the character. You are not a figment of his imagination.  One of your jobs as an actor is to use the heart of the director and the writer to inform your character.  If you are fighting the director it will only cut you off from that source.  In the case the director doesn't really want to be there or has ulterior motives in directing the movie then I would withdraw - but that's a serious thing to make a judgement about and I would not do it lightly.  This is not to say it is not common for a director (or a writer or an actor or a crew person) to be on a movie for the wrong reason.  It happens everyday.

14)Find someone on the set (it could be anyone) who gets what you do and who can give you feedback on your performance. It is best if this were the director but if you don't feel he ‘gets' your acting, then move on to the camera crew and if not them it could be another actor (rarely) or the boom person. Find someone who you can give a look to after a take and see if they ‘got' what you were doing.

15) Make sure you know how you can best do a scene as an actor and communicate that to the director.  It's all well and good to say that acting is about revealing your heart and soul, but what do you do when they move in for your close-up and you have nothing left - you'll never be able to repeat that wonderful moment you had when they shot the master. If you only have it in you to do three or four takes of a particular scene truthfully, then you have to tell the director that and let him help you make the most of those three takes.  You have to do your best to know if you should have your close-up first or have the other actor have his/her's first.  Understanding your own abilities and being able to let the director in on this is incredibly helpful to getting your character's life up on the screen.

Who you are as a person is the raw material you have to work with when you act. Part of acting is learning how to expose that and once you have found it, how to protect that self and communicate it to an audience. Living life fully and deeply is the only way to expand your palette of behavior as an actor. You can't get usually grow as a person from acting itself unless you are doing a great script.

Acting is like dreaming.  A dream is an undoing. It undoes the knots that socialization and life and consciousness put you in. To analyze a dream is to undo the undoing.

 

Writing	Directing	Acting	Shooting
Editing	Producing	Financing	Distribution