I am
STILL feeling bad about this. As if I had no business at all to write about
acting. Nonetheless I have been doing it since my first post - where I became
conscious of what John Cleese had been doing with Petrucchio and the effect it
had on me. In most cases it is just obvious, so that I don’t NOTICE, but not
necessarily with a comedy character and a bully: He made him appear like a
human being. As weird as this might be: I understood COMPLETELY why Petrucchio
was doing what he was doing. And I never stopped being interested in this. Of
course I will never know what acting is LIKE – it is the kind of thing you only
know when you are doing it. And because of this I am not even really interested
in the “technical” side. (What exactly it is actors learn in acting school.) Nonetheless
I had a certain understanding “from the outside” – which I discovered wasn’t
all wrong. But listening to Tom Hiddleston explaining his art in this clear,
systematic, and comprehensive way kind of transported my understanding of the
matter from pre-school to university level. So, it is not MY seminar about
acting, of course, but a summary of what I have LEARNED listening to Tom
Hiddleston.
It
always starts with what I have been dealing with from the beginning:
“If
there is an art to acting, it is inhabiting characters fully. It begins with an
active empathy or understanding …”
Which is already so much more to the point than anything
I could have written. But it is basically what I have been dealing with from
the start. The next step doesn’t appear like a big step but it is actually
EVERYTHING that has to happen for the empathy and understanding to become
reality, and available to us:
“…
AND THEN THE BODY HAS TO FOLLOW.”
Written down like this it appears trivial but it is
actually what makes what “we” are doing different from what actors are doing
and what I will never really understand.
I kind of covered it with my distinction between PLAYING and ACTING
which roughly serves the purpose because everything that is about empathy and
backstories, research, “learning to read, learning to think” (Tom
Hiddleston), belongs into the domain of PLAYING – which is what “we” are
doing anyway. Which, of course, DOESN’T mean that you cannot get SO MUCH better
at it. So much better than “we” could even imagine.
(One might think that, with all this necessary
empathy, actors must be these great empathic people. But I don’t think this is
NECESSARILY so. I think we misunderstand where empathy comes from. Scientists
attribute it to something they call “mirror neurons” – which not only humans
have, but not even all kinds of primates, whereas there are birds, like ravens
or crows, that have them! You find out by putting a mirror in front of them and observing if
they show signs of recognizing themselves. Empathy can only arise from this
distinction between us and other beings. That we can locate pain and pleasure,
and actions and so on in this being in the mirror. Because of this experience
we begin to attribute the same feelings and intentions to others. I suppose
most people don’t get that. I didn’t, really, until I learned about birds and
mirror-neurons. Shakespeare did, of course, ages before there were any theories
about it: “There is no creature loves me (…) and when I die no soul will pity
me. And wherefore should they since that I myself find in myself no pity to
myself.” (My favourite from Richard III) I even think that I get partially more
empathic and interested in different kinds of people and their predicaments
THROUGH reading, but in the first place it’s all about myself. So, great actors
might just be people who have a special relationship with this being in the
mirror. Who, for some reason, became particularly good at “locating”.)
ACTING – as a counterpart to playing! – is
certainly something we are doing anyway as well, as it is everything we are
doing using our body, voice, facial expression and so on to make us appear like
the people we want to be, or have to be. What we have to do to convince others
– or bully them, or make them like us, or whatever. Not least: getting them to
act in the way we want them to! (As I have already written, the distinction
serves to clarify things for myself. For actors, this probably wouldn’t be a
useful distinction. For them, naturally, everything they do professionally is acting.) In my terminology ACTING is what is defined by this sentence: THE BODY
HAS TO FOLLOW. And there is, of course, a huge difference between “every day”
and professional acting. Quite often, the body “follows” automatically what we
are just playing - in a natural and a professional context! - but really great
acting requires to make the body follow in EVERYTHING somebody is thinking and
feeling in order to “inhabit characters fully”.
A huge part of it is certainly about physical
fitness. I am constantly amazed at the physical prowess actors suddenly display
who look anything but young and fit. Like recently: Simon Russell Beale jumping
up and down like a space hopper in “Stalin”, or Ray Winstone doing handstands
in “King of Thieves”. But this is only the tip of the iceberg which we SEE. For
people like me with a desk job it is unimaginable to be physically “available”
all the time in this way, which, I think, is a basic requirement of the job.
Obviously, Tom Hiddleston was aware that a lot of what he would need to become
a good actor was already “there”. He certainly made good use of studying
classics at Cambridge, “learning to read, learning to think”, but he
knew that he needed a whole new body, in a way, to be able to play a major role
in Shakespeare for twelve weeks in a row. If the old body breaks down,
everything else you have worked out will as well! But there is another aspect to
doing more than is strictly required on this front that is even more important,
as he explains on behalf of “Coriolanus”:
I did
a lot of extra physical work, just to give myself that sense of feeling fitter,
feeling stronger, feeling more like I could climb that ladder … It was about
the kind of muscularity that the character needed.
As most people would know from experience, if they
paid attention to it, the mind also follows the body – not just the other way
round. So, even a small improvement through workout, as I found, can make a
huge difference even to the person I am. A lot of confidence comes from having
a stronger back (and a stronger butt!) and therefore naturally walking more
upright. So, the EASIEST way to convince yourself that you are the person who
can climb this ladder is actually DOING it really well. (There is also the
reverse, something I admire even more and which, I believe, is difficult to do
convincingly: impersonating somebody who is older than the actors themselves,
weaker, or “reduced” by illness or a disability. Even, maybe, just a “normal”
person who DOESN’T spend regular hours at a studio! It must be really difficult
– and not particularly agreeable in certain cases - to find out how it feels to
be in such a body if you are exceedingly fit, muscular, and healthy.)
It doesn’t appear like a big thing, but “the body
has to follow” finally explained to me why, even though I value the playing
higher, it is so important for me to SEE the acting. What makes our every day
acting so fundamentally different from what actors are doing is of course that
we are “impersonating” ourselves whereas they are impersonating other people.
And, for us to believe that they really ARE these people, they have to “inhabit”
these characters “fully”. That means they cannot leave any “gaps” or
nondescript areas in their physical expression of the character. (Which “we”
can do, and are very likely to do all the time!) This is what fascinates me and
where I, quite often, see or determine which actors are extra special and which
are just adequate actors. (You virtually don’t see any BAD acting where I am
watching = with BRITISH actors!)
I just hit on this beautiful example – one of many,
many examples! – finally watching the old British TV adaptation of “House of
Cards”. There was a favourite moment – of many, many totally enjoyable (or
horrific!) moments: the conversation between “His Majesty” and David Mycroft,
his secretary and closest confidant, trying to tell his employer that he is in
a relationship with a man. There is an accuracy and truth in how both actors
are acting that made me prick my ears and sit upright. Especially Nicholas
Farrell (playing David Mycroft) whom I have liked since “Sparkhouse” (where he
played one of the scary “patriarchs”), but I never knew why I liked him. There
was a totally weird moment in my watching the series before this where I thought:
Oh, I never knew he was gay! But this was BEFORE we know that David Mycroft is
gay, and I inaccurately attributed what I was seeing him PLAY to the actor.
(Who isn’t, by the way, or not likely to be. I checked for this purpose, and he
is married with two children.) Totally weird because he didn’t actually DO
anything, he just suddenly appeared gay! And then, in this scene with the King,
I could READ on his face kind of like word for word – or rather sentence for
sentence – what David Mycroft is thinking. Of course I couldn’t translate this
into ACTUAL sentences, but THE WAY WE READ FACES you just couldn’t make it any
clearer. And I just enjoy the completeness and truthfulness of such moments more
if I NOTICE the acting. If anything, I am moved MORE instead of less. And I
certainly UNDERSTAND better when I can see what they are doing. (But this might
be an oddity which just applies to me: that I am often moved deeper by
understanding what other people are about than by feeling something. There must
be a reason that “predicament” is kind of my favourite word …)
And
there is a great transition to part two which “is all about DETAIL” …
