“For Lucy,” Ally said to me, “this girl at that moment is the door back into some kind of life.” That’s what Ally was thinking about as she watched this girl in the doorway. “Do I want to go back into life?” Ally had an understanding of what it means to be an artist who leaves a big-time career to avoid the unpleasant demands of fame and doesn’t want to go back—or is at least unsure. “I was at a point where I was working a lot and had a lot of success at a young age,” Ally told me. “Then it got very directionless. I wanted things that were much more complicated and much more interesting—not just movies and being a star. I was very frustrated. I felt like I was going on this downhill slide.” So she came back to New York City where she could continue studying as well as act off Broadway and in small independent films. Ally didn’t drop out as Lucy did, but she empathized with Lucy’s discontent.
Ally won an Independent Film Spirit Award for her portrayal of Lucy and allowed audiences to rediscover her as an actor. If they assumed she is like Lucy, they were wrong. But Ally understood Lucy. More important, she forced herself to drop her own natural rhythms and find Lucy’s, inhabiting the character so completely that no one could see her acting.
It’s a curious thing that when we approach a new character, we think that we will naturally shift to different rhythms. But the truth is that we often don’t, because we are afraid to let go of what we think has been working for us. This gets more difficult as actors have more success because they are often given what seems like the same role again and again. But each character is different. We have to discover the difference by breaking our comfortable rhythms and discovering a new rhythm for this particular character. And we often have to do this consciously.
This is a particularly big problem for actors who have found success on television as a continuing character. Take Candice Bergen, with whom I worked on the pilot for Murphy Brown. With that part, she found a character whose rhythm was totally different from her natural rhythm. And then she played Murphy for nine seasons, winning countless awards.
After the series ended, she was asked to do a film in which her character was nothing like Murphy Brown. When we worked together, it took a great deal of effort to get Murphy’s rhythm out of Candice. She was so comfortable in the familiar groove that she automatically went there. Candice is smart and a good actress, so she knew that Murphy’s way of speaking was wrong for this new character. But at first she couldn’t shake it. So we took the character’s lines off the page together, consciously rejecting the old rhythms. She started to find a new rhythm that came from within the dialogue of the character we were working on—a subtle, sensitive, lonely woman who falls in love with a mildly retarded young man. Candice gradually changed her vocal patterns, rejecting the first music of a phrase in her mouth. Instead of going up, she’d go down. Eventually, she uncovered the character. Her emotions were free again to respond to what she said.
We have worked on several films since that one, and in each, Murphy has receded more and more. But nine years is a long time with one character, and we often joke that Murphy is always lurking somewhere in Candice, just waiting to break out.
Similarly, Bruce Willis came to me many years ago to work on an audition for the leading role in a film called In Country. He had already enjoyed great success with the television series Moonlighting, and then with Die Hard. But the character in this new film couldn’t have been farther from what he had been playing. The character was a Vietnam veteran plagued by combat flashbacks who was having trouble reentering civilian life. His language was not facile. His relationships were complicated in a silent way. He feared what was within him.
When Bruce and I began reading the new script together, it became immediately apparent that his rhythm with the dialogue was too light, too easy, for this troubled character. I pressed him to take the lines off the page piece by piece—to take his time, breathe, let the material take him wherever it went. He is a very good and experienced actor, and he understood what I meant. But no sooner did he start to do as I asked then he’d slip back into his more familiar way of handling lines. He knew it was wrong for this character. But after many years of success on TV and in films, it was not easy to drop it.
For three hours we took the dialogue off the page while I repeated again and again, “Too much. Just say it.” We worked until there wasn’t a trace of Moonlighting left. His rhythm was totally different. His pitch was different. His thinking was different. The character was in a deep well and Bruce dived down into himself to find him. At the end, he said, “I got it, Harold. I understand.” And he did. He auditioned for the director, got the part, and received serious respect for a deep, powerful portrayal that was different from his previous parts. The key was breaking a rhythm that he didn’t realize was so much a part of his acting.
Let the Script Guide the Research
As I have said, I am not opposed to research in the process of an actor’s work on character. Research is often necessary to teach us specific things we must know because they’re what the character knows. But the actor must use his research to broaden his exploration, not limit his instinct and imagination. Research should be used judiciously, and the actor should rely on the script to guide him. The script tells us what research we need and also when to give it up and trust the text. Otherwise our research can swamp the character, obscuring our sense of his specific nature.
When Matt Dillon first came to work with me it was for Drugstore Cowboy. His character was Bob Hughes, “really an interesting character,” Matt remembers. “The guy was such a determined kind of hard-core dope fiend. He was myopic in his search for drugs. So I really got into it. It lent itself to research.” A friend of Matt’s was a recovering addict. “We went around together. I met him in the East Village at a club—a ground zero for addicts who spent maybe two hours a day sober. So they had no time to worry about being clean. You could see people with open abscesses in shooting galleries. We’d meet guys in wheelchairs selling their syringes, guys with diabetes. There was something very sad about a lot of these people.”
But as we explored the script, the “feeling of darkness” these field trips inspired felt different from what the script suggested. The characters were “like Bonnie and Clyde. They were professional criminals. It was a gang. And that was different.” The script had a lot of long dialogues, and I sensed Matt’s frustration that he was playing it all so dark, so heavy.
I suggested taking it in another direction. I wanted Matt to forget about his research and let the dialogue play on him, so that moment by moment he could let in a lighter side of himself. I suggested he think of it more like a comedy.
“It was a great suggestion,” Matt remembers. “In actuality there was a real playfulness with this character. There was a sense of I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners—these two couples bickering all the time as they go around the country robbing pharmacies.”
Piece by piece, we pulled the long stretches of dialogue off the page. Matt started to let go, and his wit and intelligence brought a charm to the character that played as a counterpoint to the dark aspects of the addict’s life. This allowed not only Matt but the character to be aware of the absurdity of his life. No longer overwhelmed by his research, Matt was able to conceive of the character apart from the drugs. The character surfaced in him—a very specific person capable of loving and living another kind of life. The character became accessible to us—even attractive. We could see why he was the leader of this ragtag gang of outlaws roaming the countryside, breaking into drugstores. They weren’t just “sniveling junkies.” We liked them, and him, yet we never stopped believing for a moment that he was a drug addict—a troubled, flawed character.
Once Matt made contact with the character, he was able to use his research. “My friend told me stories, like one time when he was making dinner for his wife and while he was cooking the fish and the vegetables, he thought, I’ll just take a quick shot of dope. He nods out and when she comes back the whole kitchen is on fire and
they’re beating the shit out of each other.” In the end, Matt used his research to inform the character without overwhelming the character’s specific qualities.
In Single White Female, Jennifer Jason Leigh played a psychotic character who systematically takes over her roommate’s life. I was afraid that Jennifer’s research on psychosis, although comprehensive and very good, was preventing her from letting herself into the character.
“That was a great note for me,” Jennifer recalls. “There’s a tremendous strength and confidence you get from distancing yourself from the character through all that research. So to have you—someone I really trust—gently say to me, ‘Just be careful and bring yourself into it because you’re verging on dangerous territory’ —made me feel like I was being brought into a safe place—not being cut off, and not being judged for it. And so I still felt free to use everything I had done. It wasn’t like you were saying, throw away this research, it’s not good. You were saying just be careful and bring yourself into it.”
Jennifer’s performance was startling, frightening, and totally believable. Her research was there, but so was she. And so the character was very personal, very human.
The creative process necessitates giving up normal logic. We have to be in a trial-and-error state where unlikely connections can be made. Creativity occurs when things that don’t seem to belong together make something new when joined. It’s what I call the “illogical conclusion.” That’s what we want in our acting—characters who are not just recognizable but surprising, unexpected, stimulating.
Kevin Kline once told me, “What I learned from you was to create characters whose nature gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted. And the more complete the characterization, the more complete the freedom.” Maybe that’s part of the trick-to conceive characters who are not just believable but whom the actor feels free playing.
I know the process of getting there takes patience, bravery, and concentration. Don’t rush it. If you have the courage to take your time at the beginning, you will find that the rest of the process goes much faster. Obstacles always come up, both practical and psychological. That’s what the rest of this book is about—the specific problems actors face while they are trying to do their best. But when you have given yourself a thorough, leisurely start exploring the character, you will not feel rushed in the rehearsal process in the theater, or in the shooting process in film. On the contrary, you will feel a certain confidence at having given yourself the luxury of taking it slowly. And best of all, you will feel the joy and exhilaration of going out on a limb.
Suggestions for Practice
Trace the character of Irina or Andrei in Chekhov’s The Three Sisters through the whole play.
Start by taking all of Irina’s or Andrei’s lines off the page as you read through the play from beginning to end. Then, as you are reading, pick several important moments in the play to work on in depth. Try to condense the lines into a monologue.
For the women, for instance, if you are exploring Irina, start with two of the monologues I suggested in chapter I. Begin with the first scene in Act I—“Tell me why am I so happy?”—and continue with her lines through “I am twenty years old!” cutting out Chebutykin’s and Olga’s few lines. At this point in the play everything is hopeful for Irina—it’s her birthday and the first anniversary of her father’s death so the mourning period has ended. She wakes up believing she finally knows what she wants and what is important in her life: “Man must work by the sweat of his brow.” She is young, naïve, and full of energy.
Then, when Irina enters in Act II, a couple of years have passed. String her lines together beginning with “How tired I am” and ending at “almost a year,” cutting Tuzenbach’s and Masha’s lines. In this scene she admits how hateful and boring her work in the telegraph office is. “It’s work without poetry, without meaning.” She tells of being cruel to a distressed woman. “I was rude to her for no reason. I haven’t got the time, I said.”
In Act III, begin with “Yes, how shallow our Andrei has become … ,” stringing Irina’s lines together as a monologue that ends with “But it all turned out to be foolishness.” This moment when Irina is so unhappy that she can no longer imagine going on any longer—“Turn me out, turn me out”—is a kind of breakdown for Irina, her low point in the play: “Life is slipping by, never to return.”
In Act IV attach the speech starting with Irina’s line to Kuly-gin, “If only you knew how hard it has been to live here alone …” to her scene with Tuzenbach when she says, “I have never in my life been in love. Oh, how I have dreamed of love, dreamed of it for a long time now, day and night, but my soul is like a fine piano that is locked and the key lost.” Within this monologue, Irina moves from disappointment, to hope, to despair.
For the men working on Andrei in The Three Sisters, start with Act I, “Come, that’s enough,” and after cutting Vershinin’s lines continue to “But what a cost!” This short monologue introduces Andrei’s complex feelings about his father and his studies. Then create another short monologue revealing his desire for real love by stringing together his lines from his scene with Natasha, starting with “My darling, I beg of you …” to “I love you, love you, as I have never loved anyone before.”
Then, in Act II, a few years later, piece together from Andrei’s scene with Ferapont an unusual and important monologue about Andrei’s present disappointment with his work and his desire for the life of a scholar in Moscow. Start with “Tomorrow is Friday,” cut Ferapont’s lines, and continue with Andrei’s lines until “A stranger and lonely.”
In Act III, Andrei’s monologue to his sisters, who are hidden from his view behind screens, begins with “I’ll just say it and then go.” Cut Kulygin’s line and then continue until “My dear sisters, my darling sisters, don’t believe me, don’t believe me.” In this monologue Andrei hears things coming out of his mouth that after a point he has to admit are lies. This is the most important moment in the play for him.
In Act IV, string together a monologue starting with Andrei’s line to Chebutykin “A wife is a wire …” through “I don’t understand why, for what reason, I love her so, or at least, did love her.” Then add Andrei’s lines with Ferapont from “Oh. Where is it, where has it all gone, when I was young, gay, clever …” to “ … they become the same pitiful, identical corpses as their fathers and mothers.” This monologue completes the path of the character in the play.
Working this way traces much of what the character is, and will allow an actor to explore the complications of the character in a way that is not so different from rehearsing a play for performance.
Remember to start by taking all the character’s lines off the page while reading the play from beginning to end. Then, while continuing to reread the play a number of times, work in depth on each of these monologues. At first, do the monologues in sequence to feel the flow of the character within your responses. Then work on each monologue in depth for a few days. Work until the lines start coming to you without looking down. But don’t memorize! Let them memorize themselves. Then go on to the next monologue and the next. Finally, do all the monologues in sequence in one sitting. Try this for several days.
Don’t hold on to your choices even if they are working. Keep exploring new possibilities for the character and you. Remember to go to the negative when you are bored, know too much about how the character should be played, or are stuck. Or try the five different ways mentioned on page 30. Force yourself to take chances and keep exploring.
If you want to work with a partner, try the characters of Paul and Susan in Michael Weller’s Loose Ends. Start by taking all of your character’s lines off the page as you read the whole play. In Scene 1 start at the beginning, which includes the monologues mentioned on pages 32—34. Now use them in the scene together with your partner. Continue with the scene until Paul’s line, “I don’t believe this is really happening. I really don’t.” This is the beginning of their relationship.
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sp; Then work on Paul and Susan in scene 5 starting with Susan’s line, “Want some more?” Continue to the end of the scene. This is an important point in the play where they have been apart and meet again.
Follow this with Scene 7 from Paul’s line, “I should explain this …” to the end of the scene. Cut Ben’s lines and Susan’s lines from “Would you leave us alone” to “All of you please.” Also cut Ben’s interruption and Paul’s response. You will find this is a huge complicated scene, full of rage, pain, love, and loss. When pieced together with the earlier scenes, it will help you to discover yourself in these characters.
Add any other scenes you may be excited to work on. Go back over the whole play a number of times, taking your character’s lines off the page. Don’t set anything in stone, but accept and trust those things that do come back again and again. That’s what happens when you become the character.
Try this approach with many different plays, working alone and with a partner. Work every day on your acting. This means verbalizing lines every day, not just thinking about the character. The actor’s work is always connected to the text. You will find that the more you trust yourself when verbalizing a line, with no preconceptions or control, the freer you will find yourself when you are on stage or in front of a camera with no lines to say—the more life you will have in the moment.
3
I WANT THIS PART. HOW CAN I GET IT?
“I have always felt that if I go in and do what I feel is my best, then I don’t care if I’m not cast, because then I’m just not what they’re looking for. But if I go in and for one reason or another do not do my best, that hurts.”
How to Stop Acting Page 8