ON Acting - Musing 3
The notion of acting is fascinating .The idea of projecting versions of self that are completely removed from one’s actual self- but in fact, we do it every day- possibly all day…discuss..
Over the last year, as I’ve become ensconced in the world of theatre, surrounded by actors and scripts, conversations around casting and roles and have watched many people stepping onto stage and into characters other than their own¦ I’ve become completely inspired and fascinated by the notion of acting. The idea of projecting versions of self that are completely removed from one’s actual self, day after day, month after month, year after year, as a career.
As a top league, full time actor, you are probably spending your time, weighted very disproportionately to performing in characters, over being your true self day to day.
I wish I knew Christian Bale, Uma Thurman or Marlon Brando, to interview them and inquire more, but I’ve managed to research via existing interviews of them instead, for the purpose of this piece.
The openings to my essays appear to be forming around dictionary definitions of the topics, however, so I’ll start by delving into these.
When we hear the verb ‘to act’, do we all think about something different?
The first definition that surfaces when you search ‘to act’ is not actually acting by way of performance on the stage or on screen, but to act in terms of ‘taking action’ and doing something for a particular purpose, or acting in a particular way, that relates to behaviour. Eg ‘He acted on impulse and called for help.’
When you hear the term ‘to act’ are you driven to think about how we all act in a variety of ways, day to day and throughout the day? We can be deemed as acting irrationaly, suspiciously, arrogantly in one minute and compassionately in another.
Or when thinking of acting are you immediately led to consider acting in terms of performance on stage or sceen, as characters and as someone’s job.
Can acting be both a talent and a learned behaviour?
Are we as humans, indeed moulded and shaped in some circumstances to act in certain ways, in different environments, at different times, all the time?
Can you argue that we are essentially acting all day long?
I feel often we are, but how we are acting isn’t only determined by ourselves, often it’s measured through the prism of someone elses opinions and perspective.
You might hear someone say of someone else ‘they acted really inappropriately’. But what is the definition of act in that circumstance, of someone acting inappropropriately?
As what one person deems inappropriate, another may be able to put up with, or not even bat an eyelid at. This I feel is actually where lines can become dangerously blurred and even what has led, in the most drastic and extreme examples, to people being allowed to get away with committing sexual assault.
What is inappropriate or not is unfortunately, extremely subjective and bar extreme and obvious cases ,comes down to individual opinion, and that opinion may often by formed by how someone has been brought up or how they were treated, or mistreated even, as they were growing up.
Society sets standards and cultural norms. Our families instill our senses of what is right, wrong and acceptable. Sadly people who grow up around or subject to abuse, may be led to think that someone acting in an abusive way to them is tolerable or may find it bearable, compared to someone raised in a different environment. Yes our governments set laws and workplaces, schools, alongside churches and hospitals, all have codes of conduct and parameters within which people are supposed to act to one and other. But reality demonstrates how those laws and codes are broken and abused constantly.
Thankfully with the outing of Harvey Weinstein and many others in the film and entertainment communities over the past decade, what can and cannot be classed as acting inappropriately and what is absolutely not permissible with regard how people are treated, has finally been exposed and confirmed. It has allowed for some progress to be made for anyone who may have fallen victim to those in positions of power acting improperly.
Do we choose how we act?
I believe we certainly do. In my opinion, we cannot always choose what we think. Despite the best efforts of teachers, peers and guardians to tell us what to believe, most of the time our thoughts come through beyond our control. How we act upon or after those thoughts, is our choice and within our control however.
As a parent now and contemplating back to my childhood, it is instilled almost universally I believe as a norm to teach children manners, in essence, to teach them how to act politely, or what is considered polite by the masses. I also like to believe that the generations have shifted slightly and rather that focussing the importance on teaching your children to eat with their mouths closed and say please and thank you after every breath, the more beneficial lessons are how to speak and listen respectfully to others and acknowledge everyone’s individual differences. This is the attitude I attempt to bestow to my own child anyhow.
There are obvious expectations within society of how to act properly or what acting normal is . And this is perhaps this is what is universally attempted by us all to pass down to our children to save them from embarrassments, derision or isolation by others early in life. What is acting normal though? Is normal a restrained, formatted, dampened version of our real selves that is trying to fit in with others?
How you do act properly with someone? When we say in society , that a particular way is the right way to act, are there pre-determiners therefore that we all need to follow for social interaction and for social interactions to be successful?
The infamous psychologist Jordan B Peterson has a really interesting discussion on this and suggests that you know if you’re acting properly when someone responds positively to your interaction with them and then does so on a repeated basis.
This insinuates to me however, that there’s a danger here of people pleasing syndrome taking over, because the intimation is, that you are likely to always continue to behave in the same certain way with someone, over and over again, if you receive positive responses to those particular actions of yours every time.
Is there a possibility in these circumstances you may not always be feeling the same way that you are behaving and essentially start to act a certain way.. in the performed sense, different to how your natural self would be behaving, in order to please the other and get a certain outcome?
Marlon Brando has a couple of the best quotes that resonated with me around this thinking which read
:‘Acting, in general, is something most people think they're incapable of, but they do it from morning to night. The subtlest acting I've ever seen is by ordinary people trying to show they feel something they don't, or trying to hide something. It's something everyone learns at an early age’
And the other ‘Acting serves as the quintessential social lubricant and a device for protecting our interests and gaining advantage in every aspect of life’
It’s quite sad to think really ,how often in every day life we are acting in the performative sense , to try and get something we desire, perhaps often with solely selfish intentions, or we may be acting to hide how we truly feel about people, to protect our hearts and our selves, from breaking.
As Jordan B Peterson also suggested, we as ordinary humans who aren’t actors, act in particular ways to receive particular desired responses from other people.
Children do it from the youngest of ages with their parents, to get treated in a particular manner by them, or to get treats even.
As I alluded to earlier, often parents prepare or instruct their children with knowledge on ways to behave around peers or teachers that will protect them from suffering. But again, the reality is that you can’t prepare and protect anyone from others acting and reacting in a specific way to them, because the base fact is, you can’t control other people.
If someone responds in a negative way to your actions, does it mean that you are not acting properly, or is it simply that the way which you two are acting together is not compatible?
Again I recognise that in some instances this is going to be relative to the extremity or not of the actions. Ie if someone is screaming and cursing at you versus someone being very anxious, not thinking through everything that they say to you first or someone blurting out that they love someone unexpectedly.One of these situations will feel far worse to the receiver than the other. In some instances the person may barely have been able to control their actions at all though.
It is fortuitously acknowledged on a wide, global scale now, that we all exist on a vast spectrum of neurodiversity. All our brains function differently and some people, who may be autistic , have ADHD or Torrets for example are not always going to be physically and mentally able to act in the proper and so called ‘normal’ way that society expects us to.
I’m grateful to see and grateful for our children that there is so much education around this and how differently we may all think from one and other. It’s a very simplistic statement to make but the world would be a far better place if everyone was able to be more tolerant of each others’ behaviour and the ways that we acted towards one another.
None of us are saints, we are human and flawed, we will make mistakes ,so I suppose my point is also then, that when we do , let’s act and take action off the back of the mistake, to make the implications around how someone may be left feeling, more positive.
Hopefully someone’s experience of a negative or bizarre action, can be remedied by more thought and understanding, off the back of it.
By treating our peers and even those we don’t know so well with courtesy and consideration, we can positively contribute to someone else's experience.
A recent example that really made me think about how naive people on mass can be to someone’s lived experience was in the Beckham documentary, highlighting how firstly David Beckham’s improper action, breaking the rules and kicking someone, resulted in the majority of the football fanbase in the UK , hundreds of thousands of people acting as if he had committed a crime. Yes it was uncondonebale behaviour for a footballer to lash out and respond with the rage and fury that he did to tet other player, a momentary mistake ,. Surely now everyone who has watched that documentary and reflected on the way David Beckham was treated after that incident would judge that those fans acted extremely unkindly and improperly towards him. They tortured him .Most of the UK was probably not aware of the severe impact that had on Beckham’s mental health, at such a young age. And the poor guy had to go out in front of the country, on TV, match after match, acting as if everything was ok, performing for crowd after crowd.
In short, a little more awareness of how and why people may act the way they do day to day, even if their actions are not fully agreeable with our own values and typical behaviours, would lend itself to far more acceptance and perhaps even harmony with each other in society.
So I’ve swung round to some really big thinking there and want to bring it back around to how we also certainly choose acting, as a career, by choice, in the sense of adopting a role, or learning how to play on stage or screen.
And how ironic that on the one hand we are caught in the dichotomies of whether to recommend that our children behave and act in certain ways to get themselves big ticks at school or as they enter in the working world..or on the one hand we’re encouraging them to be themselves, be unique, stand out from the crowd, whilst simultaneously sending them to drama classes or schools, to teach them how to be everything but themselves or the society perfect versions of themselves.
I’m absolutely fascinated by this notion of actively choosing not to be ourselves and play the part of someone else, that more often than not has been created by someone else (the writer)
Small children are obsessed. When we ship them off to drama classes from such a young age and teach them to perform, perhaps we are subconsciously preparing them for their lifelong lesson of having to act in different situations and play different personas.
But acting on stage serves very different purposes I feel and of course, also there are very different reasons behind every unique individual choosing to go into acting.
The wonderful Sir Ian Mckellen says
"Acting is a very personal process. It has to do with expressing your own personality, and discovering the character you're playing through your own experience - so
we're all different."
Sanford Meisner also has a beautiful quote that reads "Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances."
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Acting on stage is creative outletting that allows stories to be told by people who may not usually be able to tell a story like that from their lived experience. On stage especially , actors enter another reality for that period of time , playing parts usually with others , in the structure of a play.
The audience accepts that unreality that is created by the actors, it is a period of escapism where everyone together, audience and actors are transported into another world.
The actors get to recreate new characters , through listening, reading about these other people and how they live, how they might speak.
Saying this, there are also instances on stage and in films where an actor may choose to play a character very similar to their own self, or they may be chosen for the part for that reason. I recently saw an amazing play called ‘People Places and Things’ which centres around a woman’s journey through addiction and recovery and Denise Gough plays the part arguably so well and realistically because she has first hand lived experience of addiction and recovery. She’s stated how cathartic the part is for her for those very reasons.
At the other end of the spectrum completely you have examples like
Christian Bale in The Machinist, Brendan Fraser in The Whale, Joaquim Phoenix as The Joker ,Uma Thurman in Kill Bill or Jared Leto as Raya in Dallas Buyers Club, playing an HIV Positive drag queen. Here are examples of expression of selves that are nothing like their own. These roles enabled them to remove so far from self and explore other deep, often brutal, villainous human characteristics that are nothing akin to themselves.
There must be such a sense of reward in being able to transport yourself into an otherworldly story ..for others . It doesn’t always have to be dark and ominous either, I’m thinking of Tom Hanks and George Clooney for a moment, both getting to experience trips to space that are very unlikely to ever occur for them in real life.
I’ve often wondered what actors feel like if they forget their lines however, how the adrenalin must take over in a different way and what the brain chemistry looks like when the memory fails someone in such a monumental way in front of so many people. Embarrassment, shame, all the feelings that must flood in, being witnessed by so many people and how the audience then responds, is not what they signed up for .
How does it feel when you go on stage, or are forced to go on stage because of your contractual responsibilities and bank balance needing you to be performing, on a night where your mind is somewhere else completely , focussed on family or overcome by grief for example. Does the part get played different, can you act differently.
Film actors get to repeat takes until they get what is deemed the perfect one . Actors on stage play the same parts night after night, doing take after take and from what I know, attempting to define the character and not be switching their traits on stage every night.
Probably fair to say that actors on both stage and screen work to hone one ideal interpretation of their characters, in order to deliver them as the most realistic, it’s just that film actors have the luxury of doing take after take to hone theirs, whereas on stage it’s only that one chance in that one particular moment.
Christian Bale as an actor is a master of transformation and one of my favourites . In the Machinist he plays a character, whose severe insomnia and psychological issues leads him into a spiral of delusions and paranoia and for this part Bale lost 62 pounds in weight.
Bale quoted ‘It’s an amazing experience doing that. When you’re so skinny that you can hardly walk up a flight of stairs..you’re like this being of pure thought. It’s like you’ve abandoned your body. That’s the most Zen-like state I’ve ever been in my life. Two hours sleep, reading a book for 10hours straight without stopping.’ Bale describes in interviews that he wanted and needed to take himself to the extreme so that he could get as distant as possible away from himself and not be aware that his original self was anywhere to be seen. Phenomenal to think that he would go to these lengths , just to really feel and do justice to the character that felt that way, in order to translate the story to the public.
Uma Thurman’s performance in Kill Bill is I think an absolutely iconic example of the lengths a female actor will go to also, in terms of endurance and pushing oneself to the brink for a role. She trained in martial arts, swordmanship and learnt to speak Japanese. Her character of The Bride demonstrates constant mutation and merciless suffering. Thurman displays the painful nature of humanity so exceptionally as she’s both a victim and a murderer. She described the role as extremely gratifying and said in an interview.
“Women would come up to me and they would say that somehow or other – they’d share a little bit — that that film helped them in their lives, whether they were feeling oppressed or struggling or had a bad boyfriend or felt badly about themselves, that that film released in them some survival energy that was helpful, and that is probably one of the most gratifying things that I have ever experienced in response to a piece of art”
A lot of the interviews I’ve read with actors reinforce this sentiment , it is extremely rewarding and gratifying it seems to be able to deliver stories like this and share the breadth of our lives as humans.
I’m reaffirming that acting, in all it’s definitions, is actually a pre-requisite of the human existence as we know it.
I feel we should always act in the way that feels truest to ourselves day to day, that’s the only way to create and maintain a sense of self, but be kind, compassionate and understand and instill in children a sense of understanding that everyone has their own experiences and beliefs , that aren’t the same.
And let’s save the acting of all those extreme characters that aren’t ourselves through and through, for the stage and screen, to hopefully educate and fascinate others.
Love so much about this. I’m fascinated too by what it must be like to inhabit a character one might play in theatre or film. How much of that must takeover the actor. The same is true when writing I think - I’m writing fiction and I have glimpses (on a good day) of my character’s POV.
And yes yes yes, leaving acting for the stage and being our true selves in the world is something I strive for - maybe it’s a life long search to truly get there?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Liv.
It seems to me that we almost instinctively revert to 'acting' in our lives when we feel a need disguise our vulnerabilities. We do this even though, in most cases, it is so much more rewarding to be open and honest about ourselves.
It is nice when you meet people in life where the protective 'acting' instinct does not kick-in straight away. For me, they are always the most memorable encounters.