Clearly, the craft of acting requires layers upon layers of devoted work. But what makes critically acclaimed performances stand out above the rest? Let’s listen to three actors who delivered such masterpieces give their sage advice.
Matthew McConaughey: Transitioning In & Out of Scenes
The Wolf of Wall Street star Matthew McConaughey shared valuable insights gleaned from his personal experiences with motion pictures during an interview at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. After winning an Oscar for his role in Dallas Buyers Club, McConaughey shared part of his process for bringing his characters to life. He explained:
“Catch. I love it when you catch somebody in a scene. I love entrances and exits. I love doing all the work—well, let’s backload about where the guy’s coming from, and why, how he got here, and where’s he going? I love to finish scenes. Anytime there’s the old dot, dot, dot … finish it! Write it out. Just finish writing it. I write a lot on scripts. I write more than I ever actually say, but I have it. It loosens me up on the entrance and the exit … I like my work best when I’m feeling like I’m being caught coming in and caught going out.”
Looking at the bigger picture, the Interstellar actor also imagines where his characters were five years before the movie began as well as where they will be in the decades to come.
To bring a fully-realized, three-dimensional person to life, actors are told to ask, “Where did my character just come from?” Was the character just locked in stop-and-go traffic? At the beach walking the dog? Visiting a sick friend? Sometimes this kind of information is spelled out in the script. For instance, in the previous scene, the character was fired and now we see him coming home to tell the family. But other times, what comes beforehand or what’s to come immediately following the scene is left to the imagination. Tending to these kinds of details has the potential to transform a good performance into a great one.
Bryan Cranston: Giving an Option in Auditions Vs. Trying to Get a Job
During a 2016 Q&A held at Point Park University, Bryan Cranston described how he had an epiphany that changed his professional life. The Breaking Bad actor shared an important shift in his mindset as it pertained to auditions and particularly how he handled rejection.
“If any of you can adopt this philosophy, I think, honestly, it could change your professional life—or the way you see things,” he said. When he was younger, he used to regard auditions as a job interview, and he felt pressure to get the job. “Well when you put yourself in the position of need or want, what happens is that you relinquish power and control over to some unknown entity,” he explained. “You are not in a position of control … If you need and want that job, it’ll show. It’ll seep out, and people will be able to tell that there’s a need or a want. Nobody wants to hire someone who actually needs a job. We want to hire people who are confident in what they’re doing and saying.”
So what was his solution? Cranston shifted his mind frame to that of a giver.
“Whether you’re donating to a charity or on a soup line or helping someone, it makes us feel empowered to give. That’s the same point of view that you need to take into that [audition] room: ‘I’m here to give you something—something of value.’”
Specifically, he advises actors to enter the audition room thinking, “Yes, I’m talented and I own that, and I value my talent … so I am here to give you something. It may be the solution to your problem. But that’s up to you. All I’m doing is giving you an option.” By presenting an idea or an option to casting professionals, he came to view auditions as another opportunity to act.
Al Pacino: Repetition
If there’s one thing Pacino is known for, it’s his uninhibited, fearless, intense, and indeed, explosive performances in films such as The Godfather trilogy, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Scarface, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Scent of a Woman. How does he give such consistently powerful performances? Pacino gives us a glimpse of his process during an interview with Charlie Rose.
“I like repetition,” he says. “There’s a saying that goes, ‘Repetition, Repetition keeps me green.’ I love that saying because the idea that we do performances over and over again, you say, ‘Well, doesn’t that get boring or stale?’ But no, it’s in the repetition that the creation comes—that the expression comes.”
Pacino recalls how once while performing Richard III on stage, he and his fellow castmates found themselves struggling with a court scene.
“I didn’t understand what I was doing in the scene, so I would call rehearsals, we would rehearse it, and we would talk about it, think about it, with all this work where people try to figure something out. The 85th performance of ‘Richard’—on my 85th entrance—I knew the court scene, I understood it, I was there. I could play it.”
Through repetition, actors can keep digging deeper into their characters, devote themselves to being of service to the story, and reach audiences with both clarity and complexity.
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