Big Misconception Acting Preparation, Altogether?
Are actors “born that way”?
With either, or all: charisma, looks, talent, emotional accessibility, comic timing, brilliant script assessment skills, and stage confidence, up the wazoo-la?
Some. Maybe. They may be born, even with a CAA agent, attached at the hip.
Still, actors work deeply, and a lot, before ever arriving near the set or stage.
Preparing…
Before ever getting into hair-and-makeup, before any camera-lighting-test, before uttering any dialogue. They work their tails off, long before getting to what-most-people understand, as the acting work.
(Even those born with the best-looking tails.)
Johnny Depp, Interesting Actor, And Interesting Man
He has an intensive,artistic, and individual way of doing his Actor Prep.
He paints his characters.
That’s the first time I ever heard of an actor working that way.
Seems mighty effective, for him.
Every Actor Develops Their Own Way Of Working…And Prepping For A Job.
But don’t be fooled by the common belief, about acting. Or the ease that the really great actors make it appear, in the end result.
That ease is a derived mastery. It is a magical, yes.
All magicians take a long time to develop each illusion.
As do actors.
There isn’t an ‘acting talent’, who is born able to handle all the depth that great acting requires.
No amount of innate je-nais-c’est-quoi, serves anyone, reliably; under lights with a camera in your face, someone tweaking your clothes, all those lines, and all that pressure. Certainly, not for repeat takes, numerous different acting jobs, nor on a live stage in front of large audience of eyes upon you.
Truly being great in a role demands much research, study, work, artistry, assessment, creative process.
Overall, being a great actor, takes some real study and artistic development to get to a place where the ‘actor’s instrument’ is malleable. Played with ease. I don’t mean at the ideal, the mastery level. I mean really great, consistent, from role-to-role…acting ability.
Takes years.
Mastery Level Ability, + Skill, For Actors Takes Working And Reworking.
It’s a process to attain and a lifelong process, at that; that continually evolves. It’s one of the things that makes the artistic part of being an actor so exciting.
That is, for those actors that are artistic in their work. All good acting work involves artistry.
Its those type of actors that win the awards, almost always, in this Oscars-Golden Globes-et-al Awards Season. (Here’s my li’l plug, in case you didn’t know–I have a site pre-Academy Awards, called OscarPrep.com.)
It’s also those actors that become household names, and whose work you may admire. You see the acting performance, you don’t see the acting prep work. They do it.
Most people aren’t aware of the underlying artistry. For each part. The depth, the breadth, the intensity, the time, the commitment.
Edward Scissorhands--One Of My Favorite Characters, Ever
Research Methods Of Actors, For Acting Roles
Each script, each role, does quite a bit of preparation process; to have a completed acting-product that not only hits the required ‘notes’, but does it well. Shiningly, like Depp.
There’s very specific emotional notes to hit, always. What about the script? A script is only and always about the story, and the actor must be adept at acting in order to be able to tell, specifically, the story. This point is a bit more abstract, yet the most essential.
Primarily, that is the actor’s job, why they were hired, and why they are visible to the audience.
The character work; even emotional specificity, accuracy, depth and complexity, are actually secondary to the actor’s main responsibility which is to tell the story. Actor’s do their ‘part’. They ‘play a role’ in the story.
Script interpretation is a very necessary and high-level skill for an actor.
Research, to attain the most knowledge about the story and the elements involved, is almost always necessary. I don’t mean only for period pieces, or deeper more literate projects, either.
Johnny Depp is awesomely handsome, and a personification of cool. Admittedly, I am swooning now. All the world’s swooning doesn’t make it cheap, easy, and without artistry, nor individuality, for Johnny Depp. As an actor.
He’s deep, as an actor. He also does a lot of actor prep. That’s why he is so great. (Seriously. Trust me, here.)
Great acting just looks easy, especially when it’s so good.
The more intensive the actor prep, the more visibly wonderful is the performance. And real.
©Disney
How Actor Johnny Depp Prepared, For The Mad Hatter, Prior To Acting
When he takes on a role, Johnny Depp often paints a watercolor portrait of the still-forming character to help find his face and personality. After putting the finishing touches on his painting for “Alice in Wonderland,” Depp looked down at the Mad Hatter staring back at him from the canvas and giggled.
“I was thinking,” the actor said, “‘Oh my God, this one will get me fired!’”
Depp’s extreme vision for the character — who arrives in theaters on March 5 — creates yet another vivid screen persona for the Hollywood chameleon who has played Sweeney Todd, Willie Wonka, Edward Scissorhands and a certain scoundrel named Jack Sparrow. The 46-year-old actor said his Hatter’s springy mass of tangerine hair became a particularly important detail because of one of the suspected origins of the term “Mad as a hatter.”
In the 18th and 19th centuries, mercury was used in the manufacture of felt, and when used in hats it could be absorbed through the skin and affect the mind through maladies such as Korsakoff’s syndrome. Hatters and mill workers often fell victim to mercury poisoning which, in Carroll’s time, had an orange tint — hence Depp’s interest in adding brushstrokes of that particular watercolor to his portrait.
“I think [the Mad Hatter] was poisoned — very, very poisoned,” Depp said. “And I think it just took affect in all his nerves. It was coming out through his hair and through his fingernails, through his eyes”
Depp’s research also took him down some unexpected literary rabbit holes with the writings of Carroll.
“There’s a great line in the book where the Hatter says, ‘I’m investigating things that begin with the letter ‘M,’” Depp said. “So I started kind of doing a little researching, reading a bunch. And you start thinking about the letter ‘M’ and Hatters and the term ‘Mad as a hatter’ and ‘mercury.’”
Depp was also intrigued by one of the Mad Hatter’s nonsense questions during a dizzying tea party: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” “I think he is referencing Edgar Allan Poe,” Depp said, referring to the haunted author of “The Raven,” which was published in 1845, two decades before Carroll’s surreal tale reached the public. Depp let the two ideas germinate in his head and it informed his own Hatter concoction.
Burton, whose background in art and animation is well known, also draws his characters, and when he and his star compared their handiwork they grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “They were,” Depp says, “very close.”
My very best,
:~Dana
Please share this Hollywood Actor Prep post, if you valued it. The more you share, the more I will write.
When you do, you are supporting me back, and helping create a strong actor community too. That’s very important. Thank you for your support.
Great post. It takes an incredible amount of effort to make things look effortless.