Posted by Dana Kaminski on 14th January 2010 in actor interview
Maggie Gyllenhaal Talks About So Much Specific Authentic Acting Stuff Here
Not much for me to add except…Thanks to Maggie Gyllenhaal for talking so abundantly and organically about her experiences as an actor. (So all actors can read it, and relate.)
“
When my daughter was around 16 months old, I started to feel overwhelmed by the desire to work, to express something.
I was like, ‘I’m a woman also. I’m an actress also.’ I was welling up with this desire to work, but I couldn’t find anything. The things that I wanted didn’t want me, and the things that wanted me I thought were terrible. Then I was doing press for The Dark Knight out here [in Los Angeles] and this script just fell out of the sky. I looked at the cover letter, which said, ‘You’ve been offered this part to star opposite Jeff Bridges and Robert Duvall.’ And I thought, ‘This is too good to be true. How could it have its financing? This is a time when no independent movies are being made.’ I was like, ‘O.K. the part’s going to be something I just fundamentally can’t do. It’s going to be like a hooker who loves being a hooker or something. What’s going to be wrong with it?’ And then I read it, and it was great, and it gave me this feeling that I have—that I think is pretty reliable in me—kind of like a magnetic pull.
…I think usually first-time directors get scared, and so they think they have to have decided before you begin how a scene’s supposed to play, what it’s supposed to be about, what your reactions are supposed to be. And that’s exactly what the death of good acting is. But Scott [Cooper] didn’t do that at all…He would have had to be like a really big idiot for me to say no. (Laughs.) But I did think, ‘I have to meet him. Who knows.’ And basically he was open and he was able to communicate with me.
I’m more proud of the work in [Crazy Heart] than I have been of anything. I went through a lot making it; it was as intense as it looks [on the screen]. And I learned so much about my life and myself and my work and everything. It sounds so silly, but I did! I wanted someone to come with me to see it so I brought my best girlfriend with me. We started watching the movie and I started feeling really ashamed because my character is so weak sometimes.
…I was like, ‘Maybe this isn’t strong. Maybe I did weak work or something.’ And my girlfriend was like, ‘She is totally weak, but I am, too.’ And I am. Sometimes I’m strong, sometimes I’m not.’ And then I started to feel really proud of it.
…Someone once interviewed me and said, ‘How much did Bad have to drink? You only see him have a drink.’ And I was like, ‘With a drunk, how would you know?’ That’s the thing, it’s totally disorienting. The luxury of working with such good actors, with a really, really open director, and with a script where each scene could be about 50 different things and end on 50 different notes, is that you don’t have to make a lot of intellectual choices. But the thing that I did think about a little was, ‘How do you let this happen?’ Someone else asked me if I thought I was his redemption (and it was a guy). I was like, ‘His redemption? I blind myself! I don’t say anything about the drinking at all for like a long time, then I straddle him—and I love the way they shot that; Like, on my ass!—I was straddling him and saying, ‘Don’t drink in front of Bud.’
…When I made Sherrybaby, I would come home but Peter was off shooting something so there would be times when I’d come home, eat something, and fall asleep in my clothes and wake up and go to work. I was just completely consumed by it. I was just as consumed by Crazy Heart, but then you come home and your child needs you and then you have to absolutely be able to make dinner and read two books before they go to sleep. And if they don’t want to go to sleep for an hour and a half, you have to be able manage it, you have to be a reliable for them. I’m really kind of still in the process of figuring out how to do that.
…I did always think I was going to be an actress, yeah. I wonder if that would have been true if I lived in, you know, Oklahoma. But it’s like being a princess or something… Scott [Cooper] wanted Crazy Heart to be like one of those movies in the 70s. It’s about sex. And that was definitely one of the reasons it appealed to me—those are the movies I love. Someone was asking me, ‘Why? Why are those the movies you love?’ It’s partially because they are really about acting, and they are about real people who behave in real ways. But also think about the women in those movies. You look at, like, Sissy Spacek or Deborah Winger or Ellen Bursten or Meryl Streep in all those movies in the 70s and you’re like, ‘Their need and their desire and their like investment in the lives of the people they’re playing are just as strong as all those guys.’ And that’s why I like those movies, you know what I mean? (Laughs.)
I’m trying to not think about any of it [Oscars, awards] too much. I just think it’s better not to think about it, you know? (Laughs.) This movie has already given me so much I feel like, I should think about not being greedy. I felt very honored to kind of go, ‘Jeff and Robert want me? They want me to be the girl? They want me to be the woman in the movie? That’s what I want, that’s exactly what I want.’ I really am sort of trying not to be greedy, I mean how much do you need?
Posted by Dana Kaminski on 30th November 2009 in great acting
Acting Sad :: Not About Crying-On-Cue, It’sAbout Authenticity Of Emotion
In my own, private, acting-stash folder, I’ve been saving these photos of well-known actors:
Willem Dafoe
Daniel Craig
Ed Harris
Forrest Whitaker
Gabriel Byrne
Michael Madsen
Paul Newman
Tim Roth
Ryan Gosling
I think these photos are an homage to the beauty of emotional truth. To real, authentic emotional acting. To these male actors’ craft. Each still photo provides, in a glimpse, the beauty that is the art of acting. The depth of great acting.
I look at them, myself, from time to time. These photos honor my craft. They remind me of why I committed myself, so passionately, so assiduously, for a very long time…to developing a masterful acting craft.
Sometimes, these photos renew my faith in the industry; when I’m feeling skeptical, or think it’s all about money, marketing, beauty, comics… These guys are well-known professional actors with longevity, and it is clearly not accidental. This special group is famous for a reason.
Posted by Dana Kaminski on 31st October 2009 in great acting
During Gabourey Sidibe’s Audition, The Acting Portion Was Utterly Convincing
She was Precious. Director Lee Daniels liked her audition, very much.
Then, she did something that surprised the heck outa him.”Hark”, he said…”She speaketh.’ [Not really...]
Lee Daniels: After The Acting Part Of The Audition Was Over…
He and she started talking. And, then Gabby Sidibe, who hadn’t had an acting job, or acting class, for that matter, ever…
Spoke completely differently than the way she spoke during her acting audition, for the lead role of Precious.
Yes, Daniels did say that…that when she started speaking normally, he knew she was an actor. That is what set her apart from the 400+ other potential Precious-es. Gabourney Sidibe, Bedford-Stuyvesant-born, candidate-number-too-high-anymore-to-count-for-the-director, and actress-who-was-never-an-actress and who-really-didn’t-want-to-go-to-the-audition-so-much; spoke almost like what he described as ‘Valley Girl’, when she was just being Gabby. Yet, as Precious, she spoke differently, and as believably, as if Precious was actually her true self.
That’s acting.
Which Is What You Will See In The Film, When You Go To See ’Precious’.
I guess that’s gonna be a big problem for Gabby. Her portrayal is so right-on; and reasonably, invisibly understated. Her acting is so deep, so pure, so real, he felt that she was a veritably castable Precious, just like the other 400+ candidates in his file drawer, as Lee Daniels explained. But, Gabby Sidibe got the job, because when she was done trying out for Precious, when she wasn’t being Precious, she was being Gabby. And Gabby was a psychology major enroute to getting a degree. She’s a well-educated, verbally expressive, differently cadenced, grown woman.
Not an abused girl, not a withholding girl, not an invisible-type personality. Gabourey Sidibe is an articulate, actualized, accomplished individual.
She is so confident, so actualized, and entrusted the director so deeply, that her performance is so withheld, quiet, and accurately understated; it’s gonna whiz right over most people’s heads. It’s so real, and so tear-wrenchingly silent, understated. Precious is buried; a child whose real-self never saw the light of day.
If you read the psychology, you know then, that that is how abuse, especially sexual abuse, is survived. Detachment.
Precious is detached from the rest of the world, by girth, by non-affect, by laconic invisibility.
There are scenes where the camera is behind her, and I almost felt that her head could just slide right down into her back and she could almost disappear into herself. Her own physicality.
Rare is an actor who could use a physicality in that way. To express a subtext. To hide. Female actors are almost always called on to use their physicality in more ways than males; ‘their look’ is often the first description on an audition breakdown. Sometimes women are cast for parts for looks, alone. By either appropriateness of physicality, and-or attractiveness, sexual appeal. Or simply cast because the actress had a type of attractiveness that appealed to the director. Or the ‘team’, of director and producers.
Gabourey Sidibe, whether intentionally or not, used her physicality in acting the part of Precious in a radical way, for Hollywood. And in an acting sense, it’s remarkably evolved. It may be because she really has not had any public attention before, so she was able to be very free with her body, and use it as an adjective. And an adverb.
Ms Sibide may not even know, because it appears that she works from instinct and trust in the director, so the grace in which she employs her body to act; even while keeping that body still, is remarkable. The freedom of the way it is used. Her body glides as an acting instrument, like a large mammal hypnotizing us with it’s balletic grace, as it glides miles swiftly through the silent water.
This actress creates Precious with her body. With an ne’er-before-seen lack of body-focus, there is no pre-engendered ball-and-chain of self-awareness, and do-you-think-I’m-sexy emanating from her pores. That creates something else, something so subtle, yet remarkably groundbreaking in an critically artistic sense. Without that, this actress was naturally freed up, which enables Precious to emanate from her pores. And this person, Precious, does. Gabourey Sidibe stands still, silent; and the life of the character emanates so strongly from her physicality, because she lets it do so. Don’t think for a second that it’s not either a remarkable gift, or something that anyone could do. Neither is it “her”. It’s not.
When asked, Gabby Sidibe answered that she could play Precious so organically, because Precious was someone “she recognized”, she knows a lot of girls like Precious.
Don’t be fooled by the ease in which this character flows from her, throughout the movie; nor by the reticence of the character. It’s far more difficult to play a quiet character, than a loud. It’s easy to invent all kinds of aspects of a character; it’s a far more fun way to act, and it’s a surer way to get attention in a scene. I know there was at least one acting legend who said “Acting Is Being”. Well, here’s your example of that.
This newcomer actor, this virgin, Gabourey Sidibe, holds her own focus and more, silently, in scenes with some of our most famous, current, American divas. Divas who are used to commanding the attention, all on their own, of audiences of many people. Audiences of many loud and raucous people.
She does it emotionally effectively, as well. The life of this character has been beaten down, and f’ed down into such a secret place; that you’d have to wonder, how does an actor play someone who, in their life, has survived by not acting. By doing nothing? By letting it just happen to her, again and again and again while still a child, it’s all she knows?
I can’t answer that. I can only tell you that the director Lee Daniels, and the actor, Gabourey Sidibe, made it work with this one, somehow, with both their conscious magic. Some unconscious stuff too, maybe some channeling.
The credit, profoundly, does belong to the both of them; and the rest of the cast, too. This kind of performance cannot come about accidentally. Lee Daniels expressed a suspicion that ‘bias’ or ‘racism’ was the reason people supposed Gabby was ’simply playing herself’. I disagreed with him. I told him that his direction was so rare and unique, in that it prioritized the “real” in the scenes, in the acting. [How gifted that is! It gifts us too!]
And that we, as an audience, and obviously our critics as well, are so inured to a certain style of acting, that most people assume that when acting is so believable; they assume, wrongfully, that it isn’t acting.
I’m not saying the acting in Precious is seamless. It’s not. It doesn’t matter. The authenticity of it’s finest moments, of the acting, in this film, are so raw and pure, their beauty is indeed precious. A rare and wonderful moviegoing experience. In Precious, there is some real acting going on. Precious, pure acting.
There are scenes where the camera is behind her, and I almost felt that her head could just slide right down into her back and she could almost disappear into herself. Her own physicality.
Rare is an actor who could use a physicality in that way. To express a subtext. To hide. Female actors are almost always called on to use their physicality in more ways than males; ‘their look’ is often the first description on an audition breakdown. Sometimes women are cast for parts for looks, alone. By either appropriateness of physicality, and-or attractiveness, sexual appeal. Or simply cast because the actress had a type of attractiveness that appealed to the director. Or the ‘team’, of director and producers.
Gabourey Sidibe, whether intentionally or not, used her physicality in acting the part of Precious in a radical way, for Hollywood. And in an acting sense, it’s remarkably evolved. It may be because she really has not had any public attention before, so she was able to be very free with her body, and use it as an adjective. And an adverb.
Ms Sibide may not even know, because it appears that she works from instinct and trust in the director, so the grace in which she employs her body to act; even while keeping that body still, is remarkable. The freedom of the way it is used. Her body glides as an acting instrument; like a large mammal hypnotizing us with it’s balletic grace, as it glides miles swiftly through the silent ocean water.
This actress creates Precious with her body. With an ne’er-before-seen lack of body-focus, there is no pre-engendered ball-and-chain of self-awareness, and do-you-think-I’m-sexy emanating from her pores. That creates something else, something so subtle, yet remarkably groundbreaking in an critically artistic sense. Without that, this actress was naturally freed up, which enables Precious to emanate from her pores. And this person, Precious, does. Gabourey Sidibe stands still, silent; and the life of the character emanates so strongly from her physicality, because she lets it do so. Don’t think for a second that it’s not either a remarkable gift, or something that anyone could do. Neither is it “her”. It’s not.
When asked, Gabby Sidibe answered that she could play Precious so organically, because Precious was someone “she recognized”, she has always “known a lot of girls like Precious”.
Don’t be fooled by the ease in which this character flows from her, throughout the movie; nor by the reticence of the character. It’s far more difficult to play a quiet character, than a loud. It’s easy to invent all kinds of aspects of a character; it’s a far more fun way to act, and it’s a surer way to get attention in a scene. I know there was at least one acting legend who said “Acting Is Being”. Well, here’s your example of that.
This newcomer actor, this virgin, Gabourey Sidibe, holds her own focus and more, silently, in scenes with some of our most famous, current, American divas. Divas who are used to commanding the attention, all on their own, of audiences of many people. Audiences of many loud and raucous people.
She does it emotionally effectively, as well. The life of this character has been beaten down, and f’ed down, into such a secret place; that you’d have to wonder, how does an actor play someone who, in their life, has survived by not acting. By doing nothing? By letting it just happen to her, again and again and again while still a child, it’s all she knows?
I can’t answer that. I can only tell you that the director Lee Daniels, and the actor, Gabourey Sidibe, made it work with this one, somehow, with both their conscious magic. Some unconscious stuff too, maybe some channeling.
The credit, profoundly, does belong to the both of them; and the rest of the cast, too. This kind of performance cannot come about accidentally. Lee Daniels expressed a suspicion that ‘bias’ or ‘racism’ was the reason people supposed Gabby was ’simply playing herself’. I disagreed with him. I told him that his direction was so rare and unique, in that it prioritized the “real” in the scenes, in the acting. [How gifted that is! It gifts us too!] That the audience cannot believe that what they are watching is anything but real.
The acting is that authentic. And that we, as an audience, and obviously our critics as well, are so inured to a certain style of acting, that most people assume that when acting is so believable; they assume, wrongfully, that it isn’t acting.
I’m not saying the acting in Precious is seamless. It’s not. It doesn’t matter. The authenticity of it’s finest moments, of the acting, in this film, are so raw and pure, their beauty is indeed precious. A rare and wonderful moviegoing experience. In Precious, there is some real acting going on. Pure, precious acting.
My best,
;~Dana
Actor Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe
Thanks for passing this on to someone. Thanks for keeping acting an art form, and supporting an actor by sharing this post with them.
Posted by Dana Kaminski on 28th October 2009 in Skilled Acting
Lee Daniels Directed Precious.
As I watched the movie, I was floored by moment-after-moment truth. Real.
Real acting, I mean. The authentic kind. The only kind.
The RARE kind. Rare-st kind. Also, the highest-level kind. Specifically, the kind that makes acting an art form.
It’s the only kind, in my book. Otherwise, it’s not acting. It’s pretending to act.
Let’s Start With The Unlikely Actors And Acting In The Movie Precious
Unlikely, because of the three that I will mention, just this time around, not one of them came by way of being a trained and experienced actor.
Additionally unlikely, because they are, all three, in absolute danger of doing the worst kind of acting of all. Yet they did the opposite.
Let’s start with Mo’Nique. Last night, the director Lee Daniels, called her: “The Queen Of BET” for her Live At The Apollo fame. I am familiar with the onstage Mo’Nique, isn’t everyone?
Mo’Nique is a household name, and a household personality. Her personality is what brings home the fame. She’s notorious for that moxy, the outrageously bold statements, the flirtatious blunt sexual-speak, tactless assessments, and claws-out skinny-girl bashing. Yeah, you’re right, that’s as real as can be.
It’s also a performance. A persona. Many people that have public personas, don’t get out of them. When coaching acting, it’s sometimes hard to get into a person with a persona to not only drop it for the truth of the character they are playing…but, as I’ve said elsewhere in this blog, it’s often hard to get them to be able to understand or decipher the difference. Between their onstage or public persona, and authentic acting. Sometimes, it’s hard to get them to decipher a difference between their real selves and their persona.
Comedy Success Can Sometimes Make Authentic Acting Impossible
Two things wrong with that, and that’s just for a start. One is that it’s all ‘external’, done for effect. Polished, over time, for effect. Done for ‘result’. There’s no way to be inside a character, in a ‘private place’, where your emotions can move and flow freely; if you are focused on the metronomic beats of the line, and if you are trying to get a result.
If you are on the outside looking on at your performance, then you are not in it enough to give an authentic performance.
Stand up comics are experienced in getting a laugh. That can be oppositional to being real, in acting. When a result is played for, by the actor; then the audience just watches, instead of experiencing the result for themselves.
This is all a bit complicated. I don’t really want to spend a whole lot of time explaining this now. I have in the past, and will do so in the future. Just know that Mo’Nique should be nominated for an Oscar. She was superb. Not just because she was able to avoid the traps that hinder almost every comedian-turned-actor you can name. But because characterization was wonderful, and her acting was so damn real.
Number Two Actor is Gabourey Sidibe Who Plays The Role Of Precious.
Not an actor. She was not experienced. Start there?
I don’t know how to explain this; except that this actress has an unusually high amount of sensitivity, channeling power, and natural acting ability. She also was a Psych major, and I have always thought there were similarities between the professions of acting, and psychology.
May I please reveal that before I met the director and his leading lady, I had a chip on my shoulder. I assumed that Gabourey Sidibe was just a real person that he had cast because she looked like the Precious that Lee had in mind. That, and since he had also cast Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz, that he really didn’t respect actors at all. Once I saw the film, I was flipped upside down. My strong assumptions, that is.
Last night, I learned that they had, in fact, searched far and wide for a real Precious to play the onscreen Precious. They went across the country. They eventually found more than 400. Precious-Potentials, that is.
The director, Lee Daniels, stated that he lost count after that. They recruited girls from public transportation, from inside different McDonald’s on both coasts. He described something called “Precious Camp”, where some prospectives were put through auditioning levels, and some training. He said they were all very great Preciouses-Plural. The difference between all 400 plus wonderful Precious-castables, and Gabourney (Gabby) Sidibe, wasn’t acting experience.
None of them had any acting experience. (He had auditioned plenty of actresses who did have experience, long before he went on the cross-country search.)
However, they all were very capable. And, in the end, he was sorry to let all of those other ones go.
Because Of Acting.
But, during the very first meeting with Gabby Sidibe; a meeting that, by the way, she really wasn’t interested in going to, and was prodded by a friend who was also going…It was during that first meeting that he knew what she didn’t even know. The director experienced it at a specific moment, that she was an actor.
He described it clearly, and …
Well. I will tell you tomorrow…. [To Be Continued, Manana.]
Best,
;~Dana
One important note on status change here. There is now a fee. The charge of each article is to send it to someone else, or post it on your Facebook page. Retweeting is negotiable as far as payment. Thanks for sharing this forward…
Actors Need To Be Aware Of Their Blocks, and Issues
I know I’ve talked about this before in this blog, but it’s important, so I am bringing it home, again.
As an actor, you will be called upon to handle all the different emotions. If you aren’t comfortable expressing emotions, you may be in the wrong business. All of us have some emotions that we feel are safe, or acceptable to express. We have others that don’t flow as easily. We may not even be aware of our inability to easily express these emotions. That’s called denial, by the way.
I suggest that you observe yourself, just keep a casual eye out, in your daily life. First, note if some of the socially-unacceptable emotions back you up. Like anger. Frustration.
What ones do you take pride in keeping inside, or under wraps, or under your control. In our culture, that’s called restraint.
Denial and restraint are toxic to acting.
I am not suggesting that all anger should be expressed by screaming and yelling. Often in acting, authentic anger breaking through restraint or delivered along with, and in sprite of , the shame of experiencing the anger; can make it more specific, and more poignant. More powerful.
But it must be something that the actor is aware of, in his own self, to be able to play. At all. Without faking. That kind of acting is very advanced, and it’s source is extreme-self-awareness.
If you have repressed emotions, you may not be able to define them as blocks–even if they are, in truth. Look over the beliefs of your cultural upbringing: Was it okay to cry? To express disappointment? What about an entitlement to happiness? (These are just some examples…)
What about in your own individual family? Were you given a “voice”? Respected? Which emotions were welcomed, and which were not? Which ones got attended to; and which emotions were you, perhaps, punished for? Belittled? Or ignored?
How did your parents express their emotions, to each other? To you? How did they model emotional-appropriateness? Often, inhibiting emotional expression is modeled. What attitudes did you subconsciously absorb?
Psychologists are finding that the outside world can have an even greater effect than your family. When you were growing up, what peers or teachers may have influenced the facility you have with emotion?
Often, those events that are prominent in your memory, from your childhood, hold a clue. Do you have a memory from your childhood which changed you in some way? What about the ones that must’ve had an emotional charge, or else you wouldn’t remember them so clearly. Can you define what decisions you may have made, from those experiences, way back when they occurred? Decisions about yourself? Decisions about your accuracy of emotion? Expressing emotion?
Permission To Act, With Authentic Emotion
Do you give yourself permission to act? Are you allowed to enjoy yourself, on stage; according to you? What about to feel emotions? To express emotions?
If you don’t, neither will the characters you play.
Is it okay to act without emotion?
I don’t think so.
Acting that comes from unconnected skill, or pretending, sucks. Acting that goes through “the motions” sucks. Acting that is one-dimensional sucks. Acting that isn’t authentic emotion, really sucks.
Experiencing And Expressing Authentic Emotion
…Is the most important thing that you must know how to do, as an actor.
If you are able to allow yourself to feel, and express, the gamut of human emotions, with those who you are intimate with, then you can channel it to your acting.
How do you do that, successfully? With your acting craft.
"So many great painters, great musicians, great geniuses ended with nothing. With broken hearts in rooms with broken windows. I want to see artists sitting at the table that decide the outcome of their lives."
--Bono
“
