Posted by Dana Kaminski on 23rd November 2009 in Auditioning
Gaborey Sidibe Acts, For The First Time, At Her Audition For Precious
I’ll probably put this on the Actors Audition page later, but it just so boss! So I’m sticking it here with its very own page, as a post, first.
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I just am so flummoxed, and bedazzled, by this actress. She is one-in-a-million, and with no formal acting training! That just does not happen. Her natural sensitivity, attunement, and empathy toward others; must guide her acting abilities, fuel her acting instrument. A natural connection to the role and as she has stated, her familiarity with that type of girl. And just divine provenance!
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Her physicality creates such a beautiful paradox. For an actor, altogether. As an audience, we watch actors, really, to see what’s inside of them. You see nothing inside of her. Part of that is because the character, Precious, has never developed a connection to her own real self. Her own emotional self. As others support the inner Precious, and pull her out, Precious is also discovering herself. At the very same time, the audience is also discovering her.
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Imagine that kind of restraint, as an actress. The measuring, the meting out…of an emotional self as it blossoms at only a pace accurate to the story. Slower, than we in the audience can take. Not because it’s a slow movie, not at all. But, rather because the amount of restraint is in equal measure to the amount of injustice that this person, this child, has endured. Precious is played with such restraint, she is so buried in there, in that person so that she is barely found. When the audience does find her, you just don’t want to let go.
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
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Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr., Playing Lead Title Role
Directed by Madonna’s Ex, Guy Ritchie; this movie also has leading actors, Rachel McAdams, and Jude Law.
For full list of the supporting players, go to this link at IMDB.
(Sorry, to my iPhone users, about the trailers being in ‘flash’…it was just a bit easier this time.)
Precious Trailer, With Mo’Nique Who May Get An Academy Award Nom For Acting In This Film
Directed by Lee Daniels, this movie has a newcomer-actor in the lead title role, Gabourey ‘Gabby’ Sidibe. Some well-known musical names are also acting in Precious, such as Lenny Kravitz, and Mariah Carey. Full cast list at IMDB.
Doesn’t Every Actress Wish To Work With Pedro Almodovar? ...Broken Embraces
Here’s a trailer with one of his usual actor-hires, and acting-Oscar winner as well, Penelope Cruz.
Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans, Directed By The Esteemed Werner Herzog
Yet, this film is a remake and Harvey Keitel was the actor in the original, and it’s one of his most famous roles. So there’s a little murmur of complaint inside the artistic film community, where great acting performances are regarded as sacred.
Negating the murmurs, somewhat, is the fact that Werner Herzog directed this one. He’s solidly in the master league of directors; and you can’t get any more artistic, as a definition, than Mr. Herzog; whether he’s doing documentaries, or narrative films.
Besides Nicolas Cage, this Bad Lieutenant also has an exciting cast list. Here are just a few actor names to throw: Val Kilmer, Eva Mendez, Michael Shannon, Fairuza Balk, Brad Dourif, Vondie Curtis-Hall…See the full list of actors at thisIMDB page link.
Enjoy!
;~Dana
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"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
