Acting in Film

Universal, 1980.
    Pictured with Jeffrey Frank.

    Say your lines aloud while you're learning them until you find what strikes you as the best possible expression of that particular thought. If there are plausible variations, develop them, practice them, too; but keep them up your sleeve. If the director rejects your brilliant interpretation, you're not left in a blank state of horror. You've already imagined and prepared other reactions to demonstrate. And most important, you've allowed for some element of malleability in your performance. Give your best reading as if it were the only one possible; but your mind should be hanging loose enough to take a leap, if necessary. For the moment, go with the line readings that seem to you the most valid. It may take some doing, but once the thought process is right, the words will follow.
    So much of it really is a matter of repetition, of saying the lines over and over again until you're sick of them; until someone can give you a cue, and you can say, feel, and react to the whole cycle of events, including those related to everyone else's parts. That confidence is your safeguard against terror. Otherwise, in the tension of the close-up, when you're standing there and someone is saying, "Quiet! Turn over! Speed! Action!" you may well go, "To bum or not to bim, that is the question!"

    Learn your lines for the whole film before you start shooting, and keep studying them during the gaps in your shooting. I was once caught on the hop when I was filming Kidnapped. We were shooting on the Isle of Mull. The weather conditions were perfect and we were ahead of schedule. Things were going so brilliantly that the director, Delbert Mann, came up to me at lunchtime and said:
    "It's such great weather, I want to shoot your last scene this afternoon."
    My last scene was a two-page soliloquy about Scotland and what it meant to me. I hadn't prepared a word. I stared at him and said, "It's not on the schedule for today."
    Mann said, "We'll never get a better day than this one."
    I said, "Give me an hour." Somehow I did it and I did it in one take. But I would have saved myself a lot of sweat if I had made it my business to familiarize myself with all my lines before I started shooting the film.

    Courtesy of Paramount Pictures. ©1965 Sheldrake Films Ltd. All rights reserved.
    ALFIE
    Directed by Lewis Gilbert. Paramount, 1966.

TIME IS ONLY DEAD IF YOU KILL IT
    There is a lot of dead time for an actor during the making of a movie. You can sleep and possibly appear dopey on camera, or you can socialize and wear yourself out. I socialize enough not to offend anyone, but I deliberately spend a lot of time in the dressing room. I use the time to go through those lines. Unoccupied time doesn't have to be dead time. It's only dead if you kill it. A lot of actors run other businesses from their dressing rooms or trailers. I was working with Sylvester Stallone and I asked him what was so attractive about his trailer that he kept rushing back to it between takes. I thought he might have a girl in there. "I'm writing Rocky III" he said. Then there was an actor who used to play the New York Stock Exchange from his trailer. lie's not a film actor anymore; but I saw him on television: he has his own program about stocks and shares. I figure it's more profitable for me to deal with the business at hand because if I play my part right, the current picture may make more money for me than any other business. If an actor is thinking about another business, maybe he should be in another business.
    I'll tell you what goes on in my trailer. Show business. Walk in and you'll see me doing a scene over and over again. There I am mumbling it and mumbling it and still mumbling it, so that it becomes second nature. It's no good if you're about to start a take and you're thinking, "It's coming soon, that difficult bit where I say `One hundred and thirty-eight North Ponders End Road SW16."' You must be able to stand there not thinking of that line. You take it off the other actor's face. He is presumably new-minting the dialogue as if he himself just thought of it by listening and watching, as if it were all new to him, too. Otherwise, for your next line, you're not listening and not free to respond naturally, to act spontaneously.

THOUGHT RECOGNITION
    It may sound like a contradiction, but you achieve spontaneity on the set through preparation of the dialogue at home. As you prepare, find ways of making your responses