David Thomson, Steve Wasserman: On Acting (BABF 2015)

Summary

In a conversation between writer David Thompson and his friend, publisher and former literary agent Steve Wasserman, the two discuss the art and craft of acting. They delve into why humans are fascinated by actors, the interplay between a performer's real self and their character, and actors' insecurities. They trace acting's evolution, argue it reveals truth about human nature, and debate whether actors are born or made. The discussion encompasses acting's power, the role of luck, what constitutes great acting, and more, while emphasizing that the audience is essential for the actor's work to have meaning.

Takeaways

• 😀 Acting fascinates us because actors are pretending to be someone else, allowing us to watch both the character and the real person
• 😮 Actors have an urge to pretend and try to present an idealized version of themselves, just as we all do in everyday life
• 🤔 Many great actors are not happy people - their insecurity and unhappiness drives their talent
• 👀 Film and photography changed our relationship with acting by making actors recognizable celebrities
• 😠 The acting profession is filled with rejection and unemployment even for dedicated actors
• 🎭 Acting requires skill in modulation and adjustment to become different people for different audiences
• 🎬 Movies today rarely have the creative freedom that allowed superb 1970s films like Taxi Driver
• 🎤 Great acting often requires doing very little - just being powerfully present
• 🍀 Luck plays a huge role in acting success - getting the right part at the right time
• 🎓 While acting education exists, life experience is the most important teacher for actors

Q & A

What does David Thompson believe is at the core of why people are fascinated by actors?

He believes people are fascinated by actors because they are pretending to be someone else. We are watching both the character they are playing and the real person we think we know.

How does David Thompson explain why people have an urge to pretend or try to be someone else?

He believes it's because in life, we are always trying to present the best version of ourselves to other people. We adjust how we act depending on who we are interacting with.

What point does David Thompson make about why acting can be difficult for some actors?

He explains that the unhappiness or nervous energy that makes someone a great actor can also make them unhappy in their personal lives. Some actors struggle with the fact that what drives their great performances causes them pain.

How did film change people's relationship with acting, according to David Thompson?

He explains that early film stars like Charlie Chaplin were seen as larger than life on the big screen. This let people identify with and fantasize about being actors themselves more than ever before.

What does David see as one of the hardest tests of great acting?

He believes one of the greatest tests is having nothing to do but still being utterly compelling. Simply sitting still on stage and being impossible to ignore showcases truly masterful acting.

What point does Steve make about how acting has impacted history?

He discusses how John Wilkes Booth leaping onto the stage to assassinate Lincoln shows in an extreme way how acting can dramatically shape events. Booth made the theater of history much larger.

What does David say helps explain Robert De Niro's decline in later roles?

He speculates that as De Niro became more interested in business and money, he started taking projects he wouldn't have earlier in his career. His attitude became duller as he likely became disillusioned.

What does David highlight as a key element of great acting?

He emphasizes a refined sensitivity that lets an actor translate the urge to pretend into believable speech and movement. An inner emotional intelligence guides the performance.

What role does David think luck plays in acting success?

He believes luck is crucial, as getting the right part at the right time with the right co-stars and director can make all the difference. Missed chances shape careers significantly.

How does David think people could benefit from acting exercises?

He suggests bringing strangers together, having them create fictional situations, cast roles, and think through acting choices. This creative collaboration would provide life insights.

Outlines

00:00

🎭 Introductions and context on acting

The host introduces the guest David Thompson, a writer and critic he has known professionally and personally for years. They discuss David's new book on acting, the genesis of which stems from both men's lifelong interest in and experiences with theater and acting. The host makes a self-deprecating joke about their close relationship.

05:02

😄 Why we are fascinated by acting

David explains that acting fascinates people because it involves pretending to be someone else. We simultaneously see the character and the real person when we watch actors. Over time, we understand what pretending has meant to an actor in their life and career.

10:03

🏆 Film and the Oscars changed acting

Film enabled the widespread visibility of actors in new ways. The host sees the sword in the Oscar statue as representing acting's ability to break through emotional barriers within us. David discusses how the Oscars represent the film industry's desire for respectability, though the award was not taken seriously initially.

15:05

🎓 Acting requires passion and pain

The host recalls a formative theatrical experience in his youth. He relates this to John Wilkes Booth assassinating Lincoln after leaping onto the Ford's Theatre stage, arguing acting has real-world power. David notes acting is rooted in a universal human impulse to pretend to be better versions of ourselves.

20:08

👀 Film and TV changed acting reality

David explains how film allowed audiences to see actors writ large for the first time. This encouraged stronger audience identification and blurred the line between fantasy and reality. The host notes that average screen time has increased drastically, altering our relationship with reality.

25:08

⏱️ Tension between acting success and personal happiness

The host asks if acting's reliance on pretense and affect curdles into a kind of self-contempt for actors over time. David notes many great actors have been unhappy, as acting often attracts insecure people. Young aspiring actors rarely understand how difficult and unstable acting is as a career path.

30:18

🤔 Defining great acting

When asked to define great acting, David identifies sensitivity, translation of pretending into speech and movement, and silent presence as key. Luck, relationships, choice of material and coaches are also essential elements for actors to achieve greatness.

35:21

😌 Acting will endure amid Hollywood decline

When asked if he worries about acting's future given the decline of Hollywood films, David says the impulse to act will remain. He notes that television has become the locus of innovative acting and writing talent.

40:22

🧑‍🎓 Acting: born or made?

Asked if great acting is innate or learned, David says it's some of both. He notes that while formal training has some role, life experience seems crucial. Some non-actors like Joseph Welch evidence sudden great acting talent when a part calls for it.

Keywords

💡acting

Acting is the main focus of the video. It is defined as pretending to be someone else. The speakers explore why humans are fascinated by acting, the history of acting, what makes a great actor, and how acting has changed over time. They provide examples of famous actors like Marlon Brando and Meryl Streep to illustrate different aspects of acting.

💡audience

The audience is an essential part of acting, providing the spectators that complete the act. As Steve says, 'acting requires spectators' and is 'not complete' without them. The audience engages with the performance and collaboration between actor and viewer is discussed.

💡dissembling

Dissembling means deceit or pretending. It is used to describe acting itself as conscious deception, though the speakers argue this does not make it necessarily insincere. Rather, pretending reveals truths about ourselves that we otherwise would not admit.

💡method acting

A style of acting in which actors draw on real emotions and memories, instead of just representing them. Daniel Day-Lewis is discussed as an example of a dedicated method actor who deeply commits to his roles.

💡passion

Passion is identified as a necessary drive motivating actors, especially early on in their careers. Robert De Niro tells graduates they chose acting to 'follow your passions', which will sustain them through rejection.

💡power

The feeling of power an actor gets over the audience is discussed, using Steve's own experience on stage as an example. This sense of control when performing offers insight into why acting fascinates.

💡reality

Acting's relationship with reality is a key theme. The speakers suggest good acting reveals truthful aspects of human nature despite being deception. Our perception of reality has also been altered by films and screens.

💡rejection

Rejection and unemployment are portrayed as inevitable difficulties for aspiring actors that even famous ones still fear. De Niro warns graduates they will face rejection, showing it is intrinsic to the acting life.

💡sincerity

Sincerity is proposed by George Burns as the most important quality in acting, though there is irony in being able to 'fake' sincerity. Meryl Streep is put forward as an example of an actor perceived as sincere.

💡unhappiness

It is suggested many great actors lead unhappy lives, with nervous energy and insecurity underlying outstanding performances. Hence the stereotypical vain, unstable actor may hold some truth.

Highlights

Actors are fascinated by because they are pretending to be someone else. We watch both the character and the real person.

Good actors have an incredibly refined sensitivity that can translate the urge to pretend into speech and action.

Acting requires luck - the right co-stars, director, timing. Most acting careers depend on a few lucky breakout parts.

Great acting is having nothing to do but being inescapable in the process. Simply looking at someone with care.

Most actors are surrounded by desperation and insecurity, which drives their urge to pretend to be someone else.

The movies changed acting by making actors shine with light so bright that our fantasies came alive.

Many great TV actors have left movies behind due to the decline in mainstream films and rise of quality TV.

Actors go where the good work is, so they'll stay in TV as long as it offers better writing and roles.

The urge to act will last despite Hollywood's decline. Great new acting emerges in shows like Breaking Bad.

We all pretend to be better versions of ourselves. Actors professionally live out this fantasy we all share.

The Oscars were invented so Hollywood could pretend to be serious and say "Respect us!"

Most actors think they're failures despite fame and praise. Insecurity drives them.

Acting blurs reality. We now spend over 11 hours a day staring at screens, far from reality.

John Wilkes Booth assassinating Lincoln proves acting matters. He strode onto history's stage.

The best acting class would be meeting strangers, making up situations, and improvising roles.

Transcripts

i'll keep the introductions short

to my left is david thompson a critic

uh and writer i admired for many years

before

it became my privilege to meet him and

uh

i have worn many hats with david so in

the interest of transparency

let me confess that in addition i'm glad

to say

of being friends i published some of his

writing when he

wrote for me on occasion when i edited

the los angeles times

book review later i became

david's literary agent in which capacity

i still function

although i wear another hat when three

years ago

i decided to embrace the nearly

scandinavian health care offered by yale

university

press and became an editor at large for

them in which

capacity i asked david to

write the book which is uh the occasion

for this

talk which uh it's my duty as his

publisher his

agent and his friend to hold up he is

also

my uncle yeah

so the the the charm well you'll be the

judge

of this conversation uh is that it's

uh an incestuous one between two people

who have

each in their own way been interested in

acting

which is perhaps another way of saying

that we have each of us in our own way

try to lead our lives and become a

protagonist in our own

unfolding drama and it had occurred to

me to ask david to write

a kind of extended essay on acting

since he has been

i think it not too extreme to say

obsessed with the subject

nearly all his adult life and maybe even

earlier than that

written about many movies as you know

written and seen many dramas

and the idea that we would do so at the

inaugural bay area

book festival in the town in which

i grew up made the whole affair

very personal and i just want to sort of

tip of the hat

to um i saw many uh wonderful

productions

in this town from the work of the magic

theater to the san francisco

mime troupe to an indelible

performance by the living theater at the

berkeley community theater

in february of 1969

paradise now and frankenstein and

the many ways in which acting and actors

have been important for me personally as

i

suppose in each in their each in your

own way they have been

for you um forms the kind of bedrock

on which we might have a conversation

about a

art form a craft a way of being in the

world which is

as paradoxical and as necessary as

i think anything is so

i'm put in mind of a perhaps apocryphal

story that i heard many years ago in los

angeles

jack lemmon once asked george burns

what was the single greatest attribute

that one needed to be

a successful actor and burns never at a

loss for words

instantly replied sincerity and if you

can fake that kid

you got it made which was perhaps about

as good a definition of acting as i

think i've ever heard so i wanted to

turn it over for a moment to david

and ask him a very simple question

what is it about acting that

seems to mesmerize us and over the

course of time

what's changed obviously acting from

thespis to

to johnny depp has a long and

distinguished tradition although by some

measures

disreputable the catholic church for

most of its history refused to

allow actors to be buried with rights

without first renouncing the sin

of their entire profession

so tell us if you would how you think of

acting and what has drawn you to the

subject

and indeed why you think it matters so

very much

well i think it's rooted

in our psyche um

i think we are fascinated by actors

because they are pretending to be

someone else

i think almost when we watch actors we

are watching

two people we are watching the character

they're playing and we're watching the

real person we think we know

as a professional career and

the interplay between those two

i think is a large part of the pleasure

so when you

when you follow an actor or an actress

over decades

you know when you see meryl streep today

you remember meryl streep in let's say

the deer hunter

where she's a very different kind of

person

but you see over the years just what

pretending

has meant to her which is interesting

because meryl streep really has

the reputation a lot of the affect

of a very sincere serious

down-to-earth honest person

and you know compared with a lot of our

leading actors i think she deserves that

and i've only

heard good things about her as a person

so why is she obsessed with pretending

to be other people

i think this is a really core impulse

in acting and i think it's a core

impulse in what we

get out of them because

and i don't know how far back this goes

because

we can get on to this but film changed

our sense of acting

but i think it's because we all of us

in life are always

pretending to be a slightly

better version of ourselves that we

would like

to have presented to people so when you

meet someone

for the first time

so to speak physically but inside your

head

you straighten up you comb your hair

you you smile you you be as sort of

as open and accessible as you can you

present yourself

in a way that says look i might be your

friend

i might be your lover i might live with

you for 60 years

and in the course of 60 years you will

probably have to pretend to be several

other people

just to make time pass pleasantly and

easily

but very briefly i think it's because

we are pretenders now that can easily be

interpreted as saying well we're all

insincere

we're all liars and i think those

principles deserve more attention than

they often get

but i don't think it's an unwholesome

unhealthy thing

i think the urge to pretend to try to be

someone else

a better version of ourselves i think

it's

absolutely widespread and any people who

are

in human company are involved with that

i think

and you know if you have a large family

situation

you may sit back sometimes and say i

realize

that i'm not quite the same person

to my children as i am to my parents

or my wife or friends and i think we do

this all the time

it's a fantastic process of

modulation and adjustment that goes on

without any conscious

process where we've just become slightly

different

because we know that person wants a

out of us and that person wants b out of

us

it's very complicated and we do it as we

do so many things

because of a brain that is just so

incredibly skillful

yeah do you think

that you observe in your book that

the oscar the academy award statuette

that is given

um and i don't think very many people

tumbled to this or

focus on it is a figure that is bearing

a sword

yes why

um i'm not literally sure

of that it's a very strange figure

because

in the original oscar the sword is

actually sort of pinning

pieces of film to the ground which i

don't think

is what they meant us to interpret it by

but it's a sort of noble classical

figure it's a sort of arnold

schwarzenegger figure

before his time and um

everything about the oscars is so

bizarre

i mean it it it could only have been

invented and of course oscar

is really a way for the film business to

pretend

we're serious we do good work

you know respect us for god's sake

respect us the oscars were invented

for those purposes right i sometimes

think in a

somewhat highfalutin way that it's the

unacknowledged

uh admission that the sword

acts for the actor as kafka is said to

have

regarded a book as the as the axe that

would break up the frozen sea within us

yes and that the art of dissembling the

act of

pretending the act of conscious

deception

itself done well reveals truths

about our daily lives that we otherwise

would not see

or admit to ourselves you should have

been there in 1927 when they first saw

the oscar statuette

you would have been laughed out of the

room

i mean this is the kind of comment that

one can only get get away with in

berkeley

you know and i i want to be loyal to my

yes my roots constituency yes yeah do

you think it's a tension for actors

uh in particular when uh they uh become

the best of them are so gifted at

dissembling and

faking authenticity that in their own

lives the most

many of them are intelligent of them uh

begin to

experience it as a as a kind of curse i

think of louise brooks

who would give up acting and become

famous really for

a refusal to engage in a kind of

dishonest practices because she found it

intolerable

i think many actors

probably most of the really good actors

know that feeling

um late in life

when he was really a wrecked person in

most ways brando taught

a class in los angeles called lying for

a living and and the title was

given to this series with a real degree

of self-contempt

um brando i think fell out of love with

acting quite early

on uh on the other hand someone like

john gielgood

was acting into his early 90s and loved

every moment of it

you know and i think he was very lucky

for that

i do think a lot of actors sense

the problem that comes home to them and

you would have to say

that a lot of actors this is a big

generalization so

forgive that part of it but a lot of

actors are not happy people

and i think some of them know that the

unhappiness

is the nervous energy that inspires what

they do and they've had they've had very

difficult

lives none more so

than the lives of a huge majority of

actors

who never even get a job the acting

profession so-called is filled with

people

who have never given up the hope that

one day they would get a breakthrough

and they will get a big part and they

prepare for parts they go to auditions

where they are

humiliated really treated badly and

they stick at it and they are old

impoverished without

pension almost certainly maybe without

social security because they've never

really earned from it

um we should remember that

every actor is born unemployed

and they never escape that fear

that they're going to be unemployed

that's why a lot of actors

make bad decisions about what parts they

will do

because they're terrified of not

being able to play and pretend to be

someone else

or as robert de niro put it most

recently two weeks ago

when he delivered the commencement

address at the graduating

class of nyu's tisch school of the arts

after thanking the assembled faculty and

congratulating the 2015

graduating class he said now you're

which brought down the house and by that

he went on to to say

you know unlike your your fellow

students who graduated the school of

accounting they will have jobs uh unlike

the people who are graduating ny school

of law

and then he stopped and said well enough

about them they're lawyers

but you you made a choice you made a

choice to follow your passions

uh it's going to be a lot of

unemployment it's going to be rejection

and then he said but you knew that going

in and oh that's

questionable i don't know how far

18 year olds really know that the

passion

is intense and it should be it has to be

i mean there are many walks of life like

being a sportsman

where it's the passion at first that

carries you into it and you don't quite

see what will happen when you're 34.

and i think

it's a very frightening situation to

have

a young person come to you and say do

you think i should be an actor

that's happened to me a few times in

life and i've always said

you have to take responsibility for that

decision

i'm sure your parents are hoping that

you will not be

an actor don't put your daughter on the

stage because this is where things look

like anything

and they're right it's a terrible line

of work to get into

and incidentally that was the most

coherent thing i've ever

heard robert de niro say

he is a notoriously bad

interview and and you know he's done

some great great work

not a not a lot of it recently i think

but once upon a time

really great work but if you ask him um

why and how and what the answers are

terrible but yeah but in that he

probably has a lot in common with

i mean again at the risk of generalizing

uh terribly

um it's not uncommon in artists of many

walks of life

dancers ballet dancers opera singers

painters uh even i dare say maybe even a

lot of

writers uh cannot when asked are

actually articulate

what it is they do i know and of course

we're in a culture that that

that insists on asking those questions

so

when madison bongano almost

single-handedly won the world series

there was aaron andrews i think it was

her say how did it feel madison

you know he's simply not made to tell

you

how it feels you were watching how did

it feel for you

you know right and in that sense

i often uh think that um actors along

with other

uh artists uh so the best of them so

uh wonderfully inhabit or exemplify

traits that we wish often on our

we wish on our best day we could inhabit

but of course

their their lines are written for them

by others

they have the gift of a kind of

emotional intelligence to inhabit

a role without perhaps uh overthinking

it

and uh revealing it in a way that isn't

given to us but what we share with them

in line what with what you're saying is

what uh

uh thoreau once uh called uh

about most people leading lives of quiet

desperation yeah

yeah and you know actors get enormous

praise

and people will stop them on the street

in restaurants and say oh i just love

your work it's meant so much to me

and it's very difficult to respond

freshly to that

all the time and a lot of actors hate to

be recognized and

accosted by strangers and for good

reason because there are strangers out

there

who do not have the best intentions

toward actors you know

um in the age of celebrity actors have

suffered because they

they are treated often like famous

people which

they are but it's not what they set out

to do and you make the observation in

your book

that this is as it were a recent

development

that if you and has everything to do

with the invention of photography and

yeah and moving pictures yeah i mean you

know

we assume that acting has always been

there

and it probably has i i invent a scene

for the book of a caveman coming home

after having a battle with a lion and

he's torn to pieces by the land but

he killed the lion and he's thinking as

he goes back

what am i going to tell the people at

home in the cave

why i'm in this state so he begins to

work out a story

which may not be exactly what happened

you know

and maybe it was two lions he killed by

the time he gets back and and

we all of us we we build up what we have

done and and um

we don't have writers we are our own

writer which is a big burden

and actors often get to a point

where they think they don't need the

writer it's a very interesting situation

where an actor who has

really sunk and soaked himself into a

part over a long period

he knows what he has to say by heart and

he begins to think

well if i was this character

i think i'd say something else there and

the whole process of improvisation

and taking off from the script the text

is amazing but you know once upon a time

hardly anyone saw

actors you go back to the 19th century

we know of famous actors

from the 19th century hardly anyone saw

them

and that's why movie changed everything

because not only did everyone see

charlie chaplin and mary pickford and so

on

but they saw them bigger than the side

of a house

they saw them so beautiful so dazzling

so shining with light that the process

of fantasy

was let loose in a very big way and

people started to identify with actors

and they

they thought they were actors too so

it it's encouraged this whole thing in

an extraordinary way and of course

you know i mean uh

i had a student at dartmouth a long time

ago

1970s who was a television fiend

and i asked him how much television a

day

do you watch and he said oh it's seldom

more than seven hours a day

which shocked me terribly at the time i

just recently

asked my son who is 25 he's a writer

he works for a publisher you know him

i said try to estimate how many hours a

day

you spend looking at a screen and he

worked it out

and it was 11 and a half

and that's probably close to the truth

for more of us we are living through

screens and if you think that is the

same as reality

you're wrong and and a big part of this

book and about

really everything i try to do about

acting is about

the way our deal with reality

has altered immeasurably because of the

movies

yeah um

i was uh shift the conversation a little

bit

on the ways in which the boundary

between

the well as it were the mirror that's

held up to us by these screens

yeah and how we look at them and how the

boundary between the world that we

live in and the permeable world that we

enter virtually has elided or blurred

the boundary

between the way we we all of us

act in our own lives and the way in

which those acts

are projected back to us by the stories

that are concocted and

shown to us many years ago

i was in a production at the florence

shrimly little theater

just down the street on allston way it

was a berkeley high school production

of pearly victorious the year was 1968.

uh the first act i had a small

role in the part in the in the play and

it required in the first act that

after i said a few lines that i sat on a

stool

and other people had their lines while i

just simply sat there of course

i was still had to be in character i was

still present

and i have to confess that perhaps the

epiphany that

came to me during this sequence was made

in some measure possible by the

ingestion

some hours earlier in the day of the

hallucinogenic drug

which is do i have any of my children in

the audience anyway

and there came to be a moment when i sat

on the stage

and i looked out at the audience and i

realized

that i was the most powerful person in

the room

and um and it was actually a frightening

but also very

thrilling uh moment when i realized that

i could with a single act

uh destroy or alter the entire history

of the evening for everybody in the room

all i had to do was get up and say

this play is a piece of and jump

off the proscenium

and stride out the hall well whatever

might happen

afterward it would be never forgotten it

would be quite a moment

i thought of that this morning because

we are

this year this month like a couple

months ago is the 150th anniversary of

the assassination of abraham lincoln

by a man who was the inferior actor

whose brother was the most famous actor

of his day john edwin booth

and his brother edmund was something of

a failure as an actor but who

nonetheless

leaps on the balcony of ford's theater

assassinates the president um and

forever upstages his brother

and jumps down onto the stage and jumps

down onto the stage

so if you ask the question does acting

matter

you bet it does i mean there's a guy who

just strode onto the stage of history

and made the theater very much larger

than no one remembers the play

that lincoln was no right well

i mean you're absolutely right and and

um the power

that an actor feels i think i think

sometimes teachers have it you know you

you may occasionally feel you have a

class in the palm of your hand

and you pause to just to sort of let

that sink in

and what you say next is going to be

remarkable

you see what i mean about the way we

present ourselves

and and i think the power is

very much a part of it because

actors are always amazed when you talk

to them as if they were great and famous

and successes very few actors think

their successes

there is a sort of stereotype of the

vain actor

rather like the character in the play

20th century and the film

um acting his head up all the time

showing off and just brow beating other

people

i've never met an actor

and talk to them at any length without

discovering

the desperate insecurity

and i think another part of why they do

it

and why we do what we do is because for

a moment

we may have a feeling an illusion of

power

over the chaos of life and that's a

heady thing that that's

that's an hallucinogenic and

you don't go to prison for it

i'm sure you don't go to prison anymore

but i know

it's 12 33 time passes all too quickly

when the play is really something you

want to

listen to i do want to invite some

questions from the audience

as well so let me do so now i will

repeat the question

unless you're capable of standing up and

and

speak the speech yeah but don't but no

speeches

just the question um so yes young men

there

could everyone hear the question he says

i'm sure you get some blow back uh on on

on your your opinions what's your

opinion of daniel day-lewis

is that fair enough um well the book has

been reviewed

by a very distinguished actor simon

callow and it was a friendly review

i i i don't think i've heard yet of

other actors

saying anything about it and and i think

i think actors are very cautious when

they're talked about in this

this kind of way um i think daniel day

lewis

is one of the really remarkable actors

of our time

i tell a story in the book he did hamlet

at the national theater

oh in the late 80s i think and

he was not the figure he is today but he

did hamlet at the national theater which

was a

a real test because they

you have an audience who know the play

inside out

and in the course of the play he was a

method actor still is

he began to see and hamlet

something that resembled him which was

the loss of a father

day lewis father who was a famous writer

died about 15 years earlier

but he got into that more

and more and other people in the

production could see

that this was making life very difficult

for him

and you know you play a real part you're

walking a tightrope

with sharks in the sea it's it's a

dangerous thing

you're playing with your own self and

one night uh

day lewis started sobbing on stage

and he walked off the un you know the

most

unspeakable thing that an actor can do

just terminate the performance and get

off

and there was a delay of about 15

minutes

and then jeremy northam his understudy

came on

and delivered a superb performance day

lewis

has never been back on stage since

but i think he's a remarkable figure

yeah

um yes

you mentioned um when you were talking

about robert de niro

that previously he'd done some great

acting and

recently not so much i'm interested

what makes great acting tell us more

about what you think worked well

as you say earlier in deniro's career

and what didn't work

so well later in it um

well i think that there was a period of

time

the 70s began in the late 60s but

through the 70s

when de niro in

movie after movie delivered

people that we

immediately recognized

like travis bickle but whom we'd not

really

seen in a film before i think he

enlarged our sense of what

people could be and

i think one way or another he kept the

company

of challenging directors and and he just

did

a run of things and

i think

gradually into the eighties not to say

there weren't some good

pieces of work later but gradually

he became interested

in business became a restaurateur

became a figure in tribeca

really i think got very interested

in money and why should he not be

we most of us are and we live in a

society that is

obsessed with it so why should an artist

not be very interested

in money but i do think over a

long period of time you can see him

getting into

films that once upon a time i don't

think he would have done

and i think his attitude to it has

become

duller a little blunter and i think a

lot of actors of that age

are disillusioned and in part it's

because

it's virtually impossible to make a film

like taxi driver

anymore you know it's amazing that that

was

done and a whole lot of films in that

time were done it was a great time

and and i don't think you can do it now

and doesn't seem

likely to come back what makes a great

actor

well it's clearly

some specially refined

sensitivity that can translate the urge

to pretend

into speech

and maybe most important of all doing

nothing steve talked about his great

performance

many years ago where he was just sitting

a supreme test and not speaking

a supreme test of great acting

is um having

nothing to do and being inescapable

in the process of

wonderful american film called rio bravo

was made in the late 1950s

and john wayne was cast in it and he

said to the director

um well i've read the script howard and

you know

it'll be a great film i think but dean

martin he's got the part

he's the guy trying to recover from

being an alcoholic

what do i do all the time he's got the

shakes and everything and hawke said

you just stand there and look at him

like someone who cares for him

and wayne is one of our most underrated

actors

for good reason he did a lot of other

things that we don't

like or a proof of he was a fantastic

screen actor

and if you look at rio bravo and you

could look at it tonight with a prophet

he just looks at dean martin as if he

cares

you can't beat that in acting you know

you can't beat it in life

how many awkward situations have you

managed to get through in life because

you've just

turned to someone and looked at them

and said i care i don't even said it but

they see it

and i think that's a very important

important thing of acting

i think you also have to say knowing the

right people

being in a situation that de niro was in

in new york in

75 where the people with great ideas for

films come to you

so that's important i think

it's terribly important to have

the right advice actors are surrounded

with entourages and we sort of make fun

of them

and a lot of them are opportunists just

taking advantage of the actor

but a lot of them give golden advice

suggestions

so that's another thing i think luck

is horribly important often when you

take on a film if you're an actor

or a play you're told well

your co-stars will be a b and c

and it will open there on that date

so-and-so will direct it sounds

wonderful sounds like a project made in

heaven

by the time you get there the actors

playing with you are x

y and z someone else is directing it

it's not in the theater you were told

about

it's just not a good place to be with it

and luck plays

a real part in it and um

i think that the people who are

unemployed

live with the dream that oh

if only they could have got sophie's

choice

they'd have knocked it out of the park

you know

well probably probably

almost anyone could have done sophie's

choice and reduced us to tears

and it's the luck of a part that comes

along

and in most acting careers there are

parts that made all the difference

and it often comes down to luck

that you got the part so all of those

things

come into play uh we've got a lot of

questions and

and my name is running out yes ma'am um

are you concerned about the future of

acting given

how terrible hollywood is

i i've given out worrying about

hollywood

i think the impulse to act is going to

last quite a while yet

and i generally agree with your

assessment of hollywood films but i

would say

uh some of the great acting of recent

years

has been brian cranston as walter white

uh gandolfini sterling soprano

claire danes is carrie mathison and and

you know hordes

of others and i think i think there's a

real connection

between the terrible decline in the

american mainstream

movie and the way that we we are

enjoying

a kind of television that may be as good

as television has ever

managed i think in other words the

people with ideas

people like david chase vince gilligan

and

the writers and the actors have gone

into television

which is not often as lucrative

for them but you know actors generally

will go where the good

work is so

i think a lot of people are staying home

watching box sets

rather than go out to movies however

i would have to say that i went to see

uh

mad max this week because i'm a tom

hardy

fan but charlize theron owns the film

and is amazing you know so you could be

surprised

uh yes back there yes sir

are actors born or made

well you could say that about doctors

you could say it about

anybody really i i mean i think it's a

bit of both

um i think the interesting thing about

acting

is that history has taught us that

the educational processes that grow up

for actors which were

very popular in britain teaching you how

to stand on stage and

fence and you know slide down the

banister all that kind of stuff

i'm not sure how useful they are i think

that i think that most

artists rather than go to art school

probably need to get out in life and to

a pretty uncomfortable

version of life because i think they'll

learn more

but i think that probably

any actor

knows that

what happened in the earliest days are

very important i saw a

documentary about ingrid bergman this

week and

the film says some pains to say that

ingrid was shaped by

losing both her parents early and by the

influence they had on her and and the

way in which that

focused her sense of herself in other

words she was a little unhappy as a

child

well anyone here was not unhappy as a

child

but we're not all great actors so you

know

there is something unique in the genes

but um

you never know you never know joseph

welsh

do you all know who joseph welsh was he

was the lawyer

who really pinned mccarthy in

54 i think on television and

he was a lawyer trained as a lawyer

and he spoke well as a lawyer but if you

look at the clip of film

with vole's him and mccarthy there's no

question

he acted better in that scene and not

long after those hearings otto preminger

cast him

as the judge in anatomy of a murder

he'd never dreamed of acting and i think

it's the case that there are people out

there

probably people in here who have never

acted but if the right part came along

might be extraordinary

of course very very very famously uh

desicca and brasson

yes uh were were devoted uh or very

much and and and made a central part of

their filmmaking that's right

and hate testing the non-act hated to

use them again once they've been used

yeah

yeah uh yes sir um

have you ever thought of acting yourself

and any suggestions you might have for

the rest of us

who uh

yeah what should we take an acting class

and could we learn something

and i'm afraid this will have to be the

last question uh

because they have another uh class

coming in

and david will sign some books in the

lobby if you care to

purchase one

i think the ideal cost

on acting would be to gather

a group of people at random

to bring them together let them

meet each other and know each other and

come up with a situation to be discussed

among the group

to cast it but maybe then to cast it in

different ways

and to play with it and begin to think

of well what should the character say

what should the action be

you would make the play from scratch

without any intention of

performing it but i think that that

process

might be an educational process about

life in general

that you would never forget

i think that if i were to do a class

like that that's how i would do it

it is incidentally very close to the way

mike lee makes his films

i have never acted uh professionally

but i am a constant and devoted am a

director

the one thing i think we should leave

you with is that

acting requires spectators

it requires an audience and the act

of acting is not complete just as the

act of writing

is not complete without readers so think

of yourselves as co-collaborators

in the process of why acting matters if

it matters at all

it matters to every one of us and may i

say

i have a vested interest in it of course

but

in every sentence that david has written

in this little book and in his other

books as well you will find

a necessary oxygen thank you very much

for your attention

you