MY ACTING TEACHER

I wanted to be an artist from a young age. I was mad about painting and drawing when I was growing up. Not into reading like my older sisters. I also loved science (yup). So I went to art foundation school. There I discovered printmaking and it was my intention to pursue that as my college degree. But at college I discovered film. The perfect combination of art and technology. For my college degree film I used young people from local schools to play the largely improvised lead roles. It was very basic. After leaving college I got a job in factual TV. I had to quickly learn the art of gathering and organising information to tell a factual story. I loved it.

But then Channel 4 gave me the chance to direct a short conventional drama. Proper script, art department, professional actors, etc. I’d never worked with professional actors. In fact I was scared of them. I kind of knew what I wanted and I certainly knew when I didn’t like what I saw, but I had no way of explaining that to the actors in a helpful way. I found the process excruciating and the short was a serious disappointment. So, despite having absolutely no ambition to be an actor, I decided to train in acting to get over my fear of working with actors.

After months of trying terrible evening classes, an American friend suggest I go to see Jack Waltzer . She said he was an amazing method acting teacher who taught in New York, Paris and London. I signed up for his classes. Jack was a no-bullshit New Yorker with a trademark cap, who’d learnt his craft with the main figures of method acting in the U.S. (Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Sandford Meisner, etc) in the Actor’s Studio in New York. He’d taken what he had learned and created his own system. Despite constant terror, I immediately fell in love with Jack’s process. He was tough, but underneath was kindness and a serious love of the craft. Over the course of the next few years I trained regularly with him, eventually going to New York to do intensive scene study. I’ll never forget the times I spent training with Jack and I never looked back. My whole approach to filmmaking changed. From then on I loved working with actors and I eventually became known as the guy who got powerful and naturalistic preferences from actors and non-actors alike. A big creative weakness had turned into one of my main creative strengths.

I’m forever grateful to Jack and often mention him when I teach. I hope he approves of how I’ve taken what I’ve learned from him, combined it with my directing experience and my mindfulness training, to create a little system of my own.

SMALL PARTS MATTER

When I first started in commercials, I’d been using method acting to get performances for a while. Even from non-actors. Because it was rare at the time, it was hard to explain to agencies why it was important to have authentic performances from an actor even in a short form commercial. This clip from Wayne’s World 2 helped me explain…

DRAMATIC MONOLOGUES DON’T HAVE TO BE PERFORMED IN A ‘DRAMATIC’ WAY

‘The Godfather of Method Acting’, Marlon Brando here plays Paul in Last Tango in Paris, talking about his difficult childhood. According to some reports Brando refused to throughly learn his lines and instead had cue cards posted around the set. Despite that he brings real emotion and authenticity to this scene. Some actors would have chosen a dramatic delivery style for this kind of monologue, but Brando - once lambasted for mumbling - seems to be simply recalling genuine difficult memories. The result is dramatic enough without him needing to add anything. Can you tell if it’s his own real story or the story of the character? I can’t.

THE CAMERA CAN SEE YOUR THOUGHTS

Andie McDowell and James Spader gave arguably career best performances in Soderberg’s brilliant first feature Sex, Lies and Videotape, which won Cannes that year. In this clip McDowell’s character Ann finds her sister’s earring in her bedroom. Slowly it dawns on her that something has been going on between her husband and her sister. I often say to actors ‘The camera can see your thoughts’ - i.e. in screen work there’s no need to try to show the audience the emotions you are having. In fact it’s usually better if you can have real, strong emotion and try to hide it. Because that’s often what people do in real life. Here’s a great example of the audience getting all the information they need by watching the cogs turning in McDowell’s mind.