| | SW:Sometimes good actors, with a good script, and a good director can rise above their personal limitations and give a powerful performance - they can effectively portray someone totally different than they are. That's what I'm hoping for. I have tickets for Friday and I'm excited.
Well ,yes, that is what actors do. We speak of them being "typecast" as when they play the same role - hero, villain, fool, sidekick, jilted lover, etc. - over and over. Also, there is a tendency for actors to just be themselves. This is especially true of Big Name Stars like Meg Ryan or Tom Cruise who just go through movie after movie not actually acting like someone else. I think that Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, and Robin Williams are extraordinary actors who do take on roles. You get that with people who have strong stage experience.
The best actors - not the ones on the tabloids - you don't see them between movies, they go into the boonies and act in summer stock and otherwise continue to "take lessons." Actors take lessons the way anyone continues to practice their craft between employments.
But they are actors. The roles they play are not the people they are. That's what acting is. Largely, they bring other people's stories - the author's stories, the stories of the characters - to life. In the movie Team America, Alec Baldwin says, "Let's all read newspapers, then go on talk shows, and repeat what we read like it was our own ideas." That is an unkind generalization, but it frames the discussion.
One of our favorite shows was NUMB3RS. David Krumholtz had no idea what he was talking about. His costars were a bit more ahead of the game. Navi Rawat said that she went online to mathematics websites to read the discussions to get some feel. She did better. Oddly enough, perhaps, Judd Hirsch actually earned a bachelor's in physics before becoming an actor. Dylan Bruno, who played the "dumb jock" Colby Granger, earned a BS in environmental engineering at MIT. Diane Farr who played FBI agent Megan Reeves came to the show from Rescue Me, which she said she found physically challenging and appreciated the new desk job. I think she did a great job actually acting like an FBI agent. Having acted as a firefighter, she got the feel for it. If I met her at my local field office, I would accept her prima facie long before I would fall for Sandra Bullock.
YouTube has no clips of Jon Lovitz as SNL's "Master Thespian". Aha! Acting!! Thank you...
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