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The Great Acting Blog: “Actors’ Craft, Not Directors’ Tricks”

17.09.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 5 Comments

A piece in the Guardian caught my eye recently when it brought into focus once again the actor-director relationship. The broad gist of it questioned whether some of the lengths directors go to in order to get performances from their actors go too far,...

The Great Acting Blog: “The Disappointment Trade-Off”

16.09.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 30 Comments

They say that most people are disappointment averse, that they're more likely to choose the option with the guaranteed reward as oppose to the one which may offer a higher reward but contains some element of risk. The guaranteed reward ensures that we avoid that...

The Great Acting Blog: “How Scriptwriting Can Improve Your Acting”

15.09.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 6 Comments

Writing scripts is one of the best ways to practice craft and keep it sharp, because screenwriting encompasses some of the key skills used in acting. A script is basically an improvisation that gets written down and crafted. Primarily, scriptwriting exercises your imagination intensely. It also...

The Great Acting Blog: “The Meaning Of Pressure”

14.09.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 2 Comments

I would not go so far as to say that actors are adrenaline junkies, but certainly the kind of person who goes into acting is the kind of person who enjoys pressure. This pressure is contained in the life and in the work. On stage or in...

The Great Acting Blog: “Commit To The Conversation Or Remain Silent”

13.09.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 1 Comment

I was in a shop recently when I caught the tail end of a conversation between the manager and a sales assistant. I say conversation but this was more of a monologue by the manager. It appears that he was telling the girl to fix...

The Great Acting Blog: “Are They So Worthless?”

12.09.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 28 Comments

Being an actor is about telling the truth, in fact, cultivating personal truth is what actors spend a lot of their time doing. Then we reach out, offering the best of ourselves and hope we hit the mark. We do so with the best intentions...

The Great Acting Blog: “How To Keep Your Head”

11.09.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 3 Comments

Acting, as we know, can be a degrading business. Actors are vulnerable because effectively they're selling themselves, their face, their personality, their body, and so if they are slighted or treated shabbily it can be more painful than it would be in most professions. Directors can...

The Great Acting Blog: “The Reason For Jack Nicholson’s Career Longevity”

10.09.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 25 Comments

Inevitably, Jack Nicholson's retirement has created a deluge of responses in the press. One in The Observer piqued me in particular, especially a comment it made about him which I've pasted below: - "the actor is not disappearing into his work so much as using his...

The Great Acting Blog: “Overcoming Self-Inflicted Unhappiness”

09.09.2013 , The Great Acting Blog , 27 Comments

All actors go through difficult periods in their lives. There are times when we feel we are never going to work again and other times when we seem to suffer indignity after indignity. The spin-off from this unhappiness is that the downsides of acting (financial...

The Generosity Of Roberto Benigni

08.09.2013 , Noirish Project , 2 Comments

“It is a sad and beautiful world” – Roberto Benigni in Down By Law To celebrate the completion of my feature film, Noirish Project, I held a screening of Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law. It was an important film for me when I was in my teens...

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