Does Your Process Make You Stronger? | The Great Acting Blog
Perhaps time is a faulty measurement of progress. Often, we set our most important goals to a time-frame: 'In 2022, I'm going to achieve X, Y and Z...
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The Great Acting Blog
Jean-Paul Belmondo: 9th April 1933 – 6th September 2021
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="463"] Jean-Paul Belmondo: 9th April 1933 - 6th September 2021[/caption] For those of us driven and intoxicated by the history of cinema, Belmondo is one of those figures who transcends his own work. He forms part of a tapestry of cinematic atmospheres; haunting...
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Working Off The Other Actor | The Great Acting Blog
Working off the other actor - what is it? In performance you focus on what the other actor is doing and respond accordingly moment-by-moment. Your performance is created in-the-moment. This is very different to the 'acting-as-presentation' model, where the actor maps out every gesture, every inflection in...
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Marcello Mastroianni In The Assassin – Elegance And Truth In Acting – The Great Acting Blog
Marcello Mastroianni possessed the rare ability to work his moment-to-moment impulses in concert with the dramatic structure of a scene. Many actors lose their shape in search of 'naturalism', while others are overly technical and lose creativity. With Mastroianni however, his performances are seemless. It is...
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Cary Grant And The Actor’s Individuality | The Great Acting Blog
Performance is the artistic expression of the actor's individuality, as exemplified by Cary Grant. Cary Grant was criticised for being a "conservative actor" - there was a feeling among critics that his work stayed within the light-comedic persona that had made him so fantastically popular, rarely...
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Artistic Drive – The Cary Grant Paradox | The Great Acting Blog
Artistic drive is essential if we are to achieve all that we need to - this post looks at the experience of Cary Grant in order to find it's key. Cary Grant was actually born as Archie Leach - a poor, crummy kid in Bristol, England....
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Be Like Fire – A Lesson From 2020 | The Great Acting Blog
"A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it." - Marcus Aurelius At the start of 2020 I wrote a post about preparing for the difficulties of the year ahead, 'Be Extraordinary, Accept Adversity', and it contained the following...
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Continuous Artistic Growth – The Expansive Mindset Of Ingrid Bergman
"I belong to this make make-believe world of film and theatre. I never want to leave it." - Ingrid Bergman Continuous artistic growth requires an expansive mindset. That is;Â staying curious, enjoying novelty and risk, for these are the drivers of our creativity. They lead us...
Read MoreCatherine Deneuve In The Truth – Artistic Longevity | The Great Acting Blog
[caption id="attachment_175665685" align="aligncenter" width="682"] Catherine Deneuve in The Truth.[/caption] Jimmy Stewart once said that he would quit acting when he no longer liked himself on screen. I thought this was a pretty good rule to go by and so I adopted it for myself. I also...
Read MoreActing As If… | The Great Acting Blog
Acting As If is when you take the action you have chosen for the scripted scene you are to perform, and use it in a fictional scenario you create from your own imagination - 'It's as if...
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