[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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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....
Read More
"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...
Read More
"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; staying curious, enjoying novelty and risk, for these are the drivers of our creativity. They lead us...
Read More[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 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...
Read More“There is no difference between what I experienced, and what is on screen”. Emmanuelle Beart on her work in L'Histoire De Marie Et Julien. Emmanuelle Beart has long been one of my favourite actors – if she's in something, then I'll watch it – infa...
Read More