The Great Acting Blog: “There Is No Such Thing As A Transformational Actor”

“There is no difference between what I experienced, and what is on screen”. – Emmanuelle Beart on her work in Jacques Rivette’s L’Histoire De Marie Et Julien.

Beart has a wonderfully complex screen persona. Her great beauty is offset by a certain moodiness and a certain lonliness, the sense that something has been lost forever. At times she is vulnerable. On the other hand, she’s intense, she poses a threat, there’s an edge, a lack of sentimentality and a ruthlessness. We’re not entirely sure whether she can be trusted, yet we want to follow her story anyway. The through line which enables these qualities to hang together, is that she is constantly wrestling between the intuitive and the intellectual (I’m talking about during her performance here). There’s a tension which arises from wanting to understand what is happening in the scene during the moment, analysing it, and the need to keep the scene moving forward by just doing the thing. This tension gives rise to a certain energy, and it’s interesting to observe her when she is not speaking lines but listening to her scene partner: she is full of energy, and often unsure where to put that energy, sometimes it is dealt with by handling an object, or a movement of the eyes. There is a scene in The Story Of Marie And Julien where she silently observes Jerzy Radziwilowicz reading a letter, she has such restless energy it’s actually quite shocking. And when I say restless I don’t mean tickish or skittish, she is actually quite restrained, it is more a case of the small movements within this restraint which are compelling, and help to create her intensity. The important point about Beart however (and herein lies her talent), is that she allows her inner conflicts to express themselves while the scene unfolds, she doesn’t try to pretend they aren’t there, or try to portray herself as a person-without-flaws (which is what characterization is all about) – this is why her work is intense and compelling. This is great acting.

There’s no such thing as a transformational actor: when an actor appears in a film or a play, what you get is that actor – what they are, the actor does not “become” somebody else**. A “constructed” performance, ie – one where a character is designed and applied by the actor, smoothes out and hides the actors’ true personality –  they are trying to repress the true complexity of their personality, and, in so doing, try to sell us the idea that they are fully in control of everything. But they needn’t do so. We are all complex, which means we are all interesting, and the truth of the actor’s personality will always be more compelling than a constructed personality. However, it requires great courage to reveal our true nature publicly, but if we can learn to do so, our performances will be far richer, as will the audiences experience of them.

** The character exists from the audience’s point-of-view, as an illusion which they willingly buy into.

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