Stage Acting Versus Film Acting (Part One)
A friend of mine, who is a now a successful film actor, tells a story that when he was fresh out of college with his degree in theater acting, his first professional job was a role in a low-budget feature film. He determined to knock ’em dead. He studied and restudied the script, analyzed his character, an planned his performance and his choices line by line. As is the case on a depressingly high number of films, he got no help from the director. Later, when my friend saw the finished film, he was surprised and embarrassed that in most of his scenes he was not believable. He looked especially bad in the scenes he had rehearsed the most diligently and in which he had carefully made his choices. Why was this?
