I don’t really follow the Academy Awards as much as I used to. I find the awards ceremony increasingly tedious and formulaic. And, of course, now that so many of the dozens of entertainment industry awards ceremonies are televised, the Academy Awards are just one of many.
It used to be that I watched the Oscars for the fashions. Back during the last gasps of the studio system there were still a few leading actresses who’d come up through that system and you’d be practically guaranteed to be treated to some very attractive women transmuted into goddesses with incredibly gorgeous clothes, jewelry, makeup, and hairdressing.
Now, as glamor gives way to pornography, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in a vain attempt to retain a certain amount of decorum, has placed such constraints on the fashions worn by the artists who attend the ceremony that it’s sucked the life out of the fashions and I find them dull and uninteresting. Add to that that, except for a few like Selma Hayek, Hallie Berry, Julianne Moore, Scarlett Johannson, and Kate Winslet, I find that so many of the leading ladies either look like female impersonators or posters for refugee relief.
The rest of this post is less a comment than a question.
Most moviegoers aren’t aware of it but there are different schools of acting. The oldest, still prevalent in Britain, is what’s called the “stagecraft schoolâ€â€”basically a collection of “tricks of the tradeâ€, things that work and can only be collected by an agile mind over a period of years of experience on stage and in front of the camera. Anthony Hopkins, Judy Dench, and Helen Mirren are all great exponents of the stagecraft school of acting.
Around the turn of the last century Konstantin Stanislavski, the administrator of the Moscow Art Theatre, began to formulate his own system, a set of rules or disciplines, by which a performer can communicate with an audience. The Stanislavski System continues to be important, mostly in Continental Europe. I won’t go into the excruciating detail of the Stanislavski system, physical action, the superobjective, etc. It’s a system for creating realistic characters.
Some people confuse the Stanislavski System with The Method, a development of the Stanislavski System developed and promoted in the 1940’s and 1950’s by Lee Strasberg in his The Actor’s Studio. Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro are all practitioners of method acting. It’s mostly influential in America.
There are lots of other acting methods e.g. the Suzuki System, the Mamet System (IIRC William H. Macy is a Mamet System actor) and so on.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed it but, over the last twenty years or so, the British and, by extension, the stagecraft school, have received a disproportionately large share of Oscars. So here’s my question: why? If The Method is so great, why don’t more Academy voters appreciate it more? Or, conversely, if other methods are more effective in communicating with audiences, why is The Method still so highly regarded among actors in America?
I think I know part of the answer: it’s very, very difficult in the United States for a young performer to get the experience that’s required for the stagecraft method. There just aren’t enough venues. Kate Winslet, on the other hand, is not only young and beautiful: she’s a member of an English acting family and has been acting in small, local and regional theatres in the UK practically since the day she was born.
Another part of the answer may be that, although actors and actresses nominate the acting awards (and Best Picture, of course) the entire Academy votes and The Method is more popular with performers than it is with audiences.
What do you think?
I’d heard of the various schools of acting, but not many of the details, so I’m speaking here as a total layman.
I think acting really comes down to two things – natural talent and practical experience.
First, some people just have a knack for it. Many young and child actors seem to have a gift. I think many of the best actors also have a natural gift for acting. On the other hand, I think some actors, like Keanu Reeves, have very little talent, and it shows. Of course, I haven’t seen him in oscar contention.
Natural talent combined with a lot of experience actually acting seems to be the best combination. The actors you mentioned seem to fit this mold and it seems like a natural conclusion considering the cream at the top of many other professions have both natural talent and experience. I think breadth of experience matters as well. In the stage actors have opportunities to play a wide variety of roles, but in Hollywood, actors are often type-cast into one type of role. As a result, many hollywood actors play essentially the same person/personality in the various roles they have in their career. De Niro is a great actor, for example, but the tough-guy roles he plays are very similar in both the type of character and the way in which he plays them – so much so that it seems to me that de Niro almost takes over the character itself.
So, I’d say the best actors have natural talent and a lot of experience, which would seem to support your observation that English actors have been awarded more top honors.
I went through a mercifully brief experiment with acting. I came out of it very impressed with actual actors.
I’m doing a documentary where I’ll be asked to do two things: engage in debate with people who will often be my intellectual betters, and do some scripted bits. The first part doesn’t bother me at all. But oh Lord, working from a script, hitting marks, oy! I’m not saying actors all deserve 20 million a movie, but they are working out there.
I come from a show biz family and I was very active in theater into my late twenties; practically all of my high school associates became professional actors for example here and here. I studied acting and directing fairly seriously at one point. Fortunately, my good sense prevailed.
As with professionals of all ilks, the good ones make it look easy. This is why so many kids think they can play centerfield for the Yankees. Anyway, I recall reading an article about Anthony Hopkins. In preparation for a grueling physical scene from “The Edge” (that great bear movie- jk), Alec Baldwin spent an hour exercising, trying to look vanguished. Hopkins did nothing. The scene was called. Hopkins immediately looked exhausted. He performed flawlessly. Baldwin marveled.
Since good acting is transparent, it’s difficult for amateur fans like me to be aware of acting technique. Michael Caine once said that the secret to movie acting is not blinking. Until then, I’d never noticed that film actors rarely blinked (unless they’re supposed to).
It’s a fascinating subject, Dave, of which I know little. Perhaps it’s analogous to trial lawyers. You can teach techniques to the average lawyer that will greatly improve his performance. But great trial lawyers are probably born, developing and honing their own styles, seemingly without effort.
Kriez,
Your comment on Michael Caine reminded me of a show I saw several years ago where he explained different acting techniques. Some of the were subtle, yet very effective, and he demonstrated differences such as how looking at or past the camera with one or the other (which changes the angle of the face relative to the camera) can have a big, but subtle, effect on the performance.
I freely admit I know almost nothing about acting, so it’s always interesting to learn something new about another profession.
Exactly, Andy. Until watching Caine, it never occurred to me that stage acting and film acting were different, for example. I was just fat, dumb and happy, eating my popcorn and sipping my coke.