A Quote by Jonny Lee Miller
There is nothing, not a thing, like the process of creating a character for the stage - you can't get it anywhere else. Unless you're totally method and spend six months living your life like your character for a film, the theater is the place to get that intense acting experience.
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Playing a TV character for seven years is almost like when you do a play. You live, breathe, and everything else with that character 24-7 for six months or four months or whatever, and that gets very deep in your blood. When you do a TV character for seven years, that's a long time. It becomes a seminal era in your life.
In film, the camera can get an array of shots so the audience can see the emotion the character is giving off. Using close-ups on the character's face really helps get the message across. On stage, you can't do that. But the stage has that live feeling that you can't get anywhere else because the audience is right there.
There were time when I was into method acting that I did have moments of residual character emotions, because the method bases your emotional responses as a character on emotional experiences from your real life.
In film, the camera can get an array of shots so the audience can see the emotion the character is giving off. Using close-ups on the characters face really helps get the message across. On stage, you cant do that. But the stage has that live feeling that you cant get anywhere else because the audience is right there.
Obviously, when you're in theater, you have to be in character. You have to prepare for the unexpected. You have to be able to react to things that don't necessarily happen every night, or aren't supposed to happen every night. And you have to react to it in character. In six months, 192 shows, those things did happen. And the experience of that, the ability to stay in character, I feel like I've learned a great deal.
When I'm creating a character, it's a little bit like what my theater teachers used to tell me about Stanislavsky, like if you're using sense memory to do a scene - if you have to cry in a scene, you try to remember something in your life that made you cry and you use that in order to get the tears.
What I realized is that it doesn't matter how big or small your film is. The actual filmmaking process, the actual storytelling, it's still the same thing. It's still all about creating characters that you like and creating moments that get you excited or get you tense.
Your body is not your own when you are acting in a film. It becomes your character's body. Everyone sees you like that and builds up perceptions of you that have nothing to do with you.
TV is longer form, and that's sometimes a positive, and sometimes a more challenging thing. As an actor, you want to be able to have your character develop or transform in some way. When you're acting on a show over the course of multiple seasons, you get to watch a character really grow and change, and go from one place to an entirely other place.
If you understand your character and feel like it's a collaborative process, you're more inclined to dive into the deep end and fight for your character and feel passionate about your character, and that passion comes across on screen.
Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don't let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months.
I am proud to say I'm a director's composer. People do method acting, I do method composing. I like to get into the skin of the character and go deep into the director's vision.
I think theatre is by far the most rewarding experience for an actor. You get 4 weeks to rehearse your character and then at 7:30 pm you start acting and nobody stops you, acting with your entire soul.
Some people have heard of The Method, which originally goes back to Stanislavski... he gave you six major pointers whereby you became that character and tried to fool your mind psychologically. That's it in a nutshell. Daniel Day Lewis is an example of somebody like that who stays in character between takes.
I was raised in New York City and raised in the New York City theater world. My father was a theater director and an acting teacher, and it was not uncommon for me to have long discussions about the method and what the various different processes were to finding a character and exploring character and realizing that character.
Acting offers me an outlet. Here is the perfect opportunity to spend fleeting moments becoming an entirely different person; to experience a character entirely unlike myself, but to also make such a character a part of me. There is no routine here; there is no boredom. How does one get bored of life?
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