A Quote by Yael Grobglas
As an actor, the first thing you're taught is, 'Don't look into the camera; ignore it.'
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I've always been taught to completely ignore the camera.
I remember I had an actor friend - a close friend from college - Anthony Zerbe. He sent me a telegram before I started my first movie, 'Cisco Pike.' It said, 'Have a good time. Ignore the camera.' That was the extent of my training.
I worked a lot on 'Conan' as an actor, and when I moved to New York, a lot of my friends were on the first staff of that show. I started doing bit parts, which was the first thing I'd done on camera in front of a live audience.
I don't really look at the skillset of being an actor as different in each medium. It asks a different thing of you as an actor, but for me, I draw upon the same skillset. It's just a different tuning of your tools as to who you're doing it for, whether you're doing it for an intimate camera or an audience of 2,000 people.
You cannot begin to imagine the shock I had when I came down on the floor for the first time. First of all, there's this whole thing about playing sitcom comedy. I didn't want to do the sitcom thing, but I didn't know what else to do. I went slowly. We went through the week of rehearsal, then we got on the floor with the cameras, which I'm used to because of my experience in the old days. Then came camera day, with an audience, and it was stunning, enthralling, exciting and chaotic. I had never experienced anything like that before, as an actor. I was part minstrel, part actor.
[The small camera] taught me energy and decisiveness and immediacy ... The large camera taught me reverence, patience, and meditation.
A huge part of what we do as actors is learning to ignore the camera, as if it's not even there, while simultaneously being very aware of the camera and what it's capturing, because you can give the best performance of your life, but if you do it with the back of your head facing the camera, it's going to get cut from the movie.
Being an actor in TV or movies is different. A film or TV actor, if put in theatre, won't know certain dimensions, while a theatre actor won't know certain things when he comes before the camera. So I think a film actor can learn emoting from this theatre counterpart, while the theatre actor can learn about camera techniques from the film actor.
My first scene ever on camera was a dinner scene and I ate all the food. They yelled cut and the actor across from me was like, 'You know you're going to have to eat the same thing every single time.' I learned the hard way.
We are taught to want a thing. We are taught that having that thing will make us happy. We are taught that having it immediately is the answer. We are taught a corrupted version of success. And love.
I have a really dry sense of humor. I don't think it's funny when people wink at the camera. That's more of an actor thing, just committing to whatever the thing is.
The first thing I did with my very first camera was climb Mt. Fuji. Climbing Mt. Fuji is a lesson in determination and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There were not going to be any pictures without it.
It's a hard job to get the camera to see it like you see it. Sometimes you have it just the way you want it, and then you look in the camera and you don't have the balance. The main thing is to get the camera to see it the way you see it.
One thing I've always been taught at the defensive end is you hit first. In life, you throw the first punch; you don't get punched first. It's the same on defense: You've got to hit first. Do your work early. That's what I was always taught. If you don't do your work early, you're done.
I think, basically, I am an actor. Sometimes I'm an actor who's writing and sometimes an actor who's directing, but I think if I'm forced to fill out a form for my tax return, 'actor' is the first thing I write down.
I think the camera was always my obsession, the camera movements. Because for me it's the most important thing in the move, the camera, because without the camera, film is just a stage or television - nothing.
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