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pyatPyat’s Theory of Acting
You may recall that famous scene from Dead Poet’s Society, in which Robin Williams plays a teacher who asks one of his students to read a famous essay on judging the quality of poetry by rating it in two different areas, and basing it’s greatness on the area it covers on a bar graph. He instructs the students to tear the essay from their books, and dance about on their desks like jackanapes, sounding their barbaric yawps to the golden sky-roof as they learn about love and loss and come-of-age.
Or something like that. I never did see the whole thing.
Well, forget that anyway. I rate actors in nearly the same way as the essayist rated poets – except I don’t go so far as to use numerals, and I admit the existence of a more intangible characteristic.
The greatness of an actor may be measured, primarily, on two indexes. The first I call “Depth,” and the second is “Range.” Because I have certain very narrow interests, I shall draw examples from Star Trek and old movies.
Depth
Depth indicates the believability or “force” an actor is able to impart. If the actor really appears to be feeling the emotions he is presenting, that actor has a high Depth rating. Depth is very important for actors who want leading roles. It is one of the things that makes you remember an actor.
Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard) has a very high depth rating. Brent Spiner (Commander Data) does not. Bogart had depth. Ingrid Bergman had depth. Peter O’Toole used to have depth.
Some actors have Depth only when portraying certain emotional states. For example, Cagney could do despair and happiness very well, but stank when it come to romance. This ties in with “Range.”
Range
Range is measure of the ability of the actor to take on new roles, and present characters other than themselves. An actor with great range can play a gangster or a saint, and the character he is portraying will seem totally different. Actors without range seem to play themselves no matter what role they are in. Range is important for ordinary, working actors, but may be totally unimportant for a leading player because people want to see the actor, not the role.
Patrick Stewart does not have range. He only plays Patrick Stewart, but he does it very well. Brent Spiner does have range. He can play many different characters, each totally different in manner than the other. Alas, he has no depth, so he can’t play them very well.
Cagney had some range, though he was typecast as a gangster because of the aforementioned limits on his depth. Ingrid Bergman and Bogart didn’t have range, but we don’t care. Elisha Cook Jr. had range and depth out the wazoo, but he was unfortunately a scrawny runt and got stuck playing minor roles for 60 years. Peter Lorre had no range. Charles Laughton had no range at all, but more on that later.
The Intangibles – Charisma
This last one makes or breaks a leading actor. Beyond acting skill is the actual personality of the actor, his/her personal appeal and presence.
Patrick Stewart has charisma and depth. Marina Sirtis (Counselor Troi) has neither range nor depth (usually), but she has charisma, so she can overcome that.
Charles Laughton was a terrible actor in most regards. He couldn’t remember his lines, and he usually just read them when he did, but he had an interesting personality and presence that people liked watching.
Peter O’Toole has charisma like no one’s business. Sadly, that’s all he has these days. He’s phoned in every movie since the early 80s, but it’s okay because he’s so damn charming and condescendingly eye-twinkly about it. “Yes, I suck, old darling, but aren’t I a devilish old wag?”
Some actors are lucky enough to combine ALL of the above traits.
I offer the examples of Michael Caine and Elisha Cook Jr. as ideal actors, one a leading man, the other a working actor.
Note also that some actors may suddenly develop or lose these traits over the course of their career. Tom Cruise was great in Jerry Maguire, but not so hot in a lot of other films. A lot of this has to do with DIRECTION. A bad actor with a good director can become good.
You may recall that famous scene from Dead Poet’s Society, in which Robin Williams plays a teacher who asks one of his students to read a famous essay on judging the quality of poetry by rating it in two different areas, and basing it’s greatness on the area it covers on a bar graph. He instructs the students to tear the essay from their books, and dance about on their desks like jackanapes, sounding their barbaric yawps to the golden sky-roof as they learn about love and loss and come-of-age.
Or something like that. I never did see the whole thing.
Well, forget that anyway. I rate actors in nearly the same way as the essayist rated poets – except I don’t go so far as to use numerals, and I admit the existence of a more intangible characteristic.
The greatness of an actor may be measured, primarily, on two indexes. The first I call “Depth,” and the second is “Range.” Because I have certain very narrow interests, I shall draw examples from Star Trek and old movies.
Depth
Depth indicates the believability or “force” an actor is able to impart. If the actor really appears to be feeling the emotions he is presenting, that actor has a high Depth rating. Depth is very important for actors who want leading roles. It is one of the things that makes you remember an actor.
Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard) has a very high depth rating. Brent Spiner (Commander Data) does not. Bogart had depth. Ingrid Bergman had depth. Peter O’Toole used to have depth.
Some actors have Depth only when portraying certain emotional states. For example, Cagney could do despair and happiness very well, but stank when it come to romance. This ties in with “Range.”
Range
Range is measure of the ability of the actor to take on new roles, and present characters other than themselves. An actor with great range can play a gangster or a saint, and the character he is portraying will seem totally different. Actors without range seem to play themselves no matter what role they are in. Range is important for ordinary, working actors, but may be totally unimportant for a leading player because people want to see the actor, not the role.
Patrick Stewart does not have range. He only plays Patrick Stewart, but he does it very well. Brent Spiner does have range. He can play many different characters, each totally different in manner than the other. Alas, he has no depth, so he can’t play them very well.
Cagney had some range, though he was typecast as a gangster because of the aforementioned limits on his depth. Ingrid Bergman and Bogart didn’t have range, but we don’t care. Elisha Cook Jr. had range and depth out the wazoo, but he was unfortunately a scrawny runt and got stuck playing minor roles for 60 years. Peter Lorre had no range. Charles Laughton had no range at all, but more on that later.
The Intangibles – Charisma
This last one makes or breaks a leading actor. Beyond acting skill is the actual personality of the actor, his/her personal appeal and presence.
Patrick Stewart has charisma and depth. Marina Sirtis (Counselor Troi) has neither range nor depth (usually), but she has charisma, so she can overcome that.
Charles Laughton was a terrible actor in most regards. He couldn’t remember his lines, and he usually just read them when he did, but he had an interesting personality and presence that people liked watching.
Peter O’Toole has charisma like no one’s business. Sadly, that’s all he has these days. He’s phoned in every movie since the early 80s, but it’s okay because he’s so damn charming and condescendingly eye-twinkly about it. “Yes, I suck, old darling, but aren’t I a devilish old wag?”
Some actors are lucky enough to combine ALL of the above traits.
I offer the examples of Michael Caine and Elisha Cook Jr. as ideal actors, one a leading man, the other a working actor.
Note also that some actors may suddenly develop or lose these traits over the course of their career. Tom Cruise was great in Jerry Maguire, but not so hot in a lot of other films. A lot of this has to do with DIRECTION. A bad actor with a good director can become good.
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 10:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 10:43 am (UTC)Anyway, I'm trying to decide whether I agree with you or not - but I'm stuck by the fact that I think every reference you make, other than Trek, is to something I'm not familiar with - I don't even have a clear sense of who Elisha Cook Jr. and Charles Laughton are (I keep getting Laughton and Sidney Greenstreet mixed up, for some reason) and I never saw Jerry MacGuire...
Need more data... who else do you think of having one or more of these characteristics?
Just on the surface of it though, I don't think you place enough importance on difficulties with type casting - I've never seen Stewart cast as anything other than Stewart because he's a tall, imposing, bald, Englishman so he gets cast as a tall, imposing, bald, Englishman.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 11:20 am (UTC)Okey dokey. Let's see... using current male leads. Some of these actors, BTW, fit more than one category, and with all of them these traits are dependent on a given role.
Depth: Gary Oldman
Range: Vincent D'Onofrio
Charisma: Hugh Grant
Actors with primarily depth are often stuck as character actors. Patrick Stewart is a really successful character actor, IMHO.
Actors with primarily range are often stuck as bit players and second bananas, but they are consistently working.
Actors with charisma often make good leads, even if they have no range and depth, because people like watching them.
I keep getting Laughton and Sidney Greenstreet mixed up, for some reason
Understandable. :) Greenstreet could enunciate his lines and was taller.
I've never seen Stewart cast as anything other than Stewart because he's a tall, imposing, bald, Englishman so he gets cast as a tall, imposing, bald, Englishman.
I've seen him play a short Russian with a lisp - Lenin. He was pretty much Captain Picard with a soul patch. :)
And he's not very tall at all - 5'10". He just EMOTES tall.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 11:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 12:37 pm (UTC)It's so rare that any production would give an actor the chance to step much outside their immediately obvious physical/cultural type or their particular niche. That's why it's so magical to see Bill Murray give a good Polonius in Almereyda's _Hamlet_
Even actors you describe as having range tend to get type cast as having range in a way - type cast as character actors - and once that happens, pretty much the best you can hope for is F. Murray Abraham's career - one really big supporting role amongst a thousand 'hey it's that guy' bits.
I think it's important to keep the movie industry's culture in perspective - the idea of capitalism is that the better you are at something, the more demand there is for your services so the more money you make. For several years in the 80s and 90s I believe the highest paid actor (and therefore, according to theory, the best) was Arnold Schwarzenagger - and after that, I think it was Jim Carrey. 'Nuff said.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 01:55 pm (UTC)Watch Jeffrey (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113464/) . Really. ;o) But actually, come to think of it, I'm not entirely sure if this was so great because it was range, or because watching Patrick Stewart playing Gay Patrick Stewart was just really amusing. ;o)
no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 02:39 pm (UTC)As I said, my system is dependent on individual roles. You take the roles over the given career of the actor as you get a general idea of range and depth. Charisma is usually obvious if the actor has any substantial part.
And I will admit it is more useful as a descriptive system than a practical theory of acting.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 09:49 pm (UTC)By the way, you also need to see Brent Spiner in other roles. I don't think he's got nearly as much depth as Patrick Stewart, who is just fantastic, but honestly, in playing Data he is *encouraged* to have no depth. That's practically the point of the character - no emotional depth at all.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 10:03 pm (UTC)Not to say he did a bad job!