Expert: Peter Messaline - 4/19/2009

Question
Hi Mr. Messaline,

What exactly is 'good acting' and 'bad acting'. What do good actors do to prepare themselves for their roles and to make sure their performances are realistic? What do bad actors do wrong? Is this just a God given talent or can it be acquired? Can you help me please?

Andrew :)


Answer
There's really no single answer.
Good acting and bad acting are a matter of fashion and context, really. If you have ever seen a filmed recording of a stage play, you'll see how really good actors can look silly when they are aiming at the back of the hall instead of to the camera's eye, just a couple of feet away.
There are still American actors who believe completely in Stanislavski's Method acting and pour scorn on formally-trained actors 'of the old school'.

Every actor, and the same actor in different plays in different places, has a different way of preparing, from a forty-minute dance class and voice warm-up, to the old codger's 'Stiff Scotch and a walk to the stage'.

I don't believe it is a God-given talent. Certainly many very well-known actors don't believe they can act at all, and go in constant fear of being found out finally. Given half-way decent voice control and a lot of work, anyone can become a good actor. Great actors, like great achievers in any area, seem to have been especially blessed with exactly the skills needed. However, Fred Astaire was famously described as 'balding, short, can dance a bit' at his first film audition. He practised for hours, every day, while he was working.

I think a lot of people end up as actors because their original plan fell through. It used to be called 'Running away with the gypsies' in Victorian times. Lots of lawyers qualify and turn to acting, so do doctors (Jonathan Miller for one).

Read about the lives of modern actors. Not "the story of my life from the gutter to superstardom", but down to earth how-to books in the Dewey Decimal 790 section in the ibrary. Don't try to learn stuff from the books, just read lots of them and get a feeling of the way the world works in the actor's life.