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This book offers a critical account of film performances by nonprofessional actors. Nonprofessional actors — actors without previous acting training or experience — have performed in films since the days of the Lumière brothers. Generally associated with currents such as Early Soviet Cinema, Italian Neorealism and New Argentine Cinema, nonprofessional actors also feature prominently in the works of celebrated directors including Pier Paolo Pasolini, Robert Bresson and Joanna Hogg. Since the turn of the century and the rise of digital filmmaking, the performances of nonprofessional actors have remained a staple of independent cinemas from all over the world, including films associated with the loose trend often referred to as Slow Cinema. Despite their enduring presence in acclaimed and widely discussed films, nonprofessional actors have received scant scholarly attention. This book proposes to analyse exemplary nonprofessional performances from across the history of cinema as a means of illuminating their significance and celebrating the performers'contributions to the films.

From the celebrated film critic and author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, a fascinating look at some of the cinema's finest actors and how they approach their craft'Open to any page and you'll become enthralled by the...tales of forgotten film lore, childhood memories, sexy gossip.”—Philip Kaufman, directorMeryl Streep, Marlon Brando, Anthony Hopkins, Carey Mulligan. When we watch these remarkable actors in a performance, we see only Sophie, Stanley Kowalski, Hannibal Lecter, or Cassie from Promising Young Woman. How are they able to transform our world in this way? How and why do they do what they do?In Acting Naturally, David Thomson sheds light on the actors who have shaped the film industry. He shrewdly analyzes these stars—among them, James Dean, Nicole Kidman, Denzel Washington, Louise Brooks, Riz Ahmed, Sir Laurence Olivier, Viola Davis, and Jean Seberg—revealing how a sly smile, an extra-long pause, even a small gesture of the hand can draw in an audience. And he takes us behind the scenes to examine casting and all the other moments leading up to “Action!”Through intimate anecdote, humor, and the insight born of a lifetime watching and analyzing film, Thomson explores the real reasons why we go to the movies and looks at how they influence our lives. This book is not only necessary reading for an insider's view of the industry but also a surprising investigation of the relationship between acting and living.

Shots to the Heart explores how the work of the film actor inspires, provokes, and refigures our feelings and thoughts about the cinema. The book closely considers the art of film performance, the combined effect of actors'gestures, movements, and expressions, in relation to the viewer's sensitive and creative eye. As discrete moments of performative incarnation on-screen slowly accumulate, actors also become figures of meaning. For many viewers, the screen figures which result from performance are simply called “characters.” But in thinking about cinema, the words “character” and “characterization” signal post-experiential abstractions: when we quickly identify characters or summarize characterization after seeing a movie, we are leaping over the emotions felt through our loving attention to the bodies flitting through a film. Such concepts can never replace a careful regard for what actors on-screen are actually doing, moment-by-moment, gesture-by-gesture. Shots to the Heart is finally not too concerned with the narrative machinations within which these gestures are inscribed, and even resists the attempt to assemble these descriptions of performance into a “full” account of the film as a whole. What Shots to the Heart does is let little moments of performance live on, in writing, as they are strung together alongside performative fragments from other films, in a kind of alternative, cinephilic account of what was felt as actors moved on the screen before us.

American actress Aline MacMahon's youth was spent honing her talents while performing at local events in New York City. After popular stage success on Broadway, she headlined a touring company in Los Angeles, where she was discovered by legendary Hollywood director Mervyn LeRoy and put under contract to Warner Brothers.During the 1930s and 1940s, MacMahon starred in countless films and was among the most influential actors of the era, her talent revered as highly as peers Katherine Hepburn, Paul Muni, and Bette Davis. Her pioneering use of a new acting style brought to America from Russia by Konstantin Stanlisavsky—now widely known as the Method—began a revolution on the screen and made her an industry darling. Although popular with audiences and widely lauded for her versatile, naturalistic style, MacMahon's despair at the lack of challenging roles and fallout from her political activism would soon dim her star in the most tragic of ways. Blacklisted during the Communist Red Scare of the 1950's she became the subject of covert FBI surveillance and was denied work for many years.John Stangeland's biography of this unique actress, Aline MacMahon, offers an insightful look into the life and oeuvre of this largely overlooked talent and how the atmosphere of Hollywood's golden age created an inescapable blueprint for a career nearly destroyed by politics and fear.

A lively, conversational textbook dedicated to the art of acting from a master teacher. Act: The Modern Actor's Handbook is the result of 30 years of one of North America's most renowned acting teachers teaching some of the world's most talented screen actors. This is a full tour through the concepts at the heart of Rotenberg's techniques: states of being, primaries and secondaries, images that you elaborate up or distill down, modifiers, actions and beats, and more. Although his methods loosely draw on the great acting teachers like Hagen and Meisner back to Stanislavski, he teaches new techniques suited to the best of today's screen actors. This is a major new work in the actor's library and will be pulled off the shelf time and again to find that key into a scene, to prepare for an audition, or to find that right technique to make the art come alive again.

Acting for the Camera: Back to One is a'how to'book with practical steps to achieve a professional performance on camera. The book focuses on four distinct areas: how to prepare the character, how to execute the technical responsibilities that will assist the editor in creating the on-camera performance in post-production, tips from industry professionals, and how to create effective self-tape auditions. Part One: The Character's World is packed with tools to analyze the script and fully prepare the character before arriving on set. Part Two: The Actor's World focuses on developing technical acting skills for the camera that assist the pre- and post-production teams to create a dynamic on-screen performance. In Part Three: The Professional World, industry professionals provide tips from inside the film/TV audition room and how to navigate a career in the acting business. The final section, Part Four: Self-Tape Like a Pro, outlines how to build a self-tape studio in the privacy of your own home and submit high-quality self-tape auditions that will help you stand out from the competition. Written for students enrolled in Acting for the Camera courses, Acting for the Camera: Back to One explores techniques that can be practiced and mastered by actors of all levels, from the moment they audition for the part through to when they hear that director call'cut!'

Robert De Niro at Work is the first critical study to examine how Robert de Niro, perhaps the finest screen actor of his generation, works with screenplays to imagine, prepare and denote his performance. In categorising the various ways in which De Niro works with a screenplay, this book will re-examine the relationship between actor and text. This book considers the screenplay as above all a working document and a material object, present at every stage of the filmmaking process. The working screenplay goes through various iterations in development and exists in many versions on set, each adapted and personalised for the specific use of the individual and their role. As the archive reveals, nobody works more closely with the script than the actor, and no actor works more on a script than De Niro.

In Search of Marie-Antoinette in the 1930s follows Austrian biographer Stefan Zweig, American producer Irving Thalberg, and Canadian-American actress Norma Shearer as they attempt to uncover personal aspects of Marie-Antoinette's life at the French court in the late eighteenth-century and to dramatize them in biography, cinema, and performance for public consumption during the 1930s. The first chapter establishes the core subject as an inquiry into the respective contributions of Zweig, Thalberg, and Shearer in formulating an “objective” or “authentic” image of “Marie-Antoinette.” The three chapters that follow examine in some detail how Zweig pursued research and drafted the psychological biography at his Salzburg home, Thalberg acquired film rights to the best-selling book and fought the censors to preserve the more sensational aspects of the screenplay at the Culver City studio, and Shearer worked closely with a new producer to give the script a strong romantic angle and to perform the character of the queen on the sound stage. The professionals'research standards and strategic objectives are weighed in the formulation of a new myth at once sensitive to the historical record and suited to the leisure market.

Elizabeth Taylor's electrifying performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The milkshake scene in There Will be Blood. Leonardo DiCaprio's turn as Arnie in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? What makes these performances so special? Eloquently written and engagingly laid out, Murray Pomerance answers the tough question as to what makes an exceptional, or virtuosic performance. Pomerance intensively explores virtuosic performance in film, ranging from classical works through to contemporary production, and gives serious consideration to structural problems of dramatization and production, actorial methods and tricks, and contingencies that befall performers giving stand-out moments.Looking at more than 40 aspects of the virtuosic act, and using an approach based in careful meditation and discursion, Virtuoso moves through such themes as showing off, effacement, self-consciousness, performative collapse, spontaneity, acting as dream, acting and femininity, virtuosity and torture, secrecy, improvisation, virtuosic silence, and others; giving special attention to the labors of such figures as Fred Astaire, Johnny Depp, Marlene Dietrich, Basil Rathbone, Christopher Plummer, Leonardo DiCaprio, Alice Brady, Ethel Waters, James Mason, and dozens more. Numerous scenic virtuosities are examined in depth, from films as far-ranging as Singin'in the Rain and The Bridge on the River Kwai, and My Man Godfrey. As the first book about virtuosity in film performance, Virtuoso offers exciting new angles from which to view film both classical and contemporary.

With On Screen Acting, director Edward Dmytryk and actress Jean Porter Dmytryk offer a lively dialogue between director and actress about the principles and practice of screen acting for film and television. Informal and anecdotal in style, the book spans auditioning, casting, rehearsal, and on-set techniques, and will be of interest to both aspiring and working actors and directors.Originally published in 1984, this reissue of Dmytryk's classic acting book includes a new critical introduction by Paul Thompson, as well as chapter lessons, discussion questions, and exercises.

This book examines performances in the American film industry's highest-earning and most influential films. Countering decades of discourse and the conventional notion that special effects are the real stars of Hollywood blockbusters, this book finds that the acting performances in these big-budget action movies are actually better, and more genre-appropriate, than reputed. It argues that while blockbusters are often edited for speed, thrills, and simplicity, and performances are sometimes tailored to this style, most major productions feature more scenes of stage-like acting than hyper-kinetic action. Knowing this, producers of the world's highest-budgeted motion pictures usually cast strong or generically appropriate actors. With chapters offering unique readings of some of cinema's biggest hits, such as The Dark Knight, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars, Iron Man and The Hunger Games, this unprecedented study sheds new light on the importance ofperformance in the Hollywood blockbuster.

The Science and Art of Acting for the Camera provides a precise yet practical approach to help unlock the mysteries of acting for film and television. Written by veteran actor, producer, and director John Howard Swain, the book offers a clear-cut, no-nonsense technique that equips aspiring or working actors with the necessary skills to succeed on camera. The technique teaches you how to build multi-dimensional characters; construct truthful and exciting relationships; ignite stimulating emotions; craft a series of discoveries guaranteed to energize your work; and much, much more. The book also provides instruction for actors working in commercials—from slating, to the dreaded'tell us about yourself'interview, to nailing'the tag'and embracing the cliché—and supplies sample commercial copy for students to practice.

'It will not disappoint...'—Ian McKellen, from the ForewordAn Authoritative Training Manual for Film Actors and Teachers “In today's entertainment industry of buff bodies and beautiful faces, it's easy to think that a couple of sit-ups and high cheek bones can create a movie legend,” writes film veteran Cathy Haase. However, she adds, what the actor really must have are “technique, craft, and a depth of self-knowledge.” In Acting for Film, Second Edition, Haase shows actors how to develop all of these, sharing her secrets (developed through years of on-camera work) for creating characters who come alive and who touch the souls of the audience. Readers will learn how to apply theatrical training to film acting and hone a personal approach to rendering a character. Acting for Film, Second Edition, is an essential guide for aspiring performers, acting teachers, and anyone interested in gaining a greater understanding of the craft. This new edition includes: Advice on dealing with new technology including CGI and motion captureConcentration and relaxation exercises that will enhance facial expressivenessExploration of sense memory techniques for on-camera workAnimal exercises and their usagesTips for maintaining proper eye focus in front of the camera and conveying the “beats” of a scene, even in the shortest takes For any performer who intends to make a living in front of the camera, Acting for Film, Second Edition, is the most authoritative resource! With Haase's experience and advice in their pocket, readers will be prepared to land the film role they've been dreaming of.

Tony Leung Chiu-Wai investigates the rich, prolific career of an acclaimed leading man of Hong Kong and Chinese film and television: the star of more than 70 films and dozens of television series, and the only Hong Kong actor to earn the Cannes Film Festival's best-actor award. This book addresses the dynamics of media stardom in Hong Kong, mainland China and the East Asian region, including the importance of television series for training and promotion; the phenomenon of regional, transmedia stardom across popular entertainment genres; and cultural and political considerations as performers move among different East Asian production environments. Attentive to Leung's position in both East Asian and global screen cultures, the book addresses relations among acting, global stardom and internationally circulating film genres and acclaimed directors. Overall, this unique study of Leung – who the New York Times calls “one of the world's last true matinee idols” – illuminates challenges and opportunities for Chinese screen actors in local, regional and global cultural and industrial contexts.

Gestures of Love considers the viewer's enchantment with charismatic actors in film as the starting point for closely analyzing the performance of love in movies. Written with a thoughtful adoration for the actors who move us, Steven Rybin examines several of cinema's most beloved on-screen movie couples, including Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and William Powell, Carole Lombard and John Barrymore, Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, and Rock Hudson and Dorothy Malone. Using the classical genres of screwball comedy, film noir, and the family melodrama as touchstones, Rybin places the depiction of romance in films into dialogue with the viewer's own emotional bond to the actors on the screen. In doing so, he offers rich new analyses of such classic films as Bringing Up Baby, The Thin Man, Twentieth Century, Laura, To Have and Have Not, Tea and Sympathy, Written on the Wind, and more.

In To the Actor Michael Chekhov has recorded brilliantly the results of his many years of experimenting, testing and verifying in the professional theater and schools of the theater. He brings to actors far greater insight into themselves and the characters they are to portray, which enables them to approach any role with new ease and skill.“To the Actor is by far the best book that I have read on the subject of acting. Actors, directors, writers and critics will be grateful for it. It should prove enlightening to theatergoers who wish to deepen their appreciation for fine acting and thus help to invigorate the theatrical art.”—Gregory Peck“I think without a doubt every creative person in the theater will want to have it as a constant reference book, outside of its being, in my opinion, absorbing and entertaining reading.”—Yul Brynner (from the Preface)“One of the most remarkable and practical books on the technique of acting I have ever read....Enthusiastically recommended to all theatre collections of whatever size.”—Library Journal

This fascinating text offers the first in-depth exploration of acting processes in British television. Focused around 16 new interviews with celebrated British actors, including Rebecca Front, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Ken Stott, Penelope Wilton and John Hannah, this rich resource delves behind the scenes of a range of British television programmes in order to find out how actors build their characters for television, how they work on set and location, and how they create their critically acclaimed portrayals. The book looks at actors'work across four diverse but popular genres: soap opera; police and medical drama; comedy; and period drama. Its insightful discussion of hit programmes and its critical and contextual post-interview analysis, makes the text an essential read for students across television and film studies, theatre, performance and acting, and cultural and media studies, as well as academics and anyone interested in acting and British television.

This book questions the de facto dominance of narrative when watching films. Using the film musical as a case study, this book explores whether an alternative spatial understanding of film can offer alternative readings to narrative. For instance, how do film aesthetics influence our interaction with the film? Can camera movement and music make us ‘feel'cinema? Can the film world bleed into our own? Utilising film musicals ranging from those by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (2000), Feeling Film: A Spatial Approach investigates how we might go about understanding the audience's spatial relationship with film aesthetics, what it might look like, and the tools needed to conduct analysis.

This vintage book contains two pioneering volumes on the subject of film making by V.I. Pudovkin. Considered two of the most valuable manuals of the practice and theory of film making ever written, these texts will prove invaluable for the student or film enthusiast, and are not to be missed by discerning collectors of such literature. The chapters of this volume include:'The Film Scenario and Its Theory','Film Director and Film Material','Types Instead of Actors','Close-Ups in Time','Asynchronism as a Principle of Sound Film','Rhythmic Problems in my First Sound Film','Notes and Appendices','Film Acting', et cetera. Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin (1893 – 1953) was a Russian film director, screenwriter, and actor, famous for developing influential theories of montage. This volume is being republished now complete with a new prefatory biography of the author.

Aspiring film and television actors will discover exercises for relaxing the face to achieve maximum expressiveness; maintaining proper eye focus in front of the camera and conveying the'beats'of a scene, even in the shortest takes. They'll also learn tested techniques for adapting to the styles of different directors; modulating voice and breath for maximum effect; preparing for the first day on the set; enduring multiple takes and on-the-set waiting; and much, much more. For any performer who intends to make a living in front of the camera, Acting for Film is the most authoritative resource!

This comprehensive collection provides theoretical accounts of the grounds and phenomenon of film acting. The volume features entries by some of the most prominent scholars on film acting who collectively represent the various theoretical traditions that constitute the discipline of film studies. Each section proposes novel ways of considering the recurring motifs in academic enquiries into film acting, including: (1) the mutually contingent problematic of description and interpretation, (2) the intricacies of bodily dynamics and their reception by audiences, (3) the significance of star performance, and (4) the impact of evolving technologies and film styles on acting traditions.

To win a screen role, an actor must learn to contend with an on-camera audition. Understanding how to make the crucial adjustments to one's craft that this kind of audition requires is vital to the career of any screen actor.Auditioning On Camera sets out the key elements of a successful on-camera audition and explains how to put them into practice. Joseph Hacker draws on 35 years of acting experience to guide the reader through the screen auditioning process with an engaging and undaunting approach. Key elements examined include: textual analysis knowing where to look dealing with nerves on-camera interviews using the environment retaining the camera's focus The book also features point-by-point chapter summaries, as well as a glossary of acting and technical terms, and is a comprehensive and enlightening resource for screen actors of all levels.

This guide for actors and directors develops a valid method for training performers to act from their core--whether they are cold reading, auditioning, or performing for film or television. This book teaches actors how to achieve and respond to believable and honest emotions before the camera, and it maintains that the key to a successful performance lies in how the actors relate to one another and to the circumstances. Exercises, including script examples, throughout the book give readers an easy resource for practicing the principles outlined. The Art of Film Acting applies a classic stage acting method (Stanislavsky) to the more intimate medium of performing before a camera, teaching readers to experience an emotion rather than to indicate it.

In this richly detailed study, James Naremore focuses on the work of film acting, showing what players contribute to movies. Ranging from the earliest short subjects of Charles Chaplin to the contemporary features of Robert DeNiro, he develops a useful means of analyzing performance in the age of mechanical reproduction; at the same time, he reveals the ideological implications behind various approaches to acting, and suggests ways that behavior on the screen can be linked to the presentation of self in society.Naremore's discussion of such figures as Lillian Gish, Marlene Dietrich, James Cagney, and Cary Grant will interest the specialist and the general reader alike, helping to establish standards and methods for future writing about performers and their craft.

Learn how to adapt the craft of acting to the needs of the camera and how to make it in TV & film with this guide full of insights from pros in the field.Culled from Tony Barr's forty years of experience as a performer, director, and acting teacher in Hollywood, this highly praised handbook provides readers with the practical knowledge they need when performing in front of the camera. This updated edition includes plenty of new exercises for honing on-camera skills; additional chapters on imagination and movement; and fresh material on character development, monologues, visual focus, playing comedy, and working with directors. Inside tips on the studio system and acting guilds make it particularly helpful for people new to the business, and numerous anecdotes from actors such as Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins and examples from current movies illustrate its many lessons. It is perfect for acting classes, workshops, all actors who work in front of the camera—and all those who want to.

Between 1908 and 1913, D. W. Griffith played a key role in the reformulating of film's narrative techniques, thus contributing to the creation of what we now think of as the classical Hollywood cinema. This book is the only extensive treatment of a critical period in the history of film acting: the emergence of the realistic'verisimilar'style in Griffith's biograph films. Roberta Pearson shows how Griffith gradually abandoned the deliberately affected'histrionic'acting style derived from the nineteenth-century stage. No longer did actors mime distress by raising their arms to heaven or clutching their heads—a subtle facial expression, a slight change in posture would convey a character's extreme emotions instead.Pearson makes detailed comparisons of certain Biograph films and brings a freshness to her analysis by closely examining contemporary journalistic writing, acting manuals, and the recollections of actors of the time. Her work is important for anyone interested in early cinema and performance, and it will enliven the study of American cultural history and mass communications.Between 1908 and 1913, D. W. Griffith played a key role in the reformulating of film's narrative techniques, thus contributing to the creation of what we now think of as the classical Hollywood cinema. This book is the only extensive treatment of a critic