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“How is it that I am a good actor? What I do is I.. pretend to be the person I’m portraying.

You’re confused.

Case in point: in Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson comes to me and says ‘I would like you to be Gandalf the Wizard,’ and I said ‘You are aware that I am not really a wizard?’ and Peter Jackson said ‘I would like you to use your acting skills to portray a wizard for the duration of the show.’

So i said ‘Okay’ and then I said to myself ‘Mmm.. How do I do that?’ And this is what I did: I imagined that I was a wizard, and then I pretended, and acted, in that way on the stage.

How did I know what to say? The words were written down for me in a script. How did I know where to stand? People told me where to stand.

If you were to graph my acting, it would look something like this: Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian, action — wizard! “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” Cut! — Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian…”

–Clip from the excellent BBC/HBO series Extras (Youtube).

As stupid as this scene is, it’s brilliant. It’s brilliant, because it’s true.

Acting is really simple. You pretend. That’s it.

There is a catch. It, too, is simple: there’s no science to acting; it is an art.

Granted, you can teach one how to use the tools that are available to you, but without the instinct there is no art. There’s a reason why the School of Theatre is a part of the College of Arts.

You can give me the absolute best box of crayons and the highest quality paper, and I still can’t draw worth a shit. You can give me oil and canvas, marble and chisel, or piano and music, and I still can’t paint, sculpt, or sing. Like the previously mentioned subjects, acting is an art — you can’t teach it, per se. You can teach the methods, but you can’t teach the instinct.

I’m not a huge fan of method acting. Yes, I use aspects of Stanislavsky’s method in my own acting, but my own acting is much like Sir Ian McKellen’s: me, me, me, me, action! (say lines) cut!, me, me, me, me.

One of my instructors keeps trying to cram into our heads that actors should “really do what you’re doing.” This is wrong. Absolutely wrong. The minute you start to really do what you’re doing, you’re no longer acting — you’re no longer pretending — you’re just YOU on stage dressed up like someone else.

In the end, however, I don’t particularly care how YOU act, so long as you act well. I have friends who can’t act worth a shit, and I’ll never cast them unless their actual, real personality fits with the character. I’ve had friends that I could’ve sworn the author was thinking of when he wrote that play — they’re that much alike.

But when I hold auditions, I look for good actors. Actors who do different things, who behave differently than they do in “real life”, who can show me a range of behavior. After all, the best characters in a play change over the course of the play: they grow. If an actress can’t act, if she can only portray herself, then how can she grow on stage?

The simple answer: she can’t.

As stupid as Sir Ian’s explanation is, it is brilliant. It’s true.

Acting is pretending.
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