What makes a great actor? How great actors build their characters!!

The technicalities like camera movement, sound design and editing are all important. There is no doubt that they all are used with respect to the performance of an actor. Directors funnel their narratives through actors. But acting in cinema can be a little tricky because you act for the camera not for the real audience. However, in mainstream Hindi cinema, doing more is considered as the right way of acting. And the popularity of this method has led to a lot of actors being hailed great actors when they are, at the most, good or average or simply garbage.

Over the course of 100 years, the nature of film acting changed significantly. However, certain characteristics remained constant throughout this period, first of which is believability. An actor can use a lot of crutches to oversell certain emotions, like freezing facial muscles to sell the act of crying or flaring nostrils to show anger. These are the moments when actors want you to believe in what they are doing, but great actors make you believe in the emotional portrait. They do that by putting a lot of effort into building the character by way of fusing their own personality into the personality of the character because ultimately, the primary aim is to recreate private moments in public.

However, being believable is not enough. The next important thing is being unpredictable. Audiences are smart when it comes to predicting a character’s action. Even if an actor builds the character, the chances of her becoming predictable are quite high. These are the moments when the audience say that the acting was flat. What they really mean, is that the actor failed to surprise the audience. Great actors build a great sense of mystery around them. So even when you know and understand the character, you never get an idea of how they are going to react to certain situations. In ‘The Godfather’ parts one and two, Michael never acts out any violence himself. Therefore, this moment is quite surprising. A similar moment is when an introverted and seemingly innocent Hanna emphatically justifies her action of letting people die. Of course, this all stems from great writing. But it is up to an actor to elevate written words into something that is quite palpable. Here’s an excerpt from the script of ‘There will be blood’ for comparison. Performances of this caliber can happen only when an actor allows herself to be affected by the material from inside out, for example, when she allows herself to be vulnerable in front of the camera. Bad actors guard themselves with an aura of invincibility. They either hide behind the stardom or the baggage of their previous success or sell their eccentricities in the name of acting. It always keeps them as a distant performer. Whereas, great actors will always share parts of themselves they keep hidden from the world. With each new character, they put a different version of themselves in that character. It can be ugly, mean, lonely, scared, sorrowful or devastated. None of these great moments occur on their own.

Great acting is teamwork. And for the teamwork to produce great results, an actor needs to be extremely good at listening. How important is listening? Because at the heart of hearts, great acting is great reacting. And to react with right expressions and natural timing, you need to listen. And when you do that properly, you get a great performance. In fact, for average actors, saying dialogue in a stylistic manner is a challenging task. Whereas, for great actors saying their lines is incidental. The real deal is the way they use their body. Now there is a misconception that has grown over the years, where extreme physical transformation has become a factor for great acting. Gaining or losing weight or adopting different accents are undoubtedly all important, but ultimately they are external factors. Sometimes they are minute details and sometimes an ornament. The secret lies in how actors use their entire body to build a performance. How do they move within a frame or with respect to the camera? How do they vary the timbre of their voice for different characters? These decisions add a great deal of depth to their performance. In ‘There Will Be Blood’, Daniel Day-Lewis uses aggressive postures and a spring in his movement to portray dominance. Whereas, in ‘Lincoln’, his slouched shoulders and slow movement portrays the weight of responsibilities. Notice the way he uses his voice in both films. In ‘The Aviator’, Cate Blanchette uses a high-pitch voice to match Hepburn’s timbre while in ‘Carol’, her graceful voice expresses maturity. And this is just a basic level of brilliance. Now consider all these limits. Now can you apply all of them in the same scene? Of course, you can. That is great acting.

Another important criterion to define a great actor was noted by Stella Adler, which stands above everything. Every single-acting technique and its implementation depends on the choice an actor makes. It is the primary reason behind actors getting trapped in a loop of self-aware redundancy and actors constantly pushing their limits through a variety of characters. It is the difference between actors continuously playing it safe by selecting characters with moral high ground and actors who continuously play risky characters dealing in moral grey areas. Talent for making right, daring and risky choices is what helps an actor build not just a great filmography but a legacy through their movies.

So the next time you watch an actor performing, don’t accept anything that is not believable and truthful because the primary job of an actor is to hold the mirror up to society. In that process, if they entertain you, that’s fine. If it earns them a lot of money, that’s also fine. But under all circumstances they should hold the mirror up to society. Through their portrayal of characters we, the audience, see our own lives. So it is an actor’s responsibility to be truthful. They owe it to the script and to the audience. And for those of you who are at an early stage of their acting career, here’s a piece of advice.acting schools top actors how to be a great actor qualities of a good actor great actor best acting schools what makes a good actor hollywood acting good acting skills qualities of a good performer great acting top acting colleges best acting school qualities of an actor acting top 10