Acting

I am good-natured when I work, and I do not mind working very hard. I do a lot of dubbing for my pictures. For example, I dubbed my own English for TWO WOMEN [1961], which was made in Italian. When you dub, you do not have as much feeling as you had when the movie was originally shot, and it is hard work. After I have been dubbing, I eat and then go to bed right away, because it is so tiring. I never rehearse a part in front of a mirror. It is phony I think, to do that. I want to get it the way it should be when I am on the set, in front of the camera. Before I start to work on a part, I read the script, but when shooting starts, I like improvisation right on the set. Even when I'm not consciously thinking about a part, I'm really thinking about it all the time. When I get to the set, I sometimes know suddenly what I will do. I didn't rehearse at all for TWO WOMEN.

(Sophia Loren)


All actors are different, of course. For instance, I don't agree with the notion that the best acting comes from the first few takes. But Spencer Tracy is violent on that. He said that the first 2 takes are always the best, and I think that they were with him. But I think I can still go pretty well on that 23rd take. And you know, it's interesting that all the times Spencer and I worked together, we never rehearsed together before shooting. Never.

(Katherine Hepburn)


The surprising aspect of their joint success was that they were so different. Kate's working method and approach was opposite to Spencer's. She is a careful, thorough, analytical, concentrated artist. She reads and studies and thinks. By the time she was ready to begin shooting THE LION IN WINTER [1968], for example, she knew enough about Eleanor of Aquitaine to write a master's thesis on the subject. She loves to rehearse and practice and try things and make just one more take. Spencer, conversely, was an instinctive player, who trusted the moment of creation, believed it was possible to go stale by over-rehearsing, and usually did his best work on the first take. He was a firmly rooted subjective artist. [When pressed on his opinion on acting] "It's taken me forty years of doing it for a living to learn the secret. I don't know that I want to give it away." Urged, he relented. "Okay, I'll tell you. The art of acting is -- learn your lines!"

(Garson Kanin)


What impressed me most about [Clark Gable] was his sturdy "pro" mentality. Every morning at the stroke of 9:00 he entered the set, knew his lines to perfection, nodded to the director's suggestions, never disputed them, and carried them out. His contract stipulated that he could go home at 5:00. At 5 minutes to 5 he would glance at his watch and call out a calm, firm, "Five more minutes, boys!" into the air, not caring if anyone heard him or not. On the dot of 5:00 he would get up and leave. Sometimes we were in the middle of a take, and I pleaded with him to let us finish, but he shook his head. "If I stayed on for a couple of minutes just one single time, that would be the thin end of the wedge. I work eight hours a day, like everybody else. No more."

(Lilli Palmer)


I think an actor like Brando can give you certain moments that have nothing to do with any director, have nothing to do with any script, have nothing to do with anything aside from his own talent. When you work with Marlon, you have only one job: release him, get him moving, get him unafraid -- get him functioning. Now that doesn't mean you simply let him go. You must stay within the confines, heading toward an objective. Marlon is a fascinating man. Like many great actors, he is also a very suspicious man. He likes to test his directors. In the first 2 days of shooting, he will do 2 takes that may seem identical, but one is full and one is only technical. Then he will watch which one you decide to print, and on that decision lies your whole subsequent relationship with him, because if you don't know your job as well as he knows his, you've had it. In those performances where you've seen him just walk through a film, he made the test and the director flunked it.

(Sidney Lumet)


I don't like Mr. Brando. I'll never forget, or forgive, what he did to me on ON THE WATERFRONT. We were doing that now-famous taxi scene. I did the take with him, when the camera was on him, but when it came time for the camera to be on me -- he went home! I had to speak my lines to an assistant director. It must have burned him up that we came out even in that scene -- despite what he did.

(Rod Steiger)


Jerry [Lewis] never rehearses. Just one take and that's it. You rehearse with Jerry and you'll die. So you can't really do anything interesting with the camera -- his habits dictate your style. Sometimes when I have to repeat a scene, he'll change it around and do something completely different. And that's his charm, you see -- you never know what he's going to do next. He doesn't look at his dialogue until he walks on the set, and then he never sticks to the lines anyway -- usually he makes them better. I just tell him roughly what the scene is and he does it, kind of hit-and-run, and it's very successful. But you get no credit for doing a Lewis picture.

(Frank Tashlin)


I would certainly say that the theater is a much better medium for the actor than film, if for no other reason that he goes through at one fell swoop the whole plot, so that he doesn't have to chop things up into little things. And there are other reasons. The mechnical business of sticking a camera into your face, if they're going into a close-up, and you have to concentrate on the scene, and it's devilish and difficult to try to make yourself believe that there isn't a camera in your face. And you're talking into a lens and you're supposed to be talking to another human being and you know bloody damn well you're talking to a lens. And to be able to so metamorphose yourself into the sense of making yourself believe that it's not so, is a tough job. You try to do it, but you succeed only partially.

(Paul Muni)