Posted 10:55 AM by Blah blah

Bette Davis, On Acting

From her excellent autobiography, The Lonely Life. She is one of my favorite actresses and a great role model, famous for playing bitches and fighting for women's rights in Hollywood in the 1930s-50s. My favorite movie of hers is Now, Voyager, in which she plays an ugly duckling who blossoms into a radiant loving woman. She received ten Best Actress Oscar nominations and won two of them, "many of those for her roles as strong-minded, and frequently disagreeable women":
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On starting acting school in New York:

The first day I was there and every day, Mr. Currie, our dramatic teacher, would deliver a scathing attack on the theatre. He informed the seventy kids in our class that we were heading for the toughest, least glamorous life imaginable. His picture of the artist's life was a pointillism, whose dots of color were sweat, jealousy, competition, disillusionment, insecurity and more sweat. It was a lecture of futility that he repeated over and over again.

It was really the most discouraging pep talk ever delivered to a group of novices. The class was soon decimated. The little society girls folded up their tents and silently stole away. There were twelve of us left at the end of the semester. It was then that Mr. Currie told us that a real actor---a real artist---needs no pep talk. If anyone really wants to be an actor, nothing can discourage him.

"A real artist brings his own conviction and hope. He may be encouraged along this line. He cannot be discouraged. If you've stuck this term out, you've at least got the stuff."

Tough! But so is the theatre. Everything he said was true. Any artist who doesn't know that the greatest reward is his own satisfaction in work should choose an easier way of life. Acting is work. But work when you love it and fulfill yourself is life at its best. (p. 46)
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Frankly, I feel that the dramatic school is important only for the basic education it imparts....How to talk. How to move. How to sit and stand....The alphabet! Fine. But knowing all the letters from A to Zed does not make one a writer....there are things that cannot be learned.

There are various [acting] schools that lay claim to revelation. For the talentless, it is true that a chart gives them direction. It can even guide them to adequacy. I watch young men and women today in all three media struggling through a psychological maze and they do not excite me theatrically.

One can draw just so much from one's personal experience...If [the actor] has no intellect, no passion, no expansion of soul, he can hardly understand a part in which these elements take precedence. He cannot even understand a part in which they are absent. One must be aware of the negative areas. How, for example, can a stupid, phlegmatic bigot be played well unless the actor, his opposite, uses selectivity and observes the accents of the character, thereby bringing him to life.

The present trend of the actor to personalize all tragedy and recall the moment in which his puppy was run over or her doll was broken in order to convey misery is sad to me. [Method acting, or the Stanislavsky method.] Although man has a basic repertoire of emotion, the subtleties in each individual are blessedly countless.

Blanche Dubois and Ophelia both liquefy before your eyes; but they melt entirely differently. Oedipus and Lear both break at the end. One cracks in half; the other crumbles to dust. Can the recalled death of the actor's sweet old Uncle William really approximate the singularity of each character's wretchedness?...

[An actor]...galvanizes his energies and his faculties and then goes out of himself not in. He pretends to be this other human being. If he has insight, he intuits and projects himself into the character, never losing the lifeline, the umbilical cord, whithout which he is a raving maniac and even worse---an amateur. He must always know he is pretending. Some part of him retains this knowledge; but he must suffer as the character just as he must move like him and speak like him.

An actor without insight is a mannequin...[A]ny real artist---has a direct line to the collective heart. This isn't pretension....His costume is made up of a thousand and one details that fall into place when his own identity is sacrificed to the other's....

Many of the girls and boys today come over quite genuinely and charmingly as themselves, which is an accomplishment of some sort. But take them out of their environment and they are lost. The classics are impossible for them. Any change of locale or time throws them.

They have simply learned to express themselves; and I'm terribly happy for them. When they learn to express the character, I shall applaud them. All the walking like a cat and flying like a bird isn't going to mean a thing if the actor meows in a Brooklyn accent or quacks like Donald Duck when he is supposed to be Francis Drake....

As personal as these troubled actors are, there is---aside from much of a muchness---the same of a sameness. They are all so busy revealing their own insides that, like all X-ray plates, one looks pretty much like the other. Their godhead, the remarkably gifted Marlon Brando, may bring (as true stars do) his own personal magnetism to every part, but his scope and projection are unarguable. He has always transcended the techniques he was taught. His consequent glamour and style have nothing to do with self-involvement but rather radiation.

I return to that spark that is the individual. An actor must be true to the spark he find in himself. And with it, he must illuminate another man and then all men. (pp. 47-50)
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There's no doubt about it. Working in a stock company will always be the greatest foundation for an acting career. An actor tackles a new part each week, and there's no time for nonsense. The necessary discipline can be found no other place, plus the confidence and the technique that is gained. Crises are met and conquered. A tempo is created and sustained. The constant tension either makes you or breaks you. Every actor knows that stock can make you slick rather than profound; but you can't play a concerto until you know your scales. There's nothing wrong with facility---no matter what the artsy-craftsy claim. Stock gives an actor facility. It makes him a professional....Nothing can teach you to act like acting.

The young actors today very often have a television series where for months they play only one part. They have a Broadway play and if, hopefully, it's a success, they play the same part over a long period. Then, if they're any good, Hollywood plucks them unripe from the vine. There are more "stars" today who cannot act. And it's not their fault. They've never been given a chance to learn.

The progress of acting careers like everything else has become so accelerated that amateurs are rewarded by international fame. There's gold in all this madness and the temptation is great. How many Brandos are there who will refuse, as he did, well-paying parts in plays that bored him or wouldn't encourage his growth? [Not true in his old age.] He also was a worker. That's something else that has gone out of fashion. Nobody wants to work....The easy way is usually the destructive way.

There is no luxury like the fatigue that follows a labor of love. Nothing in the whole, wide world as soul-satisfying as a job well done. Accomlishment. Few go all out. Few will gamble. Everybody wants security. If that were the end-all, America would still belong to the Navajos.

A good percentage of our lives is spent doing things we loathe. Marvelous! It puts starch in your spine. Who looks forward to brushing his teeth, painting the shed or changing the linens? We're making our beds all right. We are...up against an astringent, dedicated society which has been toughened by sacrifice and unhappy regimentation. (pp. 65-66)