There is a line of actor whose presence in a picture serves as a litmus.

Hinting at its likely nature and quality.

Inspiring a potential audience to expect a film that’s interesting.

Different.

Recent exemplars?

Paul Dano.

Mamoudou Athie.

Kirsten Stewart.

Follow them for what they bring to a role.

Also, for what role they bring it to.

Progressively more actors claim producer credit.

(And not just of the executive kind.

An expedient that circumvents Writers Guild rules to accrue a creative input credit.)

Many form their own production companies to accompany their own productions.

Is that the case here?

It doesn’t seem to be.

So what’s going on?

Is it down to taste?

These actors consent to appear in engrossing projects only.

Regardless of anticipated gross.

Or is a matter of luck?

Only interesting scripts stuff their letterboxes.

Whatever, their presence in a film augers well for its quality.

Also, oddly, gives some intimation of its likely style.

UNOFFICIAL POLICY

Truffaut dismissed most film directors as metteurs en scene.

Stagers who arranged artistes across sets.

Without care or self-awareness.

Select directors impose their personality on their work, he claimed.

Consequently, make better films.

He minted the term la politique des auteurs –

Policy of the authors –

To cover this caste.

Auteur director is its distillate.

Marking metteurs who matter.

Practitioners who assert undue influence on the finished film.

Above thousands of other contributors to the product.

Comparable to an author’s imprint on a book.

It’s debatable whether this influence is as substantial as alleged.

More substantive than that of a hack.

Isn’t a case of an academic praising a practitioner whose workings are evident.

So, consequential.

Who exhibits symmetry.

Announces allusions.

Enabling academics to pore over associations.

Point out patterns.

The best artist is the one who enables them to say mostest.

The most conspicuous exemplar was Hitchcock.

Who directed works in different genres.

Projects as often offered him as originated by him.

Nevertheless, he imposed a house-style on them.

Incorporated similar preoccupations.

Associations.

Fixations.

Such that he seemed to be the only constant.

Save his wife.

These uncommon actors cause a similar effect.

Perhaps a term for them, then. might be Auteur Actor.

Or simply the French word for actor:

Acteur.

AUTEUR ACTOR

Distinction is what distinguishes the work of the acteur.

They seldom play the same role twice.

Misplace themselves in each.

Rarely channel common properties.

Yet, seem suited to every part they take.

CASTING CAUCHEMAR

They ought to inspire nightmares in casting directors.

Sourcing the lead in an action film, say, most would plump for a star with a track record in same.

It’s the defensible position.

Why did you select this stiff?

Well, the guy starred in twenty other pictures just like it.

But how do you defend your decision to sign a talent who’s never the same twice?

Has no obvious type?

No pigeonholeable persona?

Has yet to appear in a genre picture?

I’d never have selected Ledger for the role of Joker in The Dark Knight franchise.

Which is why I’m not –

Should never be –

Cast as a casting director.

I might have chosen Nicholson for the part in Burton’s version.

Though he’d been an acteur likewise.

Albeit one who projected a consistent persona.

Volcanic potential.

EXHIBITING CHARACTER

Perhaps they’re character actors?

In a sense.

Though character actors never lead the dance.

Davis?

Hackman?

Oh.

The more one tightens a conceit, the more exceptions poke through its overarching contention.

STAR CHORES

Are they stars?

Sometimes they star.

But not in the vehicular sense of a Grant.

Or Crawford.

Their presence colours content.

But they aren’t box-office draws in the sense of a Cruise.

Don’t drive vehicles.

Usually.

Don’t feature in films with easily groupable characteristics.

Mostly.

The literary novel might be booked as a taxonomic analogue.

It is an artistic locus defined by what it isn’t as much as by what it is.

Its determination not to be contained within the confines of a genre.

Oh –

Except when it consents to be so shackled.

Is The Maltese Falcon, say.

Or Brave New World.

The literary novel is uncommon for being governed by an invocation solely:

ET’s Be good!

Ditto the acteur.

Part character.

Part star.

A hybrid.

Halfway between.

And all the way in both.

Incorporating the attributes of the character actor.

Inspiring the expectations of the star.

At once Apollonian and Dionysian.

Crawling between heaven and earth.

HISTORY MYSTERY

At the dawn of cinema, performers were denied credit.

Why?

Producers suspected that knowledge of their names would inspire them to strike for higher salaries.

Public curiosity picketed the policy.

None were aware of, say, Mary Pickford’s moniker.

But everyone recognized her, nonetheless.

Followed her trajectory.

Albeit as the astronomical object Little Mary.

One production house downed the ante by succumbing to public pressure.

Began promoting picture personalities.

Studios have been hitching stars to vehicles ever since.

And performers who perceived how much power they possessed created vehicles for themselves.

ACTOR MANAGER

I’m a sucker for actors.

Bow, Rogers, Poitier, Brando, Hackman –

I’d watch them in anything.

Have watched them in everything.

But why?

What is acting?

What’s the difference between actor and star?

What does each offer?

What do we expect of them?

Glamour?

Hardly –

Cagney?

Power?

Really –

Lorre?

So, it has to be something else.

Something applicable to the bad and the beautiful.

The only common denominator?

All act, obvs.

We’re attracted to actors because they act.

Because we act.

And not in the sense Macbeth meant.

Nietzsche neither.

You object.

Act up, even.

Okay.

Is there anything you do that you’d cease doing immediately if money were no object?

Then, you’re an actor.

Have assumed a role.

These professionals do as much.

Better than us?

More conspicuously.

That’s why this is the age of the actor.

The auditorium is full of them.

Their audience composed of them.

In ordinary life, a tendency to dissemble is suspect.

Though all of us do it.

All the time.

In acting it’s heroised.

Their professionalism saves them.

Our dreams of escape seep into the consideration.

The actor plays a role for a limited period.

Intensely.

Intensively.

Then moves on.

We can but wish…

IN THE MIDDLE AGES, ACTORS – THEY DIDN’T EVEN WANT TO BURY US

Each age awards a different brand of artist the title truth bearer.

Sees them as seer.

The present incumbent is the actor.

Once, they were ghettoed with the oldest professionals.

Today, acting is the most applauded profession.

And film actors the most lauded.

You disagree?

Posit medics in their place, perhaps?

Firemen?

Humanitarians?

When was the last time you watched an awards ceremony that feted saviours?

Centuries ago, mummers were dismissed as liars.

Now, we regard them as purveyors of truth.

Because they’ve changed what they do?

The technology has developed.

But their duties have remained the same.

Because we’ve changed our perception of the world’s boldest profession?

Hardly.

As the workplace has widened –

In response to teeming technology –

Each of us has been obliged to take on one of an evolving range of occupations.

We’re expected to change them out –

Out of them –

More often too.

Yet, in each case, claim that our current occupation is what we wanted to do really.

Always wanted to do.

Professional feigners show us the way.

Not least when giving gracious speeches at the Oscars.

AND THE AWARD GROWS TO…

The most popular Academy Awards ceremony attracted a global audience in excess of 50 million.

It’s dwindled since.

But still commands a crowd bigger than any other gong show.

Whom do we wait on?

Watch out for?

The technicians?

Encouraged to play pretend –

Act up like big kids –

Actors are pampered off the soundstage too.

Perennially thrown parties.

Feted in every conceivable fashion.

A single performance invites an interminable array of awards.

BAD REP

There is a price, of course.

An actor’s professional performance must impress, yes.

But also their private one.

Public will puffs them aloft.

They must tread our storyboards lightly, then.

Unfortunately, our aspirations for them often surpass their actualities.

Once, actors weren’t granted decent burials.

Now, some receive premature ones.

AGE OF THE ACTOR

We live in the age of the actor.

Nothing new in that.

Nietzsche claimed as much over a century ago.

Though he used the word as a hang-all applicable to everyone on the world stage.

Wagner, inevitably.

(Who, ahead of the game –

As often –

Wouldn’t have been surprised by the epithet.

Or regarded it as an insult.

In either sense Nietzsche intended.)

Why do we celebrate them now?

We assume they live many lives.

Are as wise as their most sagacious roles.

Valiant as their most courageous characters.

That each incarnation is the zest of them.

Whereas it’s the best of them.

That each role is their beginning.

Would reveal itself to be their tip.

Were we to know them intimately.

In fact, it’s the sunken bulk of their berg.

Like us, they are less than the sum of their parts.

Any greatness they possess is synthesised.

A ragbag of robbed riches.

TRIPPING ON TRIPPINGLY

Their art involves as much suppression –

Impression –

As expression.

Interpretation.

Act and you shall be?

No.

Act and you shall seem.

Recognising a quality isn’t tantamount to understanding it.

Even the most diligent assumes the outer flourishes of a stereotype.

Has no better sense of what it is to be it than we.

So, why do we rate the actor behind the act?

We’ve no interest in the surgeon behind the mask.

The person who saved our life.

Passion for performer over performance is nonsensical.

Like being interested more in a writer’s unused notebook than their published works.

SECOND THAT EMOTING

The actor expresses better than the rest of us.

How is this possible?

Emoting is an act.

A play of signals that represent sublimated desires.

Signs intended to provoke a response.

Bring about a change of circumstance.

The practice is acquired through careful observation.

They convince us that acting is possible –

For us.

We look to them to teach us how to do it better.

ACTING CREDENTIALS

The ability to act stems from an inability to react to social scrutiny appropriately.

To disconnect from one’s immediate surroundings.

Self-consciousness.

Conscience.

The greater the actor, the more severe their insincere sincerity.

Sincere insincerity.

The greatest give of themselves in a vacuum.

Out of a vacuum.

They possess no greater self than we do.

No bigger persona.

More charisma.

Presence.

Personality.

They argue that all are what they seem.

What we see.

That this –

Alone –

Is to be.

SPEAK THE SPEECH, TOWN-CRIER

The occupation involves bringing life to the words of a writer.

Inner light to their character.

Yes –

But doing so in public.

Under a scorching spotlight.

So, the courage that swallows shyness is at least as important as the rude talent.

You may be Olivier before the hall mirror.

But unless you can replicate it in public, a mediocrity with braggadocio will land the part.

And hearts of the audience.

Thus, the profession asserts the importance of conformity.

Society.

Doing isn’t enough.

It’s necessary to do in public.

To be seen to do.

In exchange for money, too.

A private actor –

Performing on the silvered screen of a mirror –

Pro bono, moreover –

Would be regarded as a suitable case for treatment.

SIMULATING SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

Boorman was perplexed by Reynolds.

The star goofed around with the Deliverance crew seconds before the clapperboard clacked.

But exuded intensity the moment he heard the invocation ‘Action!’.

Voight queried everything methodically.

Reynolds only question was rhetorical:

‘How do I get through this without making a fool of myself?’

At one point, he confessed he’d been cast under false pretences.

‘I can’t act,’ he told the director. ‘I was just faking it.’

Few who see the film would concur.

Suggesting that an actor’s ability to convey sincerity is a knack.

A gift in his gift.

As arbitrarily allocated as the ability to whistle.

PERFORMANCE AS ARGUMENT

A great performance is more than a reading of the text.

It’s its most complete exposition.

Fullest explanation.

An argument for the interpretation.

A great actor is a great explicator.

Understanding the role on our behalf.

Presenting the words and gestures it necessitates such that we believe they do, at least.

Better than the author who wrote them.

The actor has a duty to convey the author’s ideas and ideals.

Rather than their own.

But if one informs the other nothing is lost.

FAILURE IS INVERTED SUCCESS

Great actors fail often.

More so than stars.

Why should this be?

There’s no such thing as a great actor.

Only one capable of a great act.

There’s no such thing as great acting, per se.

Any more than there is pure being.

Thought.

It’s an applied aptitude.

Operates in a context.

ACTOR OR STAR?

The concern can be dispelled with the question:

Could anyone else have played this role?

Brought it off better?

No one could have presented Travis Bickle’s symptoms more finely than De Niro.

Agreed.

But no one could have represented Sidney Falco more surely than Curtis.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ACTOR AND STAR

What is it that makes the performance given by an actor –

However technically accomplished –

Distinct from that given by a star –

However indifferent?

The actor says:

How can I turn myself into this person?

The star:

How can I turn this person into myself?

The actor operates from the inside out.

The star from the outside in.

Nevertheless, a star may give a performance as real as an actor’s.

Realer.

How?

Outside-in is how we measure everyone we encounter.

A star who presents character thus is playing to an audience that conceives of the world thus.

UNCANNY VALLEY OF THE DOLLS

The actor is proud of their technique.

The learning that occasioned it.

Knowing all the while it’s significant but not sufficient.

Otherwise, all who acquired it would be able to act.

Their teachers top of the class.

But some never crack the art.

However much they mark the technique.

Precisely hit their marks.

Their performances remains robotic.

Ersatz.

Merely nearly human.

Gesture without emotion.

Given time, anyone may become a good motorist.

But a Formula 1 driver?

DRAWING ON TECHNIQUE

No matter how effective, technique doesn’t guarantee success.

Often degenerates into excess –

Style –

Through overuse.

Initial effectiveness.

Becomes mannered.

An attempt to rise on stilts that strikes us as stilted.

Numerous Renaissance artists applied the theory of geometrical perspective.

Della Francesca, most conspicuously.

Michelangelo conveyed height/width/depth.

But isn’t known to have observed the theory.

Piero’s panels are heavenly.

But more so than Buonarroti’s?

Deepening the field:

Mœbius respected formal perspective.

Kirby didn’t.

Whose work is more dynamic?

The consideration is comparable to actors who rely on formal theories against those who don’t.

Method actors and methodless actors.

The scope of a scuba diver may seem shallower than that of a snorkeler.

I DON’T SEE ANY METHOD AT ALL, SIR

Methodists are zealots.

Convinced that their magical thinking makes them superior.

Isn’t magic at all.

Is science, rather.

(Even science isn’t science.)

Method acting is a marvellous machine.

Like geometrical perspective.

A mechanism that guarantees results.

Perfection every time.

Brando was best.

Ergo, method acting is best.

There are thousands of method actors.

How many Brandos?

STAR POWER

A star is popular with the public on account of their personality.

Despite their lack of acting ability.

Fortunately, there’s no necessity for the star to become a character.

Indeed, any gifts they possess in that way may get in the way.

Are tolerated only so long as their persona shines through.

It’s their haecceity that hastens the pulse.

Their essence.

Not their ability to assume a role.

Become subsumed in one.

That’s the last thing we want.

Lose themselves in a part and they lose us.

WINKLE OUT THE TWINKLE

We often say of a star:

See, they can act.

As if this were incidental.

An unexpected extra.

Secondary to what they offer primarily.

And what is that?

The persona beneath the maquillage –

This is the talent.

So, though a character actor doesn’t fear to be dull –

Should the part demand it –

The star runs screaming from it.

As with other kinds of artist –

Fine –

Artisanship is attributed by association.

Out of confusion.

Succumb to the artist and you succumb to the art.

Proof?

A star is more interesting than any character they play.

Must believe they are more interesting than any character we pay them to play.

Why?

In the course of realising a role, they override it.

Outshine it.

Obliterate it.

Posit caricature in its stead.

Tics and tricks.

Fortunately, we regard those about us in the auditorium similarly shallowly.

Why do we celebrate them more than any other actor?

They offer us a hope.

Of being loved for what we are.

Not what we do.

SHOW REALITY

Acting is a vehicle for the delivery of a star’s attractive character.

The means by which we might enjoy their being.

If a more efficient method of showcasing it could be found, it would be pursued.

Has been found.

Is being pursued.

The reality show.

It provides a platform for character unobstructed by clutter.

Untarnished by talent.

Achievement.

Celebs devolved from the movie star.

BESTEST EVER

Is the acteur a character actor?

Or star?

Which is best?

Immodesty mistranslates favourite as best.

But there is no best type of actor.

Any more than there is a best form of personality.

Merely one who personifies experience in a particular role.

Exhibits a quality we possess.

Enables us to exalt our celluloid avatar to the status of demigod.

Sop self-regard by praising those who represent us.

Applaud them most.

Because we can’t applaud ourselves.

COLD CODA

We believe that we know our favourite actor.

As we do friends and family.

Better than we do friends and family.

It’s a trick of the limelight in our eyes.

We fancy we’ve watched them enjoy ecstasy.

Suffer extremis.

But if they’re character actors, what we’ve witnessed is what they aren’t.

Precisely.

If stars, we’ve experienced their essence –

Yes –

But only when liontamed by screenwriter/director/et cetera.