All language subtitles for 22. Collaborating With Actors

The reason that I I rarely have wanted

to show up in a rehearsal room fully

blossomed in a character is because this

is a collaborative business.

I cannot do what I do alone.

I cannot do what I do without a

director. I cannot do what I do without

a script. I cannot do what I do without

other actors. What I do is react

and therefore I walk into a rehearsal

room open and ready to respond and to go

to work.

I think one of the most interesting

things about

listening

is very often, you know, I could be

saying something right now to you and I

will not get to the end of what I'm

saying for maybe another minute and a

half, but you've already decided that

you want to respond to something I just

said a moment ago, but you store it and

you hold it. Now, by the time we get to

your line where you respond to what I've

just said, quite often you'll respond to

the last thing I said, but then you'll

remember this other

thing that you stored and you'll then

answer that. Very often, if you look at

writing, the way that writers who are

really good at what they do, they write

the way we think. And you can tell that

that idea of saying that to you at that

where I say it, that didn't happen at

that moment. That happened up there when

you said it.

But it took me until here to respond to

it because I had all this other stuff I

had to respond to because you ended with

that stuff. So I responded immediately

to all that. And then I remember this

other thing. There is, my point is,

there is a way in which we think,

in which we don't, the words that come

out of a character's mouth aren't always

the words that they just thought at that

moment. They might have been something

that they've been thinking about for

five minutes and they finally said them.

And our job is to try to figure out

where did that land, where did that idea

start?

And that's where

you get into being able to watch an

actor think.

There are actors who think while they're

acting where we're looking at them and

there's always something going on.

There are best actors and then there are

other actors that you look at them and

there doesn't seem to be anything going

on. There's there's nothing happening.

There's the lines when they speak, but

there's not much else happening when

they don't speak.

It's always about that trying to

identify why do I respond? I'm

responding to something.

And if it's words, I heard words.

Sometimes you're responding to the way

someone looks at you, the expression on

their face. There are undoubtedly

people who are very skilled at looking

like they're listening, but they're not.

And then there are people who are

genuinely listening.

And I think you can tell the difference.

When I did Glen Greg, Glenn Ross, I I I

was uh very young. It was probably the

first significant role that I really

played in in in in a film. Um, so I was

like a kid

and certainly terrified every day as I

came to work and you know it was either

Ed Harris or Jack Lemon or Pacino or

Jonathan Price or Alec Ball and all

these people that had been around a lot

longer than I had and and uh you know I

was just I was just terrified and I had

and I had to play their boss

which was daunting.

And I remember

There's a scene in the film where

Pacino has to chew me out

and it's it's a pretty devastating scene

because the character I play blows

something screws something up and Al's

character comes after this character.

And so we were doing a shot where the

camera was essentially Al. So, it was a

moving shot around me about I would say

a sort of semiircle.

And what I didn't know was that Al had

said to the sound guy, "Don't record

this." Cuz I had no dialogue. It was all

Al

off camera,

you know, walking along the side of the

camera just ripping me a new [ __ ]

And so we start shooting

and this is maybe the second take

and suddenly Al starts saying things

that aren't in the script that are about

me. He starts saying Kevin. Oh, we know

how you got this job. Kevin, don't we?

Yes, we do. when and he literally

started and I remember thinking

I literally I remember like looking

around and thinking is anyone hearing

what I'm hearing and he was doing it and

they weren't cutting and Al was and by

the end of this take

I looked like a train wreck. I mean I

looked like a train had just run over me

because I didn't know what the hell was

going on. It was just terrifying.

And Al walked up to me after that take

and he went, "Oh, that was good. Your

your reaction was incredible. Sorry I

did all that." They didn't record that.

I was just doing that because, you know,

I don't know. If you saw me tomorrow

morning on 57th Street, you yelled

across the street, "Hey, Al, I know what

you did last night." I would jump

because, you know, we're all guilty. So,

good good work.

Now, it was only sort of a little later

after that happened that I realized

how extraordinarily generous that was.

He was giving me something and doing

something

to make me react in exactly the way that

I should have been reacting

in that moment. It was a incredible

thing.

Never forget that.