We’ve all seen what we deem to be bad acting in films and onstage. And while the measurement for good acting can be as subjective as art itself, we can often feel a blatant unbelievability or hollowness in a performance.
Very often, we criticize the actor individually. Of course we do; that person did not bring what they should have to the table. The job of the actor is literally to effectively communicate the character they are portraying to an audience using their voice, actions, reactions, and their physical instruments. If they fail to authentically communicate a character, they did not properly do their job. Another way to say that is that they did not do their job at all.
Now, despite common perception, giving a great performance, a believable performance, is not an easy job to do whatsoever. It takes more work and dedication than anyone outside the industry usually understands. In all honesty, my two years in graduate school studying acting was far more demanding than the previous six years I had studying education on the undergraduate and graduate level combined. Hands down. No comparison.
I am an actor. A professional actor (whatever the means – I don’t know at what point one becomes professional as an actor but that’s a different discussion altogether).
I am also a director. I have directed both theatre and film and I believe these combined experiences have provided me with some interesting insights into the mechanics of how things work.
Greg teaching his "Acting like a Teacher" workshop for Education students at Pace University.
One such insight is this: directors need to take more responsibility for the bad acting in their projects.
To me, it sounds obvious. But rarely do we hear a viewer say, “Wow. That performance was awful. I guess the director couldn’t get that actor to where they needed to be.”
I think we need to be saying this more. And here’s why:
As a director, the buck stops with you. It is your responsibility for everything that happens creatively and artistically. That is why you are hired. This obviously includes performances.
You hire good actors so they bring the most believable performances. But that doesn’t mean your job is now necessarily a hands-off experience where you can sit back, relax, and watch the magic happen. It is still your vision. Actors must coordinate themselves to your vision. Sometimes this requires a hands-on technique.
And it is not incidental that I use the word technique. A director who does not speak the actor’s language will find it far more difficult to get an actor where they need to be.
This brings me to a related point. A director absolutely needs to speak the language of the actor. They need to know technique. Whether it’s Stanislavsky, Meisner, Method, etc., a director should have an approach to infiltrate a lacking performance. They should have an awareness of all of these techniques and dare I say, know what their cast is trained in. That way they can talk the lingo and engage in the process to reach each actor in a constructive manner.
Bad directors tell actors what to do and what to feel. Good directors guide actors towards their vision of a character. Great directors manipulate actors to think they reached a revelation organically when it was the director the entire time leading them to that desired destination. What makes this director great is simple; they recognize that when actors come up with something themselves, it is far more real to them and thus easier to access and thus more believable. And that’s the name of the game.
Directors need not be technicians. Every other crewmember on set is an artistic technician of sorts. A director needs to be focused on story, imagery, and performance. The truth of a scene. Directors hire their crew to specifically take care of the more technical issues so that they need not worry about them. Meetings happen within the months of pre-production so that the crew understands the vision and plans are made to enforce said vision.
This leaves time for a director to handle the most important aspects of filmmaking while actually shooting– the acting itself.
As an actor, I found directors who were great at the mechanics of filmmaking but lacked the ability to communicate effectively with actors the worst kind of directors. I found this particularly true, unfortunately, of recent college graduates. It was as if their training program neglected to enroll them in an acting class. All directors should take an acting class.
Not doing so is self-sabotage as far as I’m concerned.
Being a director who takes a more hands-on approach with actors can be complicated. There are times when an actor is so prepared you just let that actor do their thing. There are times when you have the opportunity (and hopefully ability) to help them step their game up. But an audience member will never know if it’s a great performance solely because of the actor or because you stepped in and worked your magic. But, in a way, it doesn’t matter. It’s all part of the wizardry.
Conversely, if a performance is extremely poor and you, the actor, and everyone on the planet knows it, the director needs to share in the blame, for neither the actor nor the director did their job.
If an actor’s job is to effectively communicate the character they are portraying to an audience as mentioned before, it is one of the many jobs of the director to make sure actors effectively communicate the characters they are portraying to that audience.
Now, let’s be real. A director has a million-and-one jobs. We are constantly being asked questions about the production. Our heads are pretty much in a whirlwind state the entire time. But that’s the job.
We are the last line of defense on the day. Everything is ultimately our responsibility – even when it’s out of our control.
I once directed a play where the set to our production was in a U-Haul truck. A U-Haul truck that was stuck in a snowstorm. We ended up performing opening night with no set, as the truck didn’t arrive until the middle of the performance. Was I driving the truck? Nope. Did I control the weather? Nope. Did I plan correctly leaving hours upon hours for the truck to arrive on time? Yup. The festival had a strict load in schedule and so I couldn’t bring the set to the theatre any earlier than that afternoon.
Yet I stood in front of my cast and I apologized. It was on me. I was in charge. And we had no set.
I suppose part of my point is that directors need to be more vocal about accountability. Directors are leaders; sometimes it’s appropriate to take it for the team. To accept that responsibility whether or not you are directly to blame.
To be fair, however, there are scenarios where a director is truly hogtied. Sometimes a producer forces a director to hire an actor that should not be hired. Sometimes the creative vision between a director and a producer is not aligning – if this happens seriously consider leaving the project, albeit on good terms; producers are putting up the money – it’s their movie too after all – two separate visions never end well. If you need to do it for the money, and it’s no longer about the art, execute the producer’s vision. If this makes you sick to your stomach leave amicably and respectfully due to creative differences.
It is also worth noting that a bad editor, or bad decisions in the editing room in general, can downgrade an actor’s performance from what that actor provided during filming.
It is a cinematic leap of faith for any actor to let go of their performance and leave it in the hands of others; that, of course, is the collaborative nature of film and a reminder that making a great film is hard. All the pieces, the artistic cogs in the wheel of production, need to be firing on all cylinders. That’s two car references in one sentence. I’ve never felt so masculine.
There are also times, unfortunately, that the actors you hire, who perhaps you know have the potential to bring it, just don’t. No matter how hard you try you just cannot get them there. Sometimes it is no ones fault; it just doesn’t happen. It’s the reason this article is worded directors need to take more responsibility and not all. Sometimes the blame is shared and that’s okay.
But how does one avoid such a fate?
In theatre, it is obviously common practice that we rehearse for months before opening. In film, we often come to set as actors and get our lines re-written while in the makeup chair.
That is why it is imperative, as directors, that we hold rehearsals for cinematic performances as well. This doesn’t necessarily have to be as formal and traditional as a theatrical rehearsal. Read-throughs are great but they’re not really rehearsals. Get in a space, act it out, allow actors to have a playground to experiment because once on set such exploration is limited. Call your actors on the phone – have deep discussions about their characters and their objectives, conflicts, and actions. Make sure they build a backstory and know their character inside out. Improvise scenarios. Discuss tactics and motivations. Direct them. Rehearsing for a film should be more about an actor truly knowing their character (meaning the director has to truly know each character as well) than the specific lines that might very well change soon. This allows an actor to have a seamless transition when minor changes are made with the script.
Your project will flourish as a result. I promise.
I believe this change in outlook and practice will have two effects on our industry. The obvious one being an increase in the quality of acting. The other being, I postulate, an increase in the quantity of good actors. Right now, perhaps on a subconscious level, many great actors are great because they have developed a specific skill: they can take a director’s vague and unhelpful comment and justify it. These actors understand what the director is trying to say, what the director really should be saying, and they step back, search within, do the required work, come back out and present exactly what the director sought.
Actors who are unable to do this often give performances that could have been better as they never truly grasped what the hazy and esoteric comments the director made meant. One such way a dedicated actor combats this is by hiring an acting coach, an interceder that has the skillset to understand what needs to be done and can translate a director’s desires for you in a way that is better understood; in other words, the coach speaks the actor’s language.
But the reality is many actors on the verge of greatness, whose career or lack thereof is teeter tottering, can’t afford an acting coach to be on set with them constantly. And they shouldn’t have to.
What happens to many of these actors? They never make it. Their talents are categorized as sub-par, sometimes they are deemed difficult to work with because they ask so many questions to better understand. To me, this is a tragedy. A waste of artistic talent.
It is often said that great actors can take a script and upgrade it one letter grade by giving a believable performance. So they take a C script and make it seem like a B script.
Russell Crowe famously told screenwriter William Nicholson on the set of Gladiator,
"Your lines are garbage, but I'm the greatest actor in the world, and I can make even garbage sound good".
Harsh much?
This idea also works conversely, although perhaps with a more steep decline – bad acting can take an A script all the way down to, well, an F.
I think something akin can happen between directors and actors. A great director should be able to take a B actor and raise their game one letter to an A performance. And of course, this too works conversely as bad direction can and will lower the grade of a performance.
Let’s work on raising the grades.
By taking on more responsibility for bad acting, directors will be, by nature, more inclined to push and push the boundaries of a performance. They will be more than auteurs. They will be creative educators that help usher in the next great generation of actors and portrayals.
