How to Play a Serial Killer
Want to know how to play a serial killer? The answer might disappoint you, but you’ll be far more convincing…
The extreme characters seem to attract some actors. But the acting profession in general attracts people that enjoy the license to do and say things that would normally be socially abhorrent.
But there is fundamental misunderstanding about how one plays a serial killer, or any role for that matter.
If you want to know how to play a serial killer – you do not need to identify with the serial killer to do a good job of representing one for the purposes of a drama. I understand that’s what you’ve been lead to believe it, but it simply isn’t true. In fact, it has been bought wholesale and become what’s known as common sense, which means a lot of people believe it to be true – which of course doesn’t make it true at all, but just widely believed.
To play a serial killer gives license for actors to go off and read all that gruesome crap and call it ‘working on the role’. They get to imagine what it would be like to murder, they ‘go to dark places’ and perhaps they even speak with real serial killers or the law enforcement officers that caught them.
I’m sorry that I sound like such a killjoy, but it won’t help you one small bit. Researching Serial Killers won’t help. You aren’t trying to become a serial killer, you are attempting to represent one for the purposes of entertainment.
You do not need to become a serial killer, you need to play a serial killer in general, you need to specifically play each scene. You do not need to know how a serial killer thinks, feels or what they believe. You need to find a way to appear like a serial killer.
The accepted approach is to know enough about such a horror as to convey that horror to the audience, as if understanding anything about science has ever made an actor on CSI ever look more credible.
Let’s take it down to simpler things.
Take a look the following scene from No Such Film:
INT. An Interview Room. Sheriff’s Office. Dakota. Day.
FBI Agent Neilson listens to Henley intently:
HENLEY
I slit her neck open, her blood was very warm.
Now, how would a serial killer say that line? The actor goes off to the library (oh they don’t exist any more, sorry, I mean the Google) and reads books on serial killers to understand the mindset of the killer. Since they are not a killer, they presume some great knowledge is required.
Now the actor hopes that they will find some special understanding in their research and improvisations and dark imagining – something that will reveal a clever reason for how to say that line.
Instead, the actor should try to work out why the serial killer is speaking, what do they wish to achieve? We speak to affect others.
Perhaps in this scene, it is to disgust or impress the FBI Agent? For that, we need an understanding of the motivation that the writer has given the serial killer for that scene, as this will reveal the intention with which to speak the line.
There is no moment in this (or any) scene in which the actor playing the serial killer needs to do anything to identify with the horror of real serial killers.
The scarier option is to realise that if you simply act out of an intention similar to that of the character, you will create a very unique serial killer, you will appear to the audience, to be the serial killer you would be, if you were a serial killer for real.
Film and television serial killers should be easy to catch, they stand out a mile, because the actors try to convey weirdness or evil or danger or psychopathy. The thing about real serial killers is that they are impossible to differentiate them (on the surface) from other people because there is nothing particularly special about them.
In every scene you play, discover the intention the character has, and act out of that intention towards the other actor truthfully. The result? You appear to the audience, thanks to the magic of film and television, to be a serial killer. Why should they doubt it? They willingly suspend their disbelief – let them.