What role has emotion got in acting?

A poor actor locates emotion in their voice, as if feeling can only be released vocally. This often produces a throaty, strangled sound that stands in for the experience of emotion. But when we experience our emotions it is a psychophysical experience which combines mental, corporeal and vocal reactions and responses. I would suggest that the actor that sounds as though they are trying to feel something by forcing the throat to convey meaning is actually feeling nothing. They are faking, defrauding the audience and watching them is increasingly tiresome.

But actors should feel something, they should take ownership of what they are actually feeling and make it work for them. And in the course of carrying out the endeavours of their characters, the actor should not ignore their own emotions for in the context, nothing that the actor feels should be denied.

When we carry out actions similar to those of the literary characters we seek to portray, we will feel something, and we must acknowledge that feeling. Just because we prefer our acting technique should centre itself not around real emotion but truthful experience, does not mean that we feel there is no place in acting for emotion.

Emotion is the bio-psychophysiological response to experiences that affect us. It has both a mental and physical display and never appears in the same way twice. Thus making it a highly unsuitable material from which to build a character. Emotion is shy, nervous and uncontrollable, it cannot be poked at with a stick, it will respond in ways you do not expect. You cannot train the emotions in the same way that Pavlov did his dogs. And if you were able to do so, why would you want mechanically stimulated emotions? Their beauty is their spontaneity of emergence.

I prefer my acting a little less emotional, for I see far too few actors in the UK that can successfully squeeze out the required emotion at the desired occasion. So they fake it and usually very poorly. Those that manage to squeeze one out in rehearsal will place their focus on reliving that moment and sadly, I would say, that makes them more self conscious in performance, self indulgent and boring to watch.

I’m sure as actors you enjoy this part of your job, but I’ve never gone away from a film impressed by the actors’ capacity to feel, to emote. I often sit speechless at the end of a film, moved by it. And here’s the key, I am the one moved by it. When am I moved? There are many occasions but I am usually moved when a character with whom I have developed a relationship, a bond goes bravely through something painful. Then I feel something far more than if I were to sit and watch them cry.