“Somewhere along the line, someone — I can’t remember who it was — told me to stop acting with a capital ‘A,’ not to perform, not to be big, not to entertain, just to be. And to … listen to other people when they’re talking. That was probably the most important thing I ever learned.” — Dennis Franz, “NYPD Blue”
Probably the most powerful and also the most readily available tool an actor has for staying in the moment is the other actor in the scene. Listening to the other person(s) in the scene gives an actor a simple task and a focus for his attention. Listening is the best technique an actor has for anchoring himself in the moment. It also keeps his choices from becoming mechanical or forced. Listening relaxes actors. It absolutely prevents overacting. It’s what makes a performance look “natural.” Listening allows the actors to affect each other and thus to create moments — tiny electric connections that make the emotional events of a scene.
If you are directing drama, and you want the audience to engage with the characters and their predicaments and adventures, it is essential that the actors listen. Without listening a dramatic scene is just “my turn to talk, your turn to talk”; it becomes a scene about two actors’ performances instead of a scene about a relationship and an event in that relationship.
If you have a funny script to direct and you don’t want it ruined, it is essential that the actors listen. When the actors listen to each other and play the situations, the audience can hear the lines, identify with the characters and suspend their disbelief in even the most outrageous situations. When actors in a comedy are not listening, when they start to play the punchlines or the schtick instead of playing the situations, the comedy becomes forced and a terrible strain to watch.
The words that characters speak to each other are not the scene. The scene is the underlying event to which the words are clues. We only have an event — that is, a scene
— if something happens to the characters. When the actors are listening to each other, something can happen because they can affect each other. Now it stands to reason that it is the director’s job to make sure that there is a scene and not just words being spoken. Hence a good director will make sure that the actors are listening to each other.
In the worst cases of non-listening, the actor may do what is called “anticipating.” This means she may actually react (with a pre-decided reaction) to the other actor’s line before that actor even delivers it. You don’t see this much in movies that are actually released or television programs that get aired. It looks so bad that even if a director is so tense or unsophisticated that he doesn’t notice it (“anticipating” is one
of the acting problems in the movies of Edward D. Wood, Jr., for example) someone on the set — or
in the editing room — will usually spot it.
“I think that if you have a talent for acting, it is the talent for listening.” — Morgan Freeman
You might think listening would be automatic. The actors hear each other’s lines — doesn’t that mean that they are listening? But we are not talking about ordinary listening. It is a term of art. It’s not just listening for your cue, for your turn to talk, it is a special attention paid to the other person.
The actor is required to listen more deeply than we usually do in real life. In fact Stanislavsky uses the term “communion” to describe what I am calling “listening.” The term “communion” calls attention to the deepness of the experience as well as to the fact that listening makes the audience feel the actors are communicating with each other rather than delivering lines to each other.
Eye contact is very helpful to listening. In my Acting for Directors class I begin with a listening exercise; first I ask each student to make eye contact with his partner. The eye contact I am asking them to make is different from regular “looking.” When we use our eyes in the regular way, we are checking, evaluating, categorizing — this is not a bad thing to do when you are driving a car, for instance. But the eye contact I am asking for is a giving and a receiving; it is using your eyes in the sense that the eyes are windows of the soul.
It is a surrender, a tiny leap of faith. It exactly means that the actor puts more attention on the other actor than on her own performance. And allows her lines to be informed by that attention, dictated by that attention. The lines come out of her attention to the other actor, out of her interest in the response of the other actor, rather than out of a decision how to say them. Now this is key. Listening is not simply hearing the words the other actor says and responding to them — it is allowing one’s concentration to be on the response of the other actor, on him physically — on the expression in his eyes, the little lines around his mouth, on the sound of his voice as well as the words he is saying, on his body, even on his smell.
This is a subtle distinction that absolutely differentiates really good actors from mediocre ones. Actors can get stuck selling the surface of the lines if they think listening is merely responding to what they hear the other actor say. Presumably the scene is written so that it sounds like the characters are listening and responding to each other
— the lines answer each other. So actors can fool themselves into thinking that they are listening when they are really only playing the surface of the lines. They think that as long as they are not committing the cardinal sin of “anticipating,” they are listening.
When an actor is listening, his facial expressions also come out of his interest in the response of the other actor. If the actor becomes concerned with his own response (perhaps in reaction to a result direction, for example, “I think you should get angry
when she says X”) there is a tiny hardening in his face, an invisible veil in front of his expression.
eye contact is very underrated as an acting tool. According to his book M a k i n g M o v i e s , Sidney Lumet noticed, when he was working with William Holden on “Network,” that Holden rarely made eye contact with his acting partners. When it came time to film his big emotional scene the only direction Lumet gave Holden was to look in Faye Dunaway’s eyes for the whole scene and never to look away. Emotion poured out of Holden.
“All you have to do is look at Anthony Hopkins’ eyes and you get so much, your job is cut in half there’s so much in his eyes. He was lovely, generous, moving.” — Joan Allen
“[Candace Bergen] has the most beautiful eyes. And not being a trained actor, I’ll go right into her eyes when I’m lost. I look at them, and I say the words. It’s a wonderful thing.” — Garry Marshall
Listening is sure-fire, it is the best tool an actor has. And it is simple. Whatever her preparation, the actor puts her full attention on the other actor. But sometimes actors don’t listen. Sometimes they are fearful of being caught staring at the other actor; they worry that full eye contact would not be natural-looking. Attempting to give their performances variety and colors, they devise elaborate affectations of response that bear no relation to true listening.
Sometimes actors are working so hard on their inner life that they forget about the other actor. Sometimes they don’t like what the other actor is doing and think that if they listen to him it will bring their performance down. Some successful, highly regarded actors think they have to screen out the other actor in order to maintain the luster of their individual performance.
True listening can be frightening to actors. Actors themselves call a fellow actor who is a good listener unselfish. A reviewer called Emma Thompson’s performance in “Sense and Sensibility” “considerate” — I think he perceived that she always listens. “Ensemble acting” is another name for listening. You may have noticed that the new Screen Actors Guild awards include awards for Ensemble Acting in every category. This is because actors know, as John Travolta said in his Golden Globe acceptance speech for “Get Shorty,” that an actor “can only be as great as the actors around him.” Spencer Tracy is known as the “actor’s actor” because he always listened.
When actors are said to have “chemistry” together, it means that they listen to each other, they engage, they “play off” each other. Romantic leads don’t have to sleep together — they don’t even have to like each other — as long as they listen. Cary Grant had chemistry with more leading ladies than probably any other actor in the history of movies — because he always listened, always put his full, relaxed concentration on his partner.
Ensemble acting puts the story ahead of showy individual performances, and allows the audience to relax and enjoy the movie. There can be a nagging fear for actors that by listening, by submitting themselves to the ensemble, they are giving something up. They could not be more mistaken. They are caught in the misunderstanding I described
above: that of thinking that listening is no more than hearing the other actor’s lines and inflections. No. It is the attention, the concentration on the response of the other actor. For this, each actor bears individual responsibility. Listening does not detract from an actor’s performance — it enriches the texture, substance, humor, suspense, etc., etc. My best advice to young actors is always, “When all else fails, make the other guy look good.” It’s the simplest, surest way for an actor to improve his own performance.
But when the other actors are also listening, are also giving, and are in addition connected up to their simple, honest understanding of the circumstances of the script — then really superior work can take place. And without that, without all the actors giving to each other, an actor who listens and who meets the demands of the role may stand out and still look good, but really superior work cannot take place.
You as the director are in a position to turn a group of actors into an ensemble. First of all, you must ask for it. And you need to be able to spot resistances to listening because if even one of the actors is not listening you have no scene, only two performances. And the scene itself turns into a scene about two actors instead of a scene about whatever the script is about.
Of course sometimes the reason actors are not listening is because they are trying to follow a result-oriented direction. Result-oriented direction takes the actor’s concentration off his partner and puts it squarely on himself. The actor starts worrying: “Am I as angry as the director wants me to be? Did I have the right reaction, the right expression? Did I say the line right? Was I quirky enough?” When his concentration is focused thus on his performance, rather than on a playable choice, which can connect him to the other actor, his performance is ruined.
It can be hard for an inexperienced director to tell if actors are listening. Superior listening skills are invisible to the untrained eye. Actors like James Garner, Peter Falk, Mary Tyler Moore, Spencer Tracy — all actors of superior listening skills — seem simply to be the character, with no visible craft.
When John Travolta says that a director “won’t see it on the set. You’ll see it in the editing room,” it’s a bit intimidating, isn’t it? Makes you feel left out. Dennis Hopper, while directing Robert Duvall in “Colors,” was terrified because it didn’t look like Duvall was doing anything! It looked boring! Fortunately he was more terrified of looking foolish by telling a superior actor like Duvall to do “more,” so he didn’t say anything — because in the rushes, it was all there.
Now that you know about listening, you have the secret! You can see it on the set, if you know what to look for. The main reason why directors don’t see “it” on the set is that they don’t understand about listening, they don’t appreciate the source of the tiny emotional events that read like gangbusters on the big screen.
It is astonishing to me that nowadays so many directors — including directors who should know better — position themselves at the video monitor while a scene is shooting. You’re not going to like hearing this, but it’s my job to tell you: You can’t tell from the video monitor whether the actors are listening. You must be next to the camera,
watching their naked faces.
In most movies where the acting is bad, the thing that is wrong is the actors were not listening to each other. In student films and first features this is the most glaring defect. Problems of pace and timing, lapses in energy, false notes, lack of “build” to a scene, actors who are flat, stiff, cold, cardboard-y, “walking through it,” “phoning it in,” actors who seem to be “in different movies” — all these are examples of problems that usually are listening problems. Likewise when actors are overacting. When directors tell actors to “do less” what they probably should be telling them is to listen more.
If the actors are not listening in a two-shot or master, the shot will turn out to be unusable because if there is no listening, there is no relationship. And if there is no relationship, there is nothing to watch in a two-shot. But listening is also crucial to a close-up. People think of the close-up as the chance to see the character’s reactions, his inner life, which they figure the actor can create all by himself. But a performance in which the actor is acting “all by himself,” while it may be showy and impressive, takes the audience out of the story, to watch the impressive acting. So in close-ups equally as in two-shots and masters the actor must be listening. Listening gives life and colors and expression to the close-ups. Listening creates the tiny expressive movements, the sense that the character is thinking about what to say next, and feels something about what he is saying. Listening makes the audience care about the characters and what happens to them.
Sometimes a shot is so tight or so complicated that there is no room for the other actor to stand in the eyeline of the actor whose close-up is being shot. Sometimes the director of photography will tell you that in order to get the two-shot you want, the actors’ eye- lines will need to be elsewhere than looking at each other. I’m not saying that you should block every scene so that the actors are always looking at each other. I’m talking about scenes which are staged so that the characters are meant to be looking at each other but, because of technical demands, the actors playing the characters cannot. Your reasons for deciding to arrange the shot this way may be important enough to you that you decide to forego the freshness that two engaged actors (provided they really are engaged, and are really playing off each other, and not just “acting all by themselves” even though they are standing face-to-face) can give the scene. But you should understand that you are making a choice, a trade-off. If, when you get to the editing room, you don’t see “it” — you don’t see the relationship or the emotional events of the scene — then what? The one thing I don’t want you to do at that point is say, “I had no choice.”
Directors often want to know how to work with actors who have been trained in different ways. The answer is simple: get them to talk and listen to each other, get them to put their concentration on each other, keep each one from acting “all by himself and screening the other one out”.
this skill. You need to be able to see and feel it. And you need to be able to see and feel it not just on a movie screen but while it is happening in front of you. In other words, you need to be in the moment; you need to be able to listen, too. Your eyes must be open, relaxed, and soft, able to receive. This is how you will be able to catch false
moments. Sidney Lumet says in his book M a k i n g M o v i e s that he can tell if the acting in
a take is good enough or not by simply watching in a relaxed way. Then whenever his attention wanders, he knows the actors are not engaged and the take is not good enough.
Here’s another way to tell whether the actors are listening: When actors listen, their performances on each take are going to be slightly different. This idea is frightening to directors. It takes tremendous courage and skill to trust this process. Each take the actor does of a scene has to be slightly different if the actor is listening. And there’s more: If the actors are listening, the readings of the lines are likely to come out differently from the way you heard them in your head. If you want good acting, you must favor listening over preconceived line readings. I tell you this flat out.
“It took me years to understand fully why [my teacher] was right, and… never to plan how I would say a line, only to think of the situation, and listen to the other actors… What is hard, and really has to be worked at, is being able to go with whatever comes up from other actors or the director at each moment of a performance and not to try to force a repetition of something that went well the day before.… The real work of acting is letting go.” — Vanessa Redgrave
Some actors are “naturals,” that is, they are good listeners without having to think