Edward Norton on "Inside the Actor's Studio"

Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005 - 11:27 pm

(Original Posting at http://irmabelle.diaryland.com)

So tonight, I watched Edward Norton on Inside the Actor's Studio. Don't know if it was an old repeat or a new episode, but I haven't seen it before, so...

I got a lot of good notes from him, it helped clarify a lot of things about acting for me. The only movie I've seen him in is "Fight Club". I saw a clip of another action oriented movie that he was in, so I assumed that was his "niche", I was surprised to learn that he's played a wide variety of roles in many different types of movies.

I was also surprised to learn that he auditioned twice for the Actor's Studio and was not accepted. He also auditioned for the Yale Drama program and was not accepted. Norton said that he'd heard Dustin Hoffman auditioned seven times for the Actor's Studio. Then James Lipton said that Harvey Keitel auditioned eleven times, and Jack Nicholson auditioned five times. Makes me feel better knowing that some of the great actors out there weren't immediately recognized as such...maybe there's still hope for me to reach that 8 or higher that I'm aiming for. Or to find success in Hollywood in spite of obstacles.

Anyhow, these are the notes I took. Most of my notes are paraphrases of what Norton actually said(NOT word for word quotes), I wrote down the ideas he expressed in a way that made sense to me. When I did write down word for word quotes, they are in "paranthases".

1. Have a full toolbox of skills as an actor; Use different techniques for different types of work.

2. Building a character: "If you can find the right pair of shoes for your character, that's a good place to start, because the shoes affect your posture, how you move and walk."

3. Become the character as much as possible, but "sometimes your responsibility becomes simulating artificially that which is real in someone else, and absorbing the superficiality" so that you can represent it rather than becoming it. (But not with emotions, that's a different thing.) The representation of naturalistic behavior is part of your job, especially in film. "There are moments that connect the moments of emotion. Living in a space or environment has a lot to do with behavior and making it unconcious."

[I'm not sure what that last part means, but I wrote it down anyway because my intuition tells me it's important, and hopefully it will make sense to me sometime in the future.]

4. Advice from Helena Bonham Carter for the period of time between takes: If you're standing and you could be sitting, sit down. If you're sitting and you could be laying, lay down.

5. Advice from Stella Adler: An actor's talent lies in his choices.

6. Film can pick up on subtle acting, stillness. Allow the camera to see you thinking between your lines.

7. Your role as an actor in the theatre is you hold the shape of the drama in your hands more than in film, it's a very different responsibility.

8. Preparation for a role/performance: Sense Memory can be a means of opening emotional conduits in you so things flow more freely. Imagination gives you outlet to more places, there is nobody whose personal experience is as rich as a human imagination. Stanislavski: You're behaving naturally under imaginary circumstances. Meisner's repetition exercises can be extremely effective. Good actors actually listen to what the other person is saying, it's one of the cornerstones. Repetition exercises make you listen, gets you out of your head and past analysis of the text. Get as many acting tools in your toolbox as you can find.

9. "Every actor has a certain amount of elasticity, some have more than others." Know your strengths and weaknesses as an actor. Allow yourself to strip down emotionally and be naked and vulnerable, trust that simplicity. As as actor you may feel you need to tart it up with drama or intensity or gesture. Sometimes the hardest thing is just to trust your own humanity, to let it come through without twists or inflections or anything.

[That's something Norton feels he needs to work on, BTW.]

So those are my notes, they really clarified a lot for me, things I've heard before, but they didn't quite make sense to me before.