Film and TV Editor John O’Connor discusses the intelligence needed to perform and why the minds of actors today are often undervalued
Once, on a slow day, I zoomed into the hands of an actress. Not quite to the point where I could only see pixels but enough for the hands to be the foreground of the picture. They belonged to Charlotte Rampling and the film is Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years (2015). I watched how she used her hands in a scene. Two minutes of hands resting on a table, fingers interlaced, a thumb twitching, small movements or no movements at all. She has discovered her husband’s past is not what she thought it was, or how he presented it to be. Despite not seeing her face, I knew what her character felt. Something as arbitrary as the actor’s face felt almost futile in portraying her emotion. But, how could hands tell me this ? How does Rampling decide to move them and why ? I imagine that hands, along with the eyes, are the natural props actors are born with and must learn to utilise.
However, it made me wonder; how much brain power is involved in creating such a powerful performance, and why does society not view actors as the intellectuals which they undeniably are?
It’s all about image. In most social circles, especially academic circles, the art of acting is not taken seriously and is questioned as a serious profession, never mind being considered a profession which requires a very high level of intelligence, because of the image that surrounds the industry. Actors are often described as vainglorious or ignorant, so the idea of being an actor and the art of acting itself is often tarnished in the process.
Hollywood lies five hours south of Silicon Valley, but it is, in certain ways, more than its equal when it comes to its role as a centre for moulding the intellectuals of today. When we think of careers that involve a high level of brain power, we think of the engineers who design our roads or the healthcare professionals in our hospitals. The concept of an actor learning hand movement or breath control, while being unfairly compared to learning how to perform open heart surgery, leads to the diminishment of the art of acting. Although professions such as engineers and healthcare workers are undeniably essential for life in the 21st century, it would be counterintuitive if we began to compare like with like and did not accept and appreciate the intelligence it requires for actors to inhabit the roles which we have come to love on screen. It may not be necessary for day-to-day life but it is an example of a crucial skill that must be developed for an actor to perform their job effectively.
So, how can pretending to be someone else on the stage or big screen be an intellectual affair? Children play dress up all the time and are not given awards for their work, so why should those who keep imagining into adulthood be rewarded?
Case in point - Emma Stone in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things (2023). The film follows the evolution of a reanimated young woman, Bella Baxter (played by Stone), who has been brought back to life, her brain being replaced with a newborn’s. Playing a fully grown woman with the brain of a child is no simple feat. Stone was forced to deconstruct what she knew. Walking, for example. When a child is learning to walk their muscles must develop to allow them to walk over an extended period of time. So, how would a child walk in the body of someone who has already developed the physical ability to do so right away? We do not know, but Stone must present to us her interpretation of how this might look. That is what makes the performance so masterful. Her performance is a theory. Yet, we believe her - believed her so much that the Academy carved her name into the best actress statuette.
The imagination and intellect required for such a role cannot be denied and I implore you to try and recreate what this must look like without seeming ridiculous but believable. Only once we put ourselves in the actor’s shoes do we realise how difficult it must be to present such an inconceivable notion as believable and consumable.
Not all performances require such an excessive amount of imagination and research, yet they still require vast amounts of emotional intelligence. Once again I turn to Charlotte Rampling’s performance in 45 years (2015). The dialogue is limited, yet the film has a runtime of over 95 minutes, so Rampling must engage the audience somehow. It is actually Rampling’s lack of dialogue which allows her to do this, through the emotionally invasive use of shots which seem to run for too long. However, not many actors possess such an awareness of micro-expressions and mannerisms that Rampling holds, which make these scenes visually stimulating and intellectually dissectable.
Of course, not all acting relies on intellectual depth, but it is those exceptional performances, formed by pure instinct and skill, alongside the "intellectuals" behind them, that make these performances stand out as all the more remarkable and captivating in comparison to the rest. A new form of intellectualism has been formed on our screens without us even realising.