Ian McKellen Explains The Difference Between Acting on Stage and In Movies | The Dick Cavett Show

if you had to play a guy who's doing a scene something you know who's and and and the director said I don't want to be awful you know I just want to make it clear that the guy's an amateur just subtly make it clear that he's an amateur maybe doing henry v when he shouldn't i'm well let me just be clear with what you're asking me before I say without I'm doing okay that I should pretend I shouldn't pretend to be an actor who isn't very good who is just not bad but inexperienced and an amateur it's so far from my own experience doing this that I'm not going to try and do because I'm good at you do it no no I can't do it but I remember I was just thinking there's just something about the way she's standing well I that isn't totally wrong and yet no one stands that way in real life no one gestures quite that way but I can't really quite do it it's a little like asking a good Horseman to ride badly alright well no we're talking about the stage or me not ya know film yeah the trouble about the stage is that the audience sees the whole body they are far enough away from it even in a small theater to take it all in and of course they because they're not engaged in the action of the play they are there only to be an audience who listen and indeed a spectator who watches they can take it all in with an objectivity which normally they don't apply I mean we're talking together now and apart from irony I've not looked at your shoes once but if I were in the audience I could still over the camera I could take it all in so that you trying to impress the audience will have to be aware of what your feet are doing in a way that you don't talking to me have to be aware I think that's the initial problem that an actor has to solve so that yeah if I'm talking to you all I need to bother about is my feet and I can be doing anything I want with the rest of my body and it's not really upsetting you because you don't you know you're concentrating on my eyes but all those people have seen that I'm terribly nervous back he was like on of being very relaxed so an actor has to somehow it's the great word all actors you can relax and that relaxation is a technique for achieving which is to do with relating having control over every part of their body their minds so that it doesn't wonder their imaginations their face the tone of their voice so that all those attributes can express the character that he is portraying and the intention that that character has in speaking or in being or listening or sitting still and when you have that total control over all your attributes you are no longer being an ordinary person you are then playing you are then acting and although it looks natural to the audience if a member of the audience were to step up onto a stage and see a person behaving playing in this way once they got up to him they would say what's the matter with this guy he's behaving very peculiarly scene closest you know goes to they also do with distance now in the movies it seems to me not having made very many that's the crucial difference that the camera is very like somebody just in the room with you it concentrates very partially on you usually on the face and the body can be doing what it wants that's why so often when film wonderful film actors step out onto a stage you have the same reaction as you did with that young girl is only acted three times you say what's the what's happening with those hands they're usually twitching because they're getting rid of a lot of them essentially in which case you put them in your pockets yeah Oh actors also don't put your hands in your pocket I think that's the very best place for is that so incredible what you just said yeah that's very illuminating it's the opposite of opposite of genius in a way there's there are subtle signs that betray the amateur that you can't quite pick out they're not as obvious as jiggling their hands it's just something's a little wrong just as with a great actor we can't exactly say why he's thrilling you at that moment you just know that it is it's not quite an opposite did you ever have trouble with your hands I've been reading a book on acting when I was a kid that said I was really a beginner's book and acting but 9:00 written for about ninth grade level and one line in it I said when you got on stage the first thing you'll think of is that everybody's looking at your hands forget it they're not but you can you remember a time when you wondered what to do with your hands on stage can you recall yes it's amazing because I look at these things when I go to see plays which I do a lot that so many actors don't know what to do with their hands even yeah yeah it doesn't matter how old they are what do you do with your hands well I going back what I just said I try and tie them up to my thoughts and my imagination of my face I don't and but then of course having achieved a certain relaxation I might decide to signal something to the audience which they should receive that they should understand that although I am very calm I am the characters a little bit nervous so I will throw out what we call them but as a body language that we all know about his deaf ear of course to get deeper into this or not yeah take that all the great actors right from Richard Burbage was the first mentor took play with Shakespeare's parts right through to Olivier marlon brando whoever you take as the latest exponent of great acting I'm Bailey talking about the theater I have been praised for their reality they are so truthful true to life is the reason persons judge of an act no I don't want you how you imagine Richard Burbage acted you know and there's great big open-air theatres with no no scenery but you could mention it all sort of this sort of thing and yet when verbage died someone said David's dead that cannot be I've seen him die as King Lear a fellow Hamlet actually he's died he had been to that audience so real and but we know from pictures of the old actors and from films of the nineteenth-century actors that their notion of reality was quite other from it reflected the age in which they lived Henry Irving nineteenth-century actor his notion of reality the bell the bell labelled Rogerson you can repeat something three times because the British Empire will never set and and there's nothing wrong with the world you know and the certainties of the bells were today it's all twitches and body language and you could actually make it a movement audience to tears with what would get roars of laughter now exactly and so fashions of reality change and the reality today is all governed by this thing the camera can get him very close and it can guess what is behind everything is ambiguous everything has to be guessed at everything is subtle and even then we may not reach the truth [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The Dick Cavett Show

Views: 2,418,502

Keywords: The Dick Cavett Show, Talk Show, Musician, Celebrities, Dick Cavett, United States, Chat Show, Interview, ian mckellen, ian mckellen young, ian mckellen interview, ian mckellen rare, ian mckellen dick cavett, ian mckellen the dick cavett show, magneto, gandalph, acting, actors on acting, actors, ian mckellen movies, ian mckellen on stage, ian mckellen actor

Id: QzOlVLDMLAQ

Length: 7min 37sec (457 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2019