My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin (most read book in the world TXT) 📕

the world of make-believe. I like the scene to be revealed by the lifting or parting of curtains. I dislike plays that come over the footlights and participate with an audience, in which a character leans against the proscenium and explains the plot. Besides being didactic, this device destroys the charm of the theatre, and is a prosaic way of getting over exposition.

In stage décor I prefer that which contributes reality to the scene and nothing more. If it is a modern play of everyday life, I do not want geometric design. These prodigious effects destroy my make-believe.

Some very fine artists have imposed their scenic effusions to the degree of subordinating both the actor and the play. On the other hand just curtains and steps running up into infinity are worse intrusions. They reek of erudition and shout: ‘We leave much to your noble sensibility and imagination!’ I once saw Laurence Olivier in evening dress recite an excerpt from Richard III at a benefit. Although he achieved a medieval mood by his histrionics, his white tie and tails were rather incongruous.

Someone said that the art of acting is relaxing. Of course this basic principle can be applied to all the arts, but an actor especially must have restraint and an inner containment. No matter how frenzied the scene, the technician within the actor should be calm and relaxed, editing and guiding the rise and fall of his emotions – the outer man excited and the inner controlled. Only through relaxation can an actor achieve this. How does one relax? That is difficult. My own method is rather personal: before going on the stage, I am always extremely nervous and excited, and in this state I get so exhausted that by the time I make my entrance I am relaxed.

I do not believe acting can be taught. I have seen intelligent people fail at it and dullards act quite well. But acting essentially requires feeling. Wainewright, an authority on aesthetics, a friend of Charles Lamb and the literary lights of his time, was a ruthless, cold-blooded murderer who poisoned his cousin for mercenary reasons. Here is an example of an intelligent man who could never have been a good actor because he had little feeling.

All intellect and no feeling can be characteristic of the arch-criminal, and all feeling and no intellect exemplify the harmless idiot. But when intellect and feeling are perfectly balanced, then we get the superlative actor.

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting. I do not mean it in a derogatory sense. Often I have heard an actor say: ‘How I’d love to play that part,’ meaning he would love himself in the part. This may be egocentric; but the great actor is mainly preoccupied with his own virtuosity: Irving in The Bells, Tree as Svengali, Martin Harvey in A Cigarette Maker’s Romance, all three very ordinary plays, but very good parts. Just a fervent love of the theatre is not sufficient; there must also be a fervent love of and belief in oneself.

The Method school of acting I know little about. I understand it concentrates on development of personality – which could very well be less developed in some actors. After all, acting is pretending to be other people. Personality is an indefinable thing that shines through a performance in any case. But there is something to all methods. Stanislavski, for example, strove for ‘inner truth’, which I understand, means ‘being it’ instead of ‘acting it’. This requires empathy, a feeling into things: one should be able to feel what it is like to be a lion or an eagle, also to feel a character’s soul instinctively, to know under all circumstances what his reactions will be. This part of acting cannot be taught.

In instructing a true actor or actress about a character, a word or a phrase will often suffice: ‘This is Falstaffian’ or ‘This is a modern Madame Bovary’. Jed Harris is reported to have told an actress: ‘This character has the mobility of a weaving black tulip.’ This goes too far.

The theory that one must know a character’s life story is unnecessary. No one could write into a play or a part those remarkable nuances that Duse conveyed to an audience. They must have been dimensions beyond the concept of the author. And Duse, I understand, was not an intellectual.

I abhor dramatic schools that indulge in reflections and introspections to evoke the right emotion. The mere fact that a student must be mentally operated upon is sufficient proof that he should give up acting.

As for that much-touted metaphysical word ‘truth’, there are different forms of it and one truth is as good as another. The classical acting at the Comédie Française is as believable as the so-called realistic acting in an Ibsen play; both are in the realm of artificiality and designed to give the illusion of truth – after all, in all truth there is the seed of falsehood.

I have never studied acting, but as a boy I was fortunate in living in an era of great actors, and I acquired an extension of their knowledge and experience. Although I was gifted, I was surprised at rehearsals to find how much I had to learn about technique. Even the beginner with talent must be taught technique, for no matter how great his gifts, he must have the skill to make them effective.

I have found that orientation is the most important means of achieving this; that is, knowing where you are and what you’re doing every moment you’re on the stage. Walking into a scene one must have the authority of knowing where to stop; when to turn; where to stand; when and where to sit; whether to talk directly to a character or indirectly. Orientation gives authority and distinguishes the professional from the amateur. I have always insisted on this method of orientation with the cast when I’m directing my films.

In acting I like subtlety and restraint.