| Member
Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: St. Louis, MO
Posts: 56
|  American vs. British styles of acting | |
I found this to be quite fascinating so I thought it might be interesting to my fellow actors. Quote: American vs. British Acting Styles
by Melissa Dixon
My limited and grossly generalized understanding of the difference between the dominant American and British acting styles is this: Americans seek to remove barriers and artifice and present moments of raw emotional/psychological truth, and Brits build a toolkit of techniques in diction, expression and body language to convey a scene's meaning to an audience.
The American method gives us fearless, visceral performers like Marlon Brando and Sean Penn, who have few or no obvious British counterparts. On the other hand, British performances may have a greater feeling of back-and-forth, a sense that the actor is actively communicating with the audience at every moment of a carefully structured performance.
Washington Post critic Stephen Hunter explored some of the advantages of the British technique in his review of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones:
"[T]he movie is kind of a laboratory on American vs. British technique. Score: Brits 10, Yanks 0. That's because to the Brits, who work from the outside in, acting is physical mastery of face and voice and body, strategically employed at certain moments for impact. An actor imposes himself on the character, and invents charm and wit and sparkle where none exists. So even the guy playing Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) is creepy-elegant, and McGregor, athletic and earnest, can even bring a little life to a line like, 'I am concerned for my Padawan. He is not ready to be given this assignment on his own yet.' The Americans, on the other hand, are trained to get into the character's mind and imagine as he would imagine, to work from the inside out. But there is no inside here: These characters are nothing but pop-cult props, and that leaves the performers helpless and inert."
Some actors who, I think, exemplify the typical American approach: Sean Penn, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Giamatti. Some British actors performing in the classic British style: Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, Helena Bonham Carter. Some American exceptions to the rule: Jeff Bridges, Gary Sinise. Some British exceptions: Jeremy Irons, Daniel Day Lewis (and maybe Kate Winslet -- all individual actors defy generalizations to some degree, but Kate Winslet's acting is especially difficult to classify).
| url: http://www.kulturblog.com/kulturblog...an_vs_bri.html
__________________
Be responsible, respectable,
Stable but gullible
Concerned and caring, help the helpless
But always remain ultimately selfish
-Depeche Mode |