Acting

“The other side thinks they have the upper hand, but what they’re not taking into consideration is the tenacity of human nature, of the human soul”

“We are proudly Canadian and that comes through our approach, where everyone is welcome,” says acting coach Julian LeBlanc

Intimacy coordinators are helping choreograph intimate scenes on film and TV sets like they’re on-camera fight sequences, ensuring everyone feels safe

Johnny Depp gives a Hollywood Indian icon a rethink, and may just get away with it

Oscar favourite Colin Firth excels as a stammering royal who has to inspire a nation

On the fakeness of reality shows, how ‘the dumb bimbo’ is cast, and why actresses are shrinking

Just a quick follow-up to my Joss Whedon post, below: one commenter understandably finds it weird for me to say that Alexis Denisof projects a “limited personality” when he played a character who changes drastically over the course of the series, and portrayed that change convincingly (like I said, he can act). It’s hard to explain why I think someone can simultaneously have range as an actor and be limited as a personality, but it comes down to the idea that most performers have a personality that is separate from, or at least complementary to, their ability to become the character they’re playing. A star actor like, say, Christopher Plummer plays many different types of characters, and adjusts his acting approach for each of them, but he also has a persona of his own — one that’s associated with his voice, manner, appearance — otherwise he wouldn’t be a star. An actor who completely disappears into every character he plays, so that he has no personality of his own, is not an actor that anyone will come to see. And this applies even more to TV, where we keep coming back week after week to see particular actors because we like them.

Actor Ben Kingsley talks to Brian D. Johnson about the art of acting