18 Oct 2006
Something I’ve often noticed: how little actors talk about the art of acting.
Rudi Shelley, the world’s greatest acting teacher, taught me a great technique. If you are in an emotional scene, don’t try and repeat the emotion. Repeat the thought and the emotion will follow. If you try and find the emotion alone, you will have to dig deeper and deeper until you are exhausted and the emotion gets distorted. Repeating the thought is much simpler and more certain to produce the same emotion again and again.
I think about something Rudi has taught me around twenty times every performance I give. There has never been anyone like him.