Acting and emotional transference

[Bucklecroft Rudy]

Ive never done any professional acting so im calling all the thespians on BL. When you act do you literally take on the emotions of your character. Im aware that there are 2 different schools of thought one which makes acting purely mimetic and the other which means that the actor replaces his own emotions with his characters.
But how far can that go? Do actors protraying drug use get so deep inside the character's head that the brain produces a mega placebo reaction? I would think not or rather that superficial emotions or emotions experienced before could be felt vaguely - but ive got no idea really.

 

[fridgebuzz]

I'm probably not contributing much but I heard the actor has to pretend what happens to the character is happening to him and react accordingly. I doubt anything experienced is more than just imagination.

 

[Samadhi]

From my understanding, the best performance that an actor can give is when they truly jump inside the skin of their character and walk around a little. It's something that i've heard Heath Ledger did with The Joker and why he received such critical acclaim for his portrayal of that character. We all know what happened there, however, but i have no clue what that means. I've heard a lot of actors really research their characters and some even behave like their characters prior to beginning a project.

I do know that when actor wants to give a realistic performance, they draw on their own relatable experiences - ie, past trauma or distress to evoke a strong negative emotion that they can use to fire their performance.

One way to work this out would be to think of particularly outstanding performances by actors, then research them - find interviews where they discuss where the inspiration for those characters came from.

 

[malakaix]

Look into: 'Method Acting'

There's a few actors that incorporate this style into their performance, Heath Ledger and Christian Bale come to mind.. with Bale, there's been a few of his movies where he's lost a severe amount of weight for the role and has become an entirely different person. Heath Ledger really took it to the next level with his performance as The Joker though, you look at his character in something like 'Candy' and then see him as the role of The Joker and the transformation is remarkable.