The Great Acting Blog

Colm Meaney’s performance in Claire Dolan (Lodge Kerrigan 1998), is a devastating example of a cinematic villain whose menace is not the product of “emotions” or “characteriztion” but of calculated shifts in action. Meaney plays Roland Cain, a gangster, pimp, restauranteur, master manipulator and thoroughly nasty piece of work. His relationship with Claire Dolan [played by Katrin Cartlidge] is…

Tony Richardson’s Mademoiselle centres on Jeanne Moreau’s refined school mistress, tasked with educating the rural children of local villagers. They are mostly simple, farming folk, ill-equipped to perceive that Moreau’s austere, disciplined appearance masks a complicated and possibly catastrophic personality. Outwardly she is the prim and proper schoolmistress but inwardly she is deviant. She is…

“In a dream everything is uncertain, senseless and contradictory except the overall feeling that directs the dream” Tolstoy, War And Peace ; cinema Further Reading…. Is Acting Art? Wise Words From 5 Great Novelists Subscribe

Only do projects that inspire you to give your best. If a project doesn’t inspire you to give your best then don’t do it. It’s not more complicated than that.

  Carol Reed’s The Running Man is a strange film. Among Reed’s filmography it does not have a strong legacy. When we hear his name our first thought is The Third Man, quickly followed by other classics like Odd Man Out, Our Man In Havana or The Fallen Idol. The same is probably true for the film’s leads too; Lee Remmick, Alan Bates and Laurence Harvey. Its not the film that springs to mind. The…

Delon in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai   RIP Alain Delon, The Spring Samurai a true cinema artist, a master, and a rare actor who defined an entire aesthetic. Thank-you for lighting the way.

How creativity and progression are linked. Creativity is about starting with a blank sheet of paper and discovering what might fill it. If we simply repeat what we have done before then it is simply not creativity. Creativity is a process of discovery, largely through trial and error plus the use of technique. If the process is true, then a new idea is brought into existence. Heraclitus was not…

Some Practical Philosophy For The Year Ahead | The Great Acting Blog

  Optimism; setbacks are temporary and limited, not permanent and pervasive. They will pass if you keep working. Quitting; if you quit then you throw away all the lessons you learned from your struggles. The expansive mindset; the conservative part of our natures wants us to be sensible, stay within our borders and repeat what has already worked. But the creative mindset is the expansive mindset…

John Cleese On Creativity – A Review | The Great Acting Blog

  John Cleese’s book, Creativity, gives a fascinating insight into the creative process of one of the minds behind Monty Python and Fawlty Towers.  One of the joys of this book is that it can be read in such a short gallop – just under an hour’s reading time. I don’t mean to sound decadent, but sometimes a quick win does lift the spirits. And Cleese’s book certainly does that. It may be short in…

The Performance In Your Mind Is Nothing | The Great Acting Blog

The performance in your head is nothing – what actually took place is the actual performance.  It’s not real – the director, the editor, the other actors, the final audience, cannot see what is inside your mind. They respond to what they see on screen or stage – nobody has any idea about the performance in your head apart from you.  And yet we all have the moment when we first see the rushes and…

Performance Is Personality – Anna Magnani In Bellissima

Anna Magnani uses the full breadth and force of her personality in Luchino Visconti’s Bellissima. An actor’s personality is their performance. Range does not exist.   Anna Magnani was known as “the volcanic mother of all Italian Cinema” and this is almost literally true in Luchino Visconti’s Bellissima. Magnani plays Maddalena Cecconi, a gritty, neo-realist mother, desperately trying to get her…

Statement On “James Devereaux Crowdfunding”

Image by Dean Kavanagh   “James Devereaux Crowdfunding” will enable me to save on paying out fees to platforms so more of the funding will go towards my creative work. It gives me greater control and flexibility over my campaigning efforts, and will mean that all of my operations will be housed on jamesdevereaux.com from now on. “

Mifune: The Last Samurai – Brief Notes

  – Mifune embodied steadfastness, integrity and samurai spirit. – You have to root for the one who is outnumbered by the enemy but stands up to them anyway.  – The Ronin acts out his rage and frustration, knowing that in the end it’s hopeless.  He knows that death is inevitable.  He fights for his own sense of justice.  – Mifune’s eldest son:  it was his compassion that made him rebellious. – On…

The Ennobling Quality Of Jeanne Moreau | The Great Acting Blog

|Subscribe To The Great Acting Blog| Orson Welles described Jeanne Moreau as the greatest actor in the world. Quite a recommendation. Here I examine Moreau’s performance in Louis Malle’s Lift To The Scaffold, and try to articulate what makes her such an essential actor. By the time she made Lift To The Scaffold, Jeanne Moreau was already 30 years old, with a solid body of work behind her.…

Monica Vitti [3rd November 1931 – 2 February 2022]

Monica Vitti in Antonioni’s L’Eclisse   I first encountered Monica Vitti in Antonioni’s L’Eclisse, a film which I had originally obtained, bizarrely, on video tape, as it had not yet been released on DVD then. I was immediately struck by her moody-poetic screen persona, the sadness and the beauty. I simply had never encountered this kind of acting in film before – until then, I had always…

Actor As Artist: Béatrice Dalle | The Great Acting Blog

When an actor is artist – Beatrice Dalle is our example here. Béatrice Dalle, Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Betty Blue…   “I’ve done 75 films and they’re all super … because I’ve always worked with auteurs.” … Are you rich? … “Hell, no. I don’t have a car, I don’t own my place, I don’t have a house in the country. But when I look at my career, I know I’m a good actress. I won’t prostitute myself. I…

Does Your Process Make You Stronger? | The Great Acting Blog

  Perhaps time is a faulty measurement of progress. Often, we set our most important goals to a time-frame: ‘In 2022, I’m going to achieve X, Y and Z…’ , and decide whether that year has been a success or failure accordingly. The trouble with this approach is that the actual achievement of a goal with a time-frame is often not within our control – this is especially true of large, complex,…