This might be the worst habit for an Actor

The Bobbing Head

Acting is one of the oldest professions in the history of man. It is a profession that has changed very little over thousands of years. Technology has changed for sure. Theatre architecture has changed. You might argue that acting styles have changed, yet the core of the craft is about the representation of human beings and the human condition.

Bad habits have also made their way through history as we have held “the mirror up to nature”. Great actors are always aware of them and work very hard to eliminate them from their acting toolbox. They are deadly habits for the craft because they create a falseness that isolates an audience. They create an awkwardness that takes the audience out of the story and breaks that crucial trust between actor and audience — that the actor will not lie to them. It is this pact between actor and audience that makes the audience give us that generous gift of “suspension of disbelief”. They allow us to take them anywhere.

The worst of these bad habit culprits is the “bobbing head”. This is the actor who is dead from the neck down. They have no sense of physicality or an understanding of how much body language matters in the overall story. Every great actor understands that the word “character” means a complete transformation of the actor. It is an emotional, physical, rhythmic, and vocal transformation. The reason for this is that it is absolutely human.

Take, for instance, going to see a play in a country where you do not know the culture and the language. Words will not be the message for you. Your whole understanding of the characters, the relationships, and the story will come from the subtext and physicality. You may not understand the words of a mother grieving over the death of her child, but you will understand the sounds and the physicality of what grief does.

I see “bobbing” or “talking” head actors all the time. Professional actors to boot. I am used to seeing it in young actors. But most surprisingly, I am seeing it now in professional actors who have been around for years. Is it laziness? Is it the director who instils such fear in the actors that they become paralyzed? Or is it our modern actor’s experience in acting for the camera that has contributed to this? I think the answer lies somewhere in all of them.

Actors must start with the physicality at the exact same time as they start learning the thoughts of the character. Hamlet says to his players, “suit the action to the word, the word to the action.” Shakespeare was so aware of this heinous practise among actors that he included it in his advice to them. The advice is given before they start rehearsing. You cannot add it in later. As I have always said to my actors, you are not learning lines, you are learning the thoughts of the character. As you start to learn these thoughts and how they connect, you must also pay attention to how your body reacts to the thoughts. What does that thought do to you physically? It cannot be forced and it cannot be artificial. It must make sense in relation to the thought.

It is fundamental that you build the foundation of the house in the first week of rehearsal. This gives the actor enough time to find these nuances and inhabit them instinctively. Olivier was Richard III because he became Richard III. Because the voice, movement, and gesture began early, he became the character. You must do the same.

Acting’s worst habit is, arguably, the talking bobbling head. Don’t be the talking bobbing head.

Related posts:

When tinkering around with Laravel you usually won’t think about some practical considerations you should watch out for, when developing an application that will go live one day. I recently put a…