'There's a crisis in young American actors right now': Michael Douglas
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What does the latest British invasion say about the state of American acting?
Martin Luther King Jr., is a celebrated American icon. His wife, Coretta, was a beloved American public figure. President Lyndon Johnson was a colorful Texan, and Governor George Wallace was a good ol’ boy son of the South from Alabama.
In director Ava DuVernay’s Best Picture nominee about the 1965 Selma civil-rights march, however, they’re portrayed by David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, and Tim Roth, respectively, who share at least one thing in common: They’re British.
Selma isn’t an exception—rather, the Brits seem to be everywhere lately. Last year’s Best Picture winner, 12 Years a Slave, about a 19th-century free black man tricked and trafficked into Southern bondage, starred multiple British actors, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Cumberbatch, and German-born, Irish-raised Michael Fassbender. (The biggest American star in the film, Brad Pitt, played a Canadian.)
12 Years was directed by a Brit—Steve McQueen—which could be one possible explanation for his film’s British-heavy cast. But the same can’t be said for several other high-profile recent and upcoming films. The American hero in Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, for example, is played by Jack O’Connell, an Englishman. David Fincher selected English actress Rosamund Pike as his Amazing Amy in Gone Girl. Fifty Shades’ Christian Grey was initially going to be played by Charlie Hunnam, an Englishman; when he dropped out, he was quickly replaced by Jamie Dornan, an Irishman. “I went to see a movie,” says [URL='http://www.castingsociety.com/members/richard-hicks']Richard Hicks, president of the Casting Society of America, “and four casting directors were sitting around talking about, ‘What’s up with all the Brits and Australian actors snagging all the leads?’”
Of course, no one’s entitled to a role because of their accent or where they’re born. That’s always been true, even before Vivien Leigh won the role of Scarlett O’Hara. But recently, there’s been a visible surge in the number of British—and the occasional Aussie—actors and actresses winning plum roles in many of Hollywood’s most prestigious films (as well as many of the biggest franchise blockbusters). In 2011, British director Stephen Frears (The Queen) told an interviewer, “There is some sort of crisis in American acting“—and suggested this could be due to a lack of proper training, specifically theater training. Calling it a ”crisis” might be a bit drastic, but with an English Superman, a British-bred Spider-Man, an English Daisy Buchanan, a British Mad Max, a German-Irish Steve Jobs—to say nothing of the current British invasion that’s raised the quality of American television—it seems like a good time to at least contemplate whether the roots of this recent trend can be found in how both sides of the Atlantic are prepping its talent for Hollywood casting calls.
For decades, there were two major schools of thought when it came to acting: the Classical, which was best epitomized by Laurence Olivier, and the Method, which revolutionized the art form in America once James Dean and Marlon Brando brought it to the big screen. Classical was more of an outside-in approach, which emphasized a more presentational style associated with the stage. Method, rooted in Constantin Stanislavski’s theories, was more naturalistic, more inside-out. “For many years, there was a schism,” says James Lipton, a pupil of Stella Adler’s teachings and the longtime host of Inside the Actors Studio. “The British stressed training in voice and posture and the physical attributes, whereas the American training is deep rooted in the actor’s emotions.”
But in 2015, what was once a contentious rivalry is no longer an either/or proposition, as both schools implement elements of the other’s philosophies into their own training. Why then, do the Brits seem to have an edge? ”There is a lot of stage work in a lot of British drama school training, but I think it’s more to do with how we ask them to think about characters, how we ask them to be imaginative, and to change themselves,” says Joanna Read, describing the dramatic skills that current students are taught at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, which counts Cumberbatch, Ejiofor, and Oyelowo among its scores of famous alums and where she has been principal since 2010. “Our training will ask an actor to really play against type at times, to play a role that they wouldn’t necessarily be cast in in the profession, in order to work out and transform how they move towards that character. It’s almost like putting on a second skin.”
That academic challenge of portraying characters that aren’t obviously suited to an actor might be an essential building block that pays off down the road. “If you look at these English actors—David Oyelowo, Tom Wilkinson, Tim Roth—they’re accustomed to playing character-actor roles,” says Lipton. “Which is to say, they are very good at playing roles that are quite distant from themselves, physically, even emotionally. They are able to find, in those strangers, a core that resonated with themselves, so they are just as truthful playing that as they would be playing someone just like themselves on screen.”
Avy Kaufman, the casting director who discovered Andrew Garfield for Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs and recruited Oyelowo to play the eloquent Union soldier who recites the Gettysburg Address to Daniel Day-Lewis in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, thinks a shrinking world has opened the doors for all sorts of international talent. “It’s not that all these actors are better than the American actors, but I think we’re just opening up to more—and we’re all excited to find something new and different,” she says. “Lincoln was a very American story, but I just felt like I should say, ‘This guy’s the best for this.’ It doesn’t matter that he’s not American. He’s got the accent down. May the best man win.”
Nowadays, the best man doesn’t even have to be in Los Angeles to audition. “Instead of meeting an actor or having to see the actor audition in the room, I can audition them via Skype and have nearly the same experience,” says Hicks. “Quality acting is quality acting, and you can recognize that even when you’re thousands of miles away.”
Lipton believes, however, that the Brits do enjoy at least one built-in advantage—one that’s also a product of geography. While American actors generally have to chose between going to New York to work in the theater or settling in Los Angeles to find fame on television and the movies, the British dramatic community—film/TV/theater—is mostly centrally located around London. “The English have the advantage of being able to go back and forth, from Downton Abbey to a stage production,” he says.
But perhaps the biggest factor leading to the perception that American actors are falling behind is that the path to Hollywood fame in this country doesn’t necessarily go through the Actors Studio or Juilliard or the Yale School of Drama. Though Hollywood has its share of Jessica Chastains and Mark Ruffalos, well-trained professionals who studied at revered dramatic institutions, the difference might lie in the other cases, in which actors get a break in Hollywood with limited training or acting background. “I think our culture, in which we take reality-show fame as a measure of success, means that we feel like, ‘Oh, it just happens to you and then you’re famous,” says Hicks.
It might be even more subtle and widespread than the reality-show mentality Hicks mentions. In a Hollywood that feeds on young stars—many of which are groomed as kids on television—early success can stunt artistic growth. “The kids that start out as stars when they’re 19 or 20, they never had a chance to learn their craft, and because they become stars, there’s never a chance to catch up,” says Lipton. “They’re not going to knock off for a year and study. They’re going to keep on making movies, as many as they can, as fast as they can. Some learn on the job. Some are geniuses, so they figure it out.”
But for every Jennifer Lawrence or Leonardo DiCaprio—instinctual wunderkinds whose talent and work ethic keep them at the top—there is a huge middle class of popular American actors who reach the age of 30 and suddenly find themselves overmatched by more disciplined foreign-educated artists. Actors who spent three years in their early twenties, for example, just learning how to properly speak and move while their American counterparts were auditioning for a Coke commercial and the new fall pilot. Cumberbatch was 30 before anyone in America knew who he was. Tom Hiddleston, a 2005 graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, was about the same age when he landed the role of Loki. “The demand for what we’re offering is something that is universally wanted,” says Read. “Their skills are very good technically, so that whether they’re on set, on location, or stage, they’re ready and able to hit the ground running.”
In other words, the British are coming… because Hollywood needs them.
[/URL]
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/01/28/selma-british-actors
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/01/28/selma-british-actors
Martin Luther King Jr., is a celebrated American icon. His wife, Coretta, was a beloved American public figure. President Lyndon Johnson was a colorful Texan, and Governor George Wallace was a good ol’ boy son of the South from Alabama.
In director Ava DuVernay’s Best Picture nominee about the 1965 Selma civil-rights march, however, they’re portrayed by David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, and Tim Roth, respectively, who share at least one thing in common: They’re British.
Selma isn’t an exception—rather, the Brits seem to be everywhere lately. Last year’s Best Picture winner, 12 Years a Slave, about a 19th-century free black man tricked and trafficked into Southern bondage, starred multiple British actors, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Cumberbatch, and German-born, Irish-raised Michael Fassbender. (The biggest American star in the film, Brad Pitt, played a Canadian.)
12 Years was directed by a Brit—Steve McQueen—which could be one possible explanation for his film’s British-heavy cast. But the same can’t be said for several other high-profile recent and upcoming films. The American hero in Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, for example, is played by Jack O’Connell, an Englishman. David Fincher selected English actress Rosamund Pike as his Amazing Amy in Gone Girl. Fifty Shades’ Christian Grey was initially going to be played by Charlie Hunnam, an Englishman; when he dropped out, he was quickly replaced by Jamie Dornan, an Irishman. “I went to see a movie,” says [URL='http://www.castingsociety.com/members/richard-hicks']Richard Hicks, president of the Casting Society of America, “and four casting directors were sitting around talking about, ‘What’s up with all the Brits and Australian actors snagging all the leads?’”
Of course, no one’s entitled to a role because of their accent or where they’re born. That’s always been true, even before Vivien Leigh won the role of Scarlett O’Hara. But recently, there’s been a visible surge in the number of British—and the occasional Aussie—actors and actresses winning plum roles in many of Hollywood’s most prestigious films (as well as many of the biggest franchise blockbusters). In 2011, British director Stephen Frears (The Queen) told an interviewer, “There is some sort of crisis in American acting“—and suggested this could be due to a lack of proper training, specifically theater training. Calling it a ”crisis” might be a bit drastic, but with an English Superman, a British-bred Spider-Man, an English Daisy Buchanan, a British Mad Max, a German-Irish Steve Jobs—to say nothing of the current British invasion that’s raised the quality of American television—it seems like a good time to at least contemplate whether the roots of this recent trend can be found in how both sides of the Atlantic are prepping its talent for Hollywood casting calls.
For decades, there were two major schools of thought when it came to acting: the Classical, which was best epitomized by Laurence Olivier, and the Method, which revolutionized the art form in America once James Dean and Marlon Brando brought it to the big screen. Classical was more of an outside-in approach, which emphasized a more presentational style associated with the stage. Method, rooted in Constantin Stanislavski’s theories, was more naturalistic, more inside-out. “For many years, there was a schism,” says James Lipton, a pupil of Stella Adler’s teachings and the longtime host of Inside the Actors Studio. “The British stressed training in voice and posture and the physical attributes, whereas the American training is deep rooted in the actor’s emotions.”
But in 2015, what was once a contentious rivalry is no longer an either/or proposition, as both schools implement elements of the other’s philosophies into their own training. Why then, do the Brits seem to have an edge? ”There is a lot of stage work in a lot of British drama school training, but I think it’s more to do with how we ask them to think about characters, how we ask them to be imaginative, and to change themselves,” says Joanna Read, describing the dramatic skills that current students are taught at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, which counts Cumberbatch, Ejiofor, and Oyelowo among its scores of famous alums and where she has been principal since 2010. “Our training will ask an actor to really play against type at times, to play a role that they wouldn’t necessarily be cast in in the profession, in order to work out and transform how they move towards that character. It’s almost like putting on a second skin.”
That academic challenge of portraying characters that aren’t obviously suited to an actor might be an essential building block that pays off down the road. “If you look at these English actors—David Oyelowo, Tom Wilkinson, Tim Roth—they’re accustomed to playing character-actor roles,” says Lipton. “Which is to say, they are very good at playing roles that are quite distant from themselves, physically, even emotionally. They are able to find, in those strangers, a core that resonated with themselves, so they are just as truthful playing that as they would be playing someone just like themselves on screen.”
Avy Kaufman, the casting director who discovered Andrew Garfield for Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs and recruited Oyelowo to play the eloquent Union soldier who recites the Gettysburg Address to Daniel Day-Lewis in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, thinks a shrinking world has opened the doors for all sorts of international talent. “It’s not that all these actors are better than the American actors, but I think we’re just opening up to more—and we’re all excited to find something new and different,” she says. “Lincoln was a very American story, but I just felt like I should say, ‘This guy’s the best for this.’ It doesn’t matter that he’s not American. He’s got the accent down. May the best man win.”
Nowadays, the best man doesn’t even have to be in Los Angeles to audition. “Instead of meeting an actor or having to see the actor audition in the room, I can audition them via Skype and have nearly the same experience,” says Hicks. “Quality acting is quality acting, and you can recognize that even when you’re thousands of miles away.”
Lipton believes, however, that the Brits do enjoy at least one built-in advantage—one that’s also a product of geography. While American actors generally have to chose between going to New York to work in the theater or settling in Los Angeles to find fame on television and the movies, the British dramatic community—film/TV/theater—is mostly centrally located around London. “The English have the advantage of being able to go back and forth, from Downton Abbey to a stage production,” he says.
But perhaps the biggest factor leading to the perception that American actors are falling behind is that the path to Hollywood fame in this country doesn’t necessarily go through the Actors Studio or Juilliard or the Yale School of Drama. Though Hollywood has its share of Jessica Chastains and Mark Ruffalos, well-trained professionals who studied at revered dramatic institutions, the difference might lie in the other cases, in which actors get a break in Hollywood with limited training or acting background. “I think our culture, in which we take reality-show fame as a measure of success, means that we feel like, ‘Oh, it just happens to you and then you’re famous,” says Hicks.
It might be even more subtle and widespread than the reality-show mentality Hicks mentions. In a Hollywood that feeds on young stars—many of which are groomed as kids on television—early success can stunt artistic growth. “The kids that start out as stars when they’re 19 or 20, they never had a chance to learn their craft, and because they become stars, there’s never a chance to catch up,” says Lipton. “They’re not going to knock off for a year and study. They’re going to keep on making movies, as many as they can, as fast as they can. Some learn on the job. Some are geniuses, so they figure it out.”
But for every Jennifer Lawrence or Leonardo DiCaprio—instinctual wunderkinds whose talent and work ethic keep them at the top—there is a huge middle class of popular American actors who reach the age of 30 and suddenly find themselves overmatched by more disciplined foreign-educated artists. Actors who spent three years in their early twenties, for example, just learning how to properly speak and move while their American counterparts were auditioning for a Coke commercial and the new fall pilot. Cumberbatch was 30 before anyone in America knew who he was. Tom Hiddleston, a 2005 graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, was about the same age when he landed the role of Loki. “The demand for what we’re offering is something that is universally wanted,” says Read. “Their skills are very good technically, so that whether they’re on set, on location, or stage, they’re ready and able to hit the ground running.”
In other words, the British are coming… because Hollywood needs them.
[/URL]
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/01/28/selma-british-actors
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/01/28/selma-british-actors
Are British Actors Better Trained Than Their American Counterparts?
At the recent red carpet premiere of the hit Superman reboot Man of Steel, Anglophenia’s Tom Brook asked the film’s British star Henry Cavill a pointed question: why are America’s iconic trio of superheroes all played by Brits? (Englishman Christian Bale is our incumbent Batman, while the Surrey-raised Andrew Garfield suited up for Spider-Man last year.)
Perhaps American leading men simply aren’t up to the task?
“There’s nothing wrong with American male actors, young man,” Cavill tut-tutted to Mr. Brook. “What the case is is that we as three actors just happened to fit into the respective director’s visions at the time.”
Is it merely a coincidence?
In a time when U.K. stars regularly assume convincing American drag on U.S. TV and Carey Mulligan and Benedict Cumberbatch frequently defeat their Yankee peers for the choicest of Hollywood roles, there is reason to look a bit more closely. Back in 2011, we spoke with British Battlestar Galactica star Jamie Bamber and veteran Hollywood casting director Marci Liroff for their perspectives on what many were calling the start of a new “British invasion,” this time of America’s big and small screens. But we also chatted with Edward Kemp, artistic director of Britain’s highly prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), for his inside knowledge of the classical training many British actors receive. Are U.K. actors simply better prepared for the rigors of screen acting than their American brethren?
Here’s my interview with Kemp, which took place in May 2011:
Anglo: Many U.S. casting directors believe that British actors are better trained than their American counterparts, use their bodies and voices more effectively, have more facility with accents, and are more skilled at comedy. How much do you agree with this?
Edward Kemp: I’ve fairly recently returned from my annual week of auditions in New York, where we are auditioning potential students to come to RADA. What’s been noticeable is that the overall standard has been improving over the last four years (as long as I’ve been at RADA) and this was the strongest yet. The word from several auditionees is that they are finding the studio based system on which much U.S. training is based — where you study a particular approach to acting, e.g. Lee Strasburg, Stella Adler — increasingly unsatisfying. It purports to offer a single key that will unlock all doors, but more and more they seem to be finding that there are some locks that remain unopened.
Their feeling seems to be that the more heterogeneous, broader-based U.K. training offers a better foundation for acting in many genres and many media. I think this has coincided with improved training in the U.K. which through spending more time on acting for camera has made young U.K. actors more at ease on screen from very early in their careers.
I think the number of young British actors who can achieve a very plausible U.S. accent has also increased, which is in part through greater exposure and in part through a realization that there is real value in getting it right. In the days when you were only ever likely to use it for British ears, it didn’t matter so much.
How much might a RADA education give a student a leg up in a Hollywood career?
Edward Kemp: I hope that a RADA education will enable all of our students to make the best and most creative use of every acting opportunity they are presented with, be it in a big budget movie or a theater above a pub: it may be that that seriousness of intent gives them the edge. I am often struck by the ability of British trained actors to make the ludicrous lines in space movies “moving to warp factor nine in sector z 3337″ sound like they really know what they’re talking about: I suspect this may be an interesting side effect of fretting over the more obscure lines of Shakespeare and Restoration comedy.
I think likewise, the challenges of making classic comedy — anything from Congreve to Coward — feel true means that they may feel more at home in the tricky balance of craft and reality demanded by much comedy on both film and TV.
How has the recent success of British talent in America affected the career ambitions of RADA students? Are fewer alumni pursuing careers on the stage?
Edward Kemp: I think the fact that it’s now clearly possible to make a successful living as British actor in American TV is certainly of interest to our students. They want to do really good work and the fact is that much of the most exciting TV drama being made in the world is coming out of the U.S. If you can do great work, get paid really well and get the kind of profile that means you can get great roles on stage and film, why wouldn’t you want to do it?
The number of alumni pursuing careers on stage is almost entirely related to the amount of stage work being made. And with the [May 2011] cuts to Arts Council clients, we can confidently predict that there will be less stage work being made, and that what there is will probably employ fewer actors and pay them less. Almost every actor I know longs to work on stage, certainly the trained ones, and many of those in long-running series pine for the opportunity to get in front of a live audience again and in the medium that puts them in charge (TV, film and radio are all much more directors and producers’ media) — but equally they need to eat and live and support their families, and there are very few actors who could survive on the amount they get paid for most theater, unless they’re in a long-running West End show so they income is regular or can command the kinds of salaries that will support them during the periods of “resting.”
What sort of specific training would a student with U.S. TV ambitions receive at RADA? Accents, etc.?
Edward Kemp: We’re trying to give our students the widest possible basis for a career, so there isn’t anything we teach which is exclusively for the benefit of any one genre; the emphasis is more on what in education-speak are called “transferable skills.” So yes, they get a lot of work on accents — at RADA this is supported by weekly individual singing lessons, which develops both their ear and vocal flexibility (and I suppose might come in handy if they found themselves in Glee); they explore a wide range of different genres, but particularly contemporary naturalism (though as I’ve said above, it may be the more “classical” training which is assisting them in the current “breakthrough”); at RADA we tend to stage at least one American play a year (this year, three) which is in part because they are getting so good and bringing American material to life (and also because there is so much great 20th and 21st century American playwriting); we have doubled the amount of acting for camera training at RADA in recent years (courtesy in part to generous support from Warner Bros.) and all actors now make a short TV drama in their final year in addition to their stage shows; we have just recently introduced “green screen acting” as a one-off class.
How developed is the RADA alumni network in the States?
Edward Kemp: The RADA alumni network in the U.S. is currently more extensive than it is developed. North Americans have been coming to RADA to train since at least the 1920s and as a result there are several hundred of them, from Rosemary Harris to Lisa Harrow and many others, not to mention those British alumni such as Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Ioan Gruffudd who are more or less residents of the U.S. We are working hard with the Americas RADA Network to build connections, I now regularly host an event in New York when I’m in town auditioning, we recently ran our first American fundraising event (around John Gabriel Borkman starring Alan Rickman and Fiona Shaw) and this summer we are going to be taking a party of students to Martha’s Vineyard to workshop new plays by U.S. playwrights with the Vineyard Arts Project.
What are the risks uniquely involved in a British actor pursuing a Hollywood career (especially the immigration issues)? What advice might you give that actor?
Edward Kemp: I’m afraid I’m not up to speed with the current U.S. immigration issues around actors — I’m more tied up with the mess the U.K. Borders Agency is making for our international students. There clearly has been some relaxation around actors working in TV and film and the protectionism of American Actors Equity seems to be less strong than in theater, where it still has clout. I think the risks are primarily due to the length of contract. When you’re booked for one of these series, you will sign a contract that may commit you for many years, if the series gets renewed. That can be very lucrative, but also can mean that it takes you further and further away from other work. It can often mean that you have many more opportunities when you do get released — U.K. actors are becoming major stars and household names both in the U.S. and U.K. off the back of this work — but trying to fit that other work around the commitment to shoot 24 or more episodes of a series can be tricky. And with that can also some the dangers of getting stale, bored, frustrated. One RADA graduate described to me the experience of filming a U.S. TV series as a bit like a very glamorous version of working in Tesco’s — you turn up every day, see the same people, get assigned the day’s tasks, go home — day in, day out for several months. For some it can be very satisfying, for those who would like to be nightly tearing a passion to tatters it can be a bit strange.
The advice I would give would be the same that I would give to any actor considering any job. Try to understand as much as you can about the job you’re taking and know exactly for yourself why you are doing it. There’s nothing wrong in taking a job because you fancy paying off the mortgage, just know that’s why you’re doing it, not because it was going to give you great creative rewards: trying to persuade yourself doing a daytime soap is really like doing Ibsen is a recipe for frustration.
http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophen...ives-radas-edward-kemp-on-why-british-actors/
At the recent red carpet premiere of the hit Superman reboot Man of Steel, Anglophenia’s Tom Brook asked the film’s British star Henry Cavill a pointed question: why are America’s iconic trio of superheroes all played by Brits? (Englishman Christian Bale is our incumbent Batman, while the Surrey-raised Andrew Garfield suited up for Spider-Man last year.)
Perhaps American leading men simply aren’t up to the task?
“There’s nothing wrong with American male actors, young man,” Cavill tut-tutted to Mr. Brook. “What the case is is that we as three actors just happened to fit into the respective director’s visions at the time.”
Is it merely a coincidence?
In a time when U.K. stars regularly assume convincing American drag on U.S. TV and Carey Mulligan and Benedict Cumberbatch frequently defeat their Yankee peers for the choicest of Hollywood roles, there is reason to look a bit more closely. Back in 2011, we spoke with British Battlestar Galactica star Jamie Bamber and veteran Hollywood casting director Marci Liroff for their perspectives on what many were calling the start of a new “British invasion,” this time of America’s big and small screens. But we also chatted with Edward Kemp, artistic director of Britain’s highly prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), for his inside knowledge of the classical training many British actors receive. Are U.K. actors simply better prepared for the rigors of screen acting than their American brethren?
Here’s my interview with Kemp, which took place in May 2011:
Anglo: Many U.S. casting directors believe that British actors are better trained than their American counterparts, use their bodies and voices more effectively, have more facility with accents, and are more skilled at comedy. How much do you agree with this?
Edward Kemp: I’ve fairly recently returned from my annual week of auditions in New York, where we are auditioning potential students to come to RADA. What’s been noticeable is that the overall standard has been improving over the last four years (as long as I’ve been at RADA) and this was the strongest yet. The word from several auditionees is that they are finding the studio based system on which much U.S. training is based — where you study a particular approach to acting, e.g. Lee Strasburg, Stella Adler — increasingly unsatisfying. It purports to offer a single key that will unlock all doors, but more and more they seem to be finding that there are some locks that remain unopened.
Their feeling seems to be that the more heterogeneous, broader-based U.K. training offers a better foundation for acting in many genres and many media. I think this has coincided with improved training in the U.K. which through spending more time on acting for camera has made young U.K. actors more at ease on screen from very early in their careers.
I think the number of young British actors who can achieve a very plausible U.S. accent has also increased, which is in part through greater exposure and in part through a realization that there is real value in getting it right. In the days when you were only ever likely to use it for British ears, it didn’t matter so much.
How much might a RADA education give a student a leg up in a Hollywood career?
Edward Kemp: I hope that a RADA education will enable all of our students to make the best and most creative use of every acting opportunity they are presented with, be it in a big budget movie or a theater above a pub: it may be that that seriousness of intent gives them the edge. I am often struck by the ability of British trained actors to make the ludicrous lines in space movies “moving to warp factor nine in sector z 3337″ sound like they really know what they’re talking about: I suspect this may be an interesting side effect of fretting over the more obscure lines of Shakespeare and Restoration comedy.
I think likewise, the challenges of making classic comedy — anything from Congreve to Coward — feel true means that they may feel more at home in the tricky balance of craft and reality demanded by much comedy on both film and TV.
How has the recent success of British talent in America affected the career ambitions of RADA students? Are fewer alumni pursuing careers on the stage?
Edward Kemp: I think the fact that it’s now clearly possible to make a successful living as British actor in American TV is certainly of interest to our students. They want to do really good work and the fact is that much of the most exciting TV drama being made in the world is coming out of the U.S. If you can do great work, get paid really well and get the kind of profile that means you can get great roles on stage and film, why wouldn’t you want to do it?
The number of alumni pursuing careers on stage is almost entirely related to the amount of stage work being made. And with the [May 2011] cuts to Arts Council clients, we can confidently predict that there will be less stage work being made, and that what there is will probably employ fewer actors and pay them less. Almost every actor I know longs to work on stage, certainly the trained ones, and many of those in long-running series pine for the opportunity to get in front of a live audience again and in the medium that puts them in charge (TV, film and radio are all much more directors and producers’ media) — but equally they need to eat and live and support their families, and there are very few actors who could survive on the amount they get paid for most theater, unless they’re in a long-running West End show so they income is regular or can command the kinds of salaries that will support them during the periods of “resting.”
What sort of specific training would a student with U.S. TV ambitions receive at RADA? Accents, etc.?
Edward Kemp: We’re trying to give our students the widest possible basis for a career, so there isn’t anything we teach which is exclusively for the benefit of any one genre; the emphasis is more on what in education-speak are called “transferable skills.” So yes, they get a lot of work on accents — at RADA this is supported by weekly individual singing lessons, which develops both their ear and vocal flexibility (and I suppose might come in handy if they found themselves in Glee); they explore a wide range of different genres, but particularly contemporary naturalism (though as I’ve said above, it may be the more “classical” training which is assisting them in the current “breakthrough”); at RADA we tend to stage at least one American play a year (this year, three) which is in part because they are getting so good and bringing American material to life (and also because there is so much great 20th and 21st century American playwriting); we have doubled the amount of acting for camera training at RADA in recent years (courtesy in part to generous support from Warner Bros.) and all actors now make a short TV drama in their final year in addition to their stage shows; we have just recently introduced “green screen acting” as a one-off class.
How developed is the RADA alumni network in the States?
Edward Kemp: The RADA alumni network in the U.S. is currently more extensive than it is developed. North Americans have been coming to RADA to train since at least the 1920s and as a result there are several hundred of them, from Rosemary Harris to Lisa Harrow and many others, not to mention those British alumni such as Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Ioan Gruffudd who are more or less residents of the U.S. We are working hard with the Americas RADA Network to build connections, I now regularly host an event in New York when I’m in town auditioning, we recently ran our first American fundraising event (around John Gabriel Borkman starring Alan Rickman and Fiona Shaw) and this summer we are going to be taking a party of students to Martha’s Vineyard to workshop new plays by U.S. playwrights with the Vineyard Arts Project.
What are the risks uniquely involved in a British actor pursuing a Hollywood career (especially the immigration issues)? What advice might you give that actor?
Edward Kemp: I’m afraid I’m not up to speed with the current U.S. immigration issues around actors — I’m more tied up with the mess the U.K. Borders Agency is making for our international students. There clearly has been some relaxation around actors working in TV and film and the protectionism of American Actors Equity seems to be less strong than in theater, where it still has clout. I think the risks are primarily due to the length of contract. When you’re booked for one of these series, you will sign a contract that may commit you for many years, if the series gets renewed. That can be very lucrative, but also can mean that it takes you further and further away from other work. It can often mean that you have many more opportunities when you do get released — U.K. actors are becoming major stars and household names both in the U.S. and U.K. off the back of this work — but trying to fit that other work around the commitment to shoot 24 or more episodes of a series can be tricky. And with that can also some the dangers of getting stale, bored, frustrated. One RADA graduate described to me the experience of filming a U.S. TV series as a bit like a very glamorous version of working in Tesco’s — you turn up every day, see the same people, get assigned the day’s tasks, go home — day in, day out for several months. For some it can be very satisfying, for those who would like to be nightly tearing a passion to tatters it can be a bit strange.
The advice I would give would be the same that I would give to any actor considering any job. Try to understand as much as you can about the job you’re taking and know exactly for yourself why you are doing it. There’s nothing wrong in taking a job because you fancy paying off the mortgage, just know that’s why you’re doing it, not because it was going to give you great creative rewards: trying to persuade yourself doing a daytime soap is really like doing Ibsen is a recipe for frustration.
http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophen...ives-radas-edward-kemp-on-why-british-actors/
the next guy
Superstar
Don't crap in my thread napoleon
the next guy
Superstar
keep that pom pom waving crap in politics. I'm just trying to find out why american actors are flabby and sick like larry holmes. got an answer?
Roman Brady
Nobody Lives Forever
what role has he taken outside his comfort zone?
same, he and Robert Pattinson were being primed as the next big things during the height of their popularity now they are just one of many others
the next guy
Superstar
I think Rocky, er Creed is a departure for him, given that it's about him, but not really about him. I agree about Pattinson. All he wants to do are indies and art house things for some reasonfor some reason.
Roman Brady
Nobody Lives Forever
I am prepared to wait and see but from the trailers he looks like he is going to play creed like every other role he plays where he doesn't have to whiten up his speaking voice and mannerisms because hes whiteys black boy
Infamous45
All Star
I can't imagine a young white A list actor in this day and age doing a movie like american history X
I am trying to think of American actors under 30 that regularly take risks with their roles/performances and I am coming up empty.
Maybe Ezra Miller?
Maybe Ezra Miller?
the next guy
Superstar
yeah but it's a wait and see thing. here's we'll see if he can bring in the viewers or not.
Miles Teller
