Acting Classes Los Angeles – David Kagen’s School of Film Acting

I had a conversation with a student yesterday about how they DIDN’T bring what they do in class into their auditions.

What I wrote to that student is a central part of what all our students need to learn.

First, you need to learn how to do your best work in class. Then, you need to learn HOW to bring what you’ve learned in class into the auditions and the acting work you get.

Here are some of the things to focus on and ask yourself as you study with us:

1. Identify, in detail, what you do in class when you are doing your best acting work. (i.e. regarding relaxation, breathing, where your focus is, how aware you are of the audience, “what the voice in you head is saying to you,” etc.)

2. What causes you to NOT do your best, most relaxed acting work? When you are having a bad audition experience, what is going on with you? Be very specific: are you judging how you say each line of dialogue? Are you aware of whether or not the people auditioning you are paying attention to you, or if they seem interested in what you’re doing? Are you judging whether you’re doing the scene too quickly or too slowly, etc? Are you worried about taking chances and following your impulses? Are you worrying about whether you are doing things that aren’t quite right for the scene or the “character?” Etc.

3. What do you need to do to self-correct when you panic while you’re doing a scene? Be very specific: do you need to make yourself pay attention to your scene partner’s emotions, do you need to slow down, do you need to breathe, do you need to follow through with your impulses and take more risks, do you need to have more fun? Etc. Your point of concentration to get back on track may be different for each one of you. It may vary as a result of the scene you’re doing and the audition situation.

Every actor has bad days and bad performances. A key skill is to learn what you need to do to get back on track; to self correct.

You need focus AND freedom as an actor. When we over-control our performance the result is not very good. Our logical responses are never as exciting and deep as our instinctual responses.

Play allows the mind to learn unexpected things. We need to keep the sense of play in all our creative endeavors, including our auditions, in order to arrive at our best and unique performance of a scene that serves the scene.

Best wishes,
David Kagen
David Kagen’s School of Film Acting
(818) 752-9678
www.davidkagen.com

copyright 2010
David Kagen
All rights reserved

One of my students recently asked how to determine which behaviors to use in your performance from all the ones you experience while rehearsing the scene.

The first step in preparing a performance to allow yourself to experience as many of the possible responses to a scene as you can. (It is destructive to be too concerned about the end result, especially in the early rehearsal stages of the process, because your performance will then become logical, predictable, and barely scratch the surface of what each of the “characters” in the scene is going through emotionally.)

When you give yourself total emotional freedom, your performance of a scene will often evolve naturally to your unique performance of the scene that serves the scene. If that doesn’t happen, you can choose which way you feel is the best way for you to do the scene.

BUT… you always want to leave the door open to have surprising and new experiences with each scene, every time you do it. That’s a little scary, but it’s what the best actors do.

Anthony Hopkins says that the only thing he does now to prepare for work is to keep reading the script over and over. In other words, he trusts himself completely to discover his performance instinctively as he rehearses and films the scene on the set.

I hope this is helpful to you.

Best wishes,
David Kagen
David Kagen’s School of Film Acting
(818) 752-9678
www.davidkagen.com

Movies on TODAY

Jake Gyllenhaal as buff action hero? Believe it
‘Prince of Persia’ star doesn’t play it safe when it comes to choosing roles
‘Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time’: May 28
Disney
Jake Gyllenhaal bulked up to play an action hero in “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.” But he’s one actor who can’t be pigeonholed.
By Michael Ventre
msnbc.com contributor
updated 5/23/2010
The “Prince of Persia” is a dashing rogue with sculpted muscles and a backbone of steel who teams with a lovely princess to protect an artifact that could determine the fate of all mankind. Fearless and mighty, he is an adventure hero of the highest order.

He is played by Jake Gyllenhaal.

Wait a sec. Jake Gyllenhaal?

Well, non-believers, before you scoff, there was a similar reaction when Matt Damon was tabbed to play government assassin Jason Bourne, and that seemed to work out OK. Gyllenhaal, 29, has already sampled a wide variety of delicacies from the acting buffet so far in his career, including indie turns in “Donnie Darko” and “Lovely & Amazing,” choice roles in prestige releases such as “Brokeback Mountain” and “Brothers,” and even a major part in the Roland Emmerich disaster flick, “The Day After Tomorrow.”

Such an eclectic palate is admirable, but one curious by-product is that it prevents the Hollywood establishment and movie audiences from getting a handle on who Jake Gyllenhaal is, at least as a bankable actor. Is he an independent character actor? A leading man? An action figure? A love interest or a second banana? Is he rough and tough, or vulnerable and sensitive?

Can someone like Gyllenhaal have a long career even though he may defy categorization in a town where even its pigeons are pigeonholed?

“Gyllenhaal’s a real 21st century leading man — the guy who doesn’t play it safe,” said Mary Elizabeth Williams, film critic and contributor to Salon.com and other publications, as well as the author of “Gimme Shelter,” an amusing look at the home-buying process.

“In a lot of ways,” she added, “he’s like Brad Pitt, Robert Downey Jr., or to name one of his peers, Christian Bale. They’re all charismatic, handsome stars, and they can carry a big action movie whenever they want to — but they know the key to longevity is to keep challenging audience expectations of them. To look at the guy, he’s made to be on movie posters.”

Muscled look on poster causes double takes
Ah, yes, the poster. The one-sheet for “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” which opens Friday, depicts Gyllenhaal in full warrior pose, looking as chiseled as the employee of the month at Gold’s Gym. Even director Nicole Holofcener, who cast Gyllenhaal in her 2001 film “Lovely & Amazing” fresh off his breakthrough in “Donnie Darko,” said she did a double take.

“I said, ‘Who’s that?! Jake?!’ But he probably sees that poster and thinks the same thing,” Holofcener said. “But who can blame him for taking that part? He probably had a blast doing it.”
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She said she chose Gyllenhaal for the part of Jordan in “Lovely” because “he had innocence and sexiness, a great sense of humor and an earnestness. And he was just so damn cute. That’s what it boiled down to. Everybody in the room during casting was blushing, so I figured that was a good sign.

“I’m thrilled for his career. I’m not surprised at all at where he’s at. When I cast him there was this feeling that he was going to be really big.”

Certainly, Nicolas Cage is really big, too. But after Cage won an Academy Award for “Leaving Las Vegas” in 1996, he became known less for art than commerce, starring in such big-payday pictures as “The Rock,” “Con Air,” “National Treasure” and “Ghost Rider.”

To be fair, Cage over the years has also mixed in more cerebral work in films like “Adaptation” and “Matchstick Men,” yet his penchant for starring in blockbusters became so magnified that it caused Sean Penn — who appeared with Cage in “Racing With the Moon” and, to a much lesser extent, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” — to once famously remark to The New York Times, “Nic Cage is no longer an actor. He could be again, but now he’s more like a … performer.”

Could Gyllenhaal’s career lose traction from too much action?

“His next project is from ‘I Heart Huckabees’ director David O. Russell (“Nailed,” co-starring Jessica Biel), so it seems clear he wants to keep stretching,” Williams said. “What Gyllenhaal brings to fare like ‘Prince of Persia’ is his light, funny touch. He’s not just sword-wielding beefcake, nor does he appear to want to be. There’s nothing wrong with a little popcorn in any career, but he’s not making a steady diet of it.

“And he’s one of the few stars, like Matt Damon, who can do action, drama, comedy and weirdo indie. I don’t think it’s just about getting the fattest paycheck — it’s about doing what he hasn’t done before.”

Options are endless, plus he’s a gentleman

David Kagen is one of the top acting teachers in Hollywood. He said Gyllenhaal possesses rare qualities for an actor, and as a result his career options are many.

“There are a lot of actors I’ve worked with where you talk to them and they open up and this wonderful personality comes out,” Kagen said. “All this stuff that’s particular to them that’s interesting. Then you hand them a script and a lot of that goes away. And that’s really bad. One of the things they need to learn is to use themselves, and then get out of the way.

“When I see Jake doing interviews, and then watch him in something like ‘Brothers,’ there’s no change. It’s like this wonderful seamless transition into whatever role he’s playing. Everything seems to be available to him, his sense of humor, his toughness. There is a sort of an ease. … There are just some people who have that.”

That was also apparent to cinematographer Steven Poster, who shot “Donnie Darko” in 2001, featuring a 20-year-old Gyllenhaal. “There was such intelligence with his characterization of Donnie,” Poster said. “You knew from the beginning he would be big. Plus, he was a gentleman. There wasn’t a moment of ego or narcissism.”

Poster believes the actor’s presence in “Prince of Persia” represents an opportunity for Gyllenhaal to have some fun rather than signal a dubious step down an unfortunate career path. “I think Jake is very smart that way,” he said. “Everybody’s got to do one of these pictures on the way up. … I think he’s very grounded.”

In Hollywood, there is often a chasm between how an actor views himself and what the business sees him as. Holofcener, for one, hopes Gyllenhaal doesn’t spend much time thinking about any of that.

“Hopefully he’s not trying to figure out who he is,” she said. “I hope he just keeps taking roles that appeal to him.”

Michael Ventre is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com. He lives in Los Angeles.

© 2010 msnbc.com.

In Paris this year, the number 6 female tennis player in the world beat the number 1 female player in the world. #1′s destructive perfectionism and feeling that she’s not enough destroyed her game and got in the way of her true talent. That’s a great lesson for the rest of us concerning perfectionism in our acting work. Strive for excellence. Not perfection.