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

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.

The complete article can be found by clicking on the link below.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-theresa-rebeck29-2009mar29,0,2065069.story

“No one has ever discovered their authentic self and not liked what they saw.”

Dr. Donna LaMar and Betsy Laney

http://www.carnegiemellontoday.com/article.asp?aid=831

Rule #1 – Trust your gut. If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. If an acting school sounds too good to be true and is promising you everything, don’t believe it. You’re just going to get a lot of slick marketing hype, false promises, phony gimmicks and naive formulas.

There are no gimmicks and there are no formulas. There is just putting in the time and hard work to learn the skills you really need to do professional-level performances. That’s just as true in acting as in any other profession. If you don’t understand that, you’re going to get hurt.

Any school that promises to teach you everything you need to know in a weekend or 4 weeks or in a 10-week casting director workshop just isn’t being honest.

What percentage of students who attend short-term acting or casting director workshops actually get a career-changing job – or any job? How many of those jobs lead to a real breakthrough in film or television? You know the answer. If it were that easy, everyone would be a big success.

Would you want to have a surgeon operate on you who had taken a workshop in surgery??? If you were a producer or writer or director with your whole career and millions of dollars at stake, would you want to hire someone who had only taken some short-term acting workshop, bootcamp, intensive, or the like?

Also, please remember that no school can fulfill the promise of getting you an agent, manager, or work – and it’s illegal to do so.

The actors you admire have been working on their acting for years. They didn’t do “intensives” or study short-term and become stars. Leonardo DiCaprio started acting when he was 9 years old. Angelina Jolie (with all her beauty and contacts via her Oscar award winning father Jon Voight) studied acting. So did Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep (Yale grad), Kevin Spacey (Julliard grad), Robin Williams (Julliard grad), Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley and on and on.

We’d all like to find a bootcamp or 10-week workshop intensive that would give us everything we need to be a big success. But, we really know better. There is no such thing. Don’t become part of that vast number of new students who get taken in. There is no instant!

Look for a class taught by seasoned professionals from the top acting conservatories in the world (Yale School of Drama, Carnegie-Mellon University started in 1915, New York University Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Program stared in 1966, and Julliard are the top acting training programs in the United States) who have worked in the industry frequently and have been teaching for a long time.

Find a school that’s real and down-to-earth.

Don’t waste your money (which you can replace) and your time (which you can’t get back and is your most precious commodity) enriching someone else other than yourself.

Copyright 2008 David Kagen
All rights reserved

Acting student: In regards to character, things are still a little fuzzy. For instance, playing a prostitute who’s grown up on the streets vs. playing a housewife. They are both being played by ME, yet I’d think each would have different emotional reactions to a same situation…?

David Kagen: This takes practice to really understand it. But… ALL of the imaginary circumstances will determine how you behave. That is, the circumstances of having or choosing to be a prostitute are different than the circumstances of having or choosing to be a housewife. And those circumstances affect YOU differently; make you a different person and therefore a different “character.” Too often playing a “character” results in acting it from outside and objectively, rather than putting yourself in the circumstances which gets you to act it from your insides and subjectively. This is what Meisner means when he says that, “Acting is living truthfully in the imaginary circumstances.” You put yourself in the circumstances; ALL the circumstances.

Acting student: In regards to cold readings, particularly the first time through, I always seem to have to warm up, because I feel like I’m suppose to start neutral, so I don’t take things in the scene as personal as I could.

David Kagen: Yes, we hear this about starting neutral a lot. That’s not what we want you to do. Start responding subjectively with your personal responses. Your personal responses are shaped by everything you’re experienced and everything you’ve felt in your life up to moment you do your scene. Don’t start in neutral.

Copyright David Kagen 2009
All rights reserved

You embark upon a voyage of discovery in training to provide the impetus and opportunity to initially unleash your talent or to further refine it. The best of the training centers also guide you from strong expressive impulses toward the discovery of the true meaning of your gift. You will be thrust into an exploratory process which will afford you and image of your acting instrument and the power it is capable of realizing.

Experimentation is what training is all about and you should lunge into it with daring determination. With an “Anything goes!” attitude, you will perceive what you need and also what you already have. Your acting instrument will be strengthened by the recognition that your talent is becoming superior to anything you thought it could become.

A teacher cannot always give you quick solutions, but can make you aware of your strengths and shortcomings.

If you embrace acting as a profession, then you must invest the same energy in professional development required by other occupations. IT IS A DELUSION TO THINK THAT NO SPECIAL TRAINING IS NEEDED TO ACT. HARDLY ANYONE WILL HIRE AN INEXPERIENCED ACTOR.

Athletes train rigorously; why shouldn’t actors? After a succession of athletic meets, top athletes return to a period of training and improve their skills before the next cycle of competition. They have the capacity to grow even while enjoying being at the top. This kid of discipline will make a gymnast train twenty hours a week for ten to fifteen years or will prevent dancers from letting an entire week go by with out practice. Let there be no doubt about it; champs work hard. The bottom line is that you can only expect it get out of life what you put into it.

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