some unknown reason. To properly prepare for the role, Leonard advertised in The New York Times , looking for a âhorse psychiatrist to help in research.â He received more than two hundred responses from psychologists, veterinarians, trainers, jockeys, and gamblers. He hired an ethologist, a person who studies animal behavior, and, he said, he âcame away with a feeling of awe at the power of the horse in the night mind of man.â
To me, describing acting as a technique has always seemed kind of ⦠technical. Meanwhile, my technique is quite different; it is the classic nontechnical technique: I memorized the script and played the character. I tried to find the core of my character, the one word, the one line in the script that best described that characterâs intentions, and then moved out from that. Like Leonard, I found clues in the script. My hope is that I can characterize something with enough emphasis that it is very different from myself, the actor. If I could make that core line real, then the rest of the character would follow. Too often, the actor bleeds through his or her portrayal and the character becomes just another version of other characters he or she has played with just a different name and a different costume. When Leonard and I began working together, we approached the material from very different places, but fortunately, perhaps because of the nature of the characters, it worked beautifully. But by then, both of us had been working regularly for a long time.
As an acting teacher and coach, as well as a working actor, Leonard became part of LAâs community of young actors. Like every other business in the world, relationships are important in the entertainment industry. Soon after Leonard was discharged, Boris Sagal, for example, cast him in an episode of Matinee Theater that he was directing. Matinee Theater was a daily live hour-long dramatic show. There were four days of rehearsals and then the actual performance, so there were always five shows in progress at the same time. That meant a lot of work for actors. Sagal hired Leonard for an under-five-line part in a drama starring Vincent Price. Price played his normal madman role, a husband planning to blow up his wife by filling the house with gas, then rigging the phone to spark when he called. Leonard played a nosy deliveryman.
He was hired for another episode, but the director wasnât comfortable with Leonardâs choices, and he was replaced. That was devastating for Leonard. He didnât do anything casually. Even when he had only a single line, he worked at it, so to be told he wasnât good enough or he didnât understand the character was a real attack on his integrity. He was fighting to establish a career, and this was a big step backward. It actually took him some time to get over it.
Because of the way he worked, in some ways these bit parts were more difficult for him than larger roles. The more dialogue a character has, the easier it is to become comfortable in the role. With only three or four lines, itâs hard to establish any rhythm or create a believable character. But it was work, it came with a paycheck, and so he never turned down an offer and tried his best to create something. In Get Smart, for example, he played a sinister character lurking in the back of a poolroom. So he wore dark clothes and dark sunglassesâthis was long before people wore sunglasses insideâand kept the sunglasses on throughout the entire episode. Ironically, the one thing he was rarely permitted to do on camera was smoke. Leonard was a heavy smoker off camera; in fact, a lot of actors were, as it helped them relax between takes. I smoked too. Once, he was playing an outlaw in a western and asked the propman for one of the hand-rolled brown cigarettes cowboys smoked. He intended to use it to help create his character. The propman turned him down. Ziv was churning out these shows without knowing
To me, describing acting as a technique has always seemed kind of ⦠technical. Meanwhile, my technique is quite different; it is the classic nontechnical technique: I memorized the script and played the character. I tried to find the core of my character, the one word, the one line in the script that best described that characterâs intentions, and then moved out from that. Like Leonard, I found clues in the script. My hope is that I can characterize something with enough emphasis that it is very different from myself, the actor. If I could make that core line real, then the rest of the character would follow. Too often, the actor bleeds through his or her portrayal and the character becomes just another version of other characters he or she has played with just a different name and a different costume. When Leonard and I began working together, we approached the material from very different places, but fortunately, perhaps because of the nature of the characters, it worked beautifully. But by then, both of us had been working regularly for a long time.
As an acting teacher and coach, as well as a working actor, Leonard became part of LAâs community of young actors. Like every other business in the world, relationships are important in the entertainment industry. Soon after Leonard was discharged, Boris Sagal, for example, cast him in an episode of Matinee Theater that he was directing. Matinee Theater was a daily live hour-long dramatic show. There were four days of rehearsals and then the actual performance, so there were always five shows in progress at the same time. That meant a lot of work for actors. Sagal hired Leonard for an under-five-line part in a drama starring Vincent Price. Price played his normal madman role, a husband planning to blow up his wife by filling the house with gas, then rigging the phone to spark when he called. Leonard played a nosy deliveryman.
He was hired for another episode, but the director wasnât comfortable with Leonardâs choices, and he was replaced. That was devastating for Leonard. He didnât do anything casually. Even when he had only a single line, he worked at it, so to be told he wasnât good enough or he didnât understand the character was a real attack on his integrity. He was fighting to establish a career, and this was a big step backward. It actually took him some time to get over it.
Because of the way he worked, in some ways these bit parts were more difficult for him than larger roles. The more dialogue a character has, the easier it is to become comfortable in the role. With only three or four lines, itâs hard to establish any rhythm or create a believable character. But it was work, it came with a paycheck, and so he never turned down an offer and tried his best to create something. In Get Smart, for example, he played a sinister character lurking in the back of a poolroom. So he wore dark clothes and dark sunglassesâthis was long before people wore sunglasses insideâand kept the sunglasses on throughout the entire episode. Ironically, the one thing he was rarely permitted to do on camera was smoke. Leonard was a heavy smoker off camera; in fact, a lot of actors were, as it helped them relax between takes. I smoked too. Once, he was playing an outlaw in a western and asked the propman for one of the hand-rolled brown cigarettes cowboys smoked. He intended to use it to help create his character. The propman turned him down. Ziv was churning out these shows without knowing
Similar Books
