Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…Look, I’ve been lucky with other directors. Sam Mendes is similar. I remember when I walked in to maybe the first rehearsal for Richard III that we were doing, and I had brought with me a canopy of ailments that my Richard was going to suffer from, and Sam eventually whittled it down to three, like, “Maybe your arm, and maybe your thing, and maybe your leg. But let’s get rid of the other 10 things that you brought into the room,” because I was so excited to capture this character. So very often … Trevor Nunn is this way, a lot of wonderful directors I’ve worked with, they’re really good at helping you trim and edit. David Fincher said about you … he was talking in general, I think, but also specifically in the moment of House of Cards … said that you have exceptional skill, both as an actor and as a performer, which he says are different things. So he defines the former as dramatization of a text, and the latter as the seduction of an audience. Do you see wisdom in that distinction? And what does it take to do both the dramatization of a text and the seduction of an audience? Those are two very interesting descriptions. I guess, when I think performer, I tend to think entertaining. I tend to think, comedy. I tend to think, winning over an audience. I tend to think, that there’s something about that quality of wanting to have people enjoy themselves. And when you saddle that against what maybe he means as an actor, which is more dramatic, or more text-driven more … look, I’ve always believed that my job, not every actor feels this way, but my job, the way that I’ve looked at it, is that my job is to serve the writing, and that if I serve the writing, I will in a sense serve myself, because I’ll be in the right world, I’ll be in the right context, I’ll be in the right style. I’ll have embraced what a director’s … it’s not my painting, it’s someone else’s painting. I’m a series of colors in someone else’s painting, and the barometer for me has always been, that when people stop me and talk to me about a character I’ve played, and reference their name as if they actually exist, that’s when I feel like I’ve gotten close to doing my job.…

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