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Faking it

by
September 2005, no. 274

Aussiewood: Australia's leading actors and directors tell how they conquered Hollywood by Michaela Boland and Michael Bodey

Allen & Unwin, $29.95 pb, 294 pp

Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600)

Trade Secrets: Australian actors and their craft by Terence Crawford

Currency Press, $34.95 pb, 228 pp

Faking it

by
September 2005, no. 274

Judi Farr – one of the fourteen interviewees who appear in Terence Crawford’s Trade Secrets: Australian Actors and Their Craft – reflects on the unpredictable nature of performance, and on the way in which an actor can become so immersed in a role and so apparently truthful to the emotion of the moment that, contrary to what we might expect, the connection with the audience is broken rather than reinforced. ‘Sometimes,’ she says, ‘you can do a play where tears will be pouring down your face, but you haven’t really affected anyone.’ Wendy Hughes makes a similar point: she recalls having to cry for a scene in a Paul Cox film, and how she prepared herself by getting deeply into the mood beforehand. During the first take, the tears flowed, and everything ‘felt so real’. Then she went through the scene again, but this time she ‘didn’t feel it the same and didn’t cry as much’. When the takes were compared afterwards, Hughes was struck by the fact that the one in which it all felt ‘really real’ was not the best. ‘The other one where I was in control was better.’

Aussiewood: Australia's leading actors and directors tell how they conquered Hollywood

Aussiewood: Australia's leading actors and directors tell how they conquered Hollywood

by Michaela Boland and Michael Bodey

Allen & Unwin, $29.95 pb, 294 pp

Trade Secrets: Australian actors and their craft

Trade Secrets: Australian actors and their craft

by Terence Crawford

Currency Press, $34.95 pb, 228 pp

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