The Psychology of a Great Actor

  I  have often thought about what makes a great actor, not a good one, but a great one.  Marlon Brando is one, Gerard Depardieu (France)  is another.  I think what it involves is those with leaky gates and therefore great access to feelings.  They can portray emotions to their depths because they are already awash in them. It makes them great and already out of control.  They are impulsive, aggressive, narcissistic, having never enough love and attention, and above all, self referent: that is, everything they say or do is related to them. You say something and they immediately retort, “I remember when I..,……” blah blah.  They are always story tellers , and the story is usually about them.

    Their whole world is acting and that is where they are real. They can blend into any character and become that character.    Reality is not their thing except inside a fantasy character.  They have no self-consciousness because the self is in the character; they are not examining the character, they are living it.  They are it.  One of my actresses put it this way:  “I’ll be anything you want me to be, mommy,  if you will only love me.” Alas, that is not to be because because too often the parent is also self-centered and has no time or space for anyone else.  They cannot give anything to anyone.  The minute an actor steps back to look at the role he is playing he is no longer great; he is as they say in French, quelconque.  He  is everyman, a wanna-be.  Let’s be clear; when an actor thinks too much about what he is doing he is back in his head and apart from the role.  He has to be in it totally to be great.

      So why is their lives such a mess; and it nearly always is.  Because they cannot love anyone.  The unloved children go to a therapist who claims: you have to love yourself.  What nonsense. How can you when there is nothing inside to do that? That is a double mind-fuck. Now the children have to wonder, “What’s wrong  with me” Why can’t I love myself?  And if they imagine that they can love themselves then  all is lost because they have bought the fantasy without the essence.  If they knew anything about neurophysiology they would know that you cannot love yourself unless you totally distort the meaning of love, and neurologically there is a critical period when you can be  loved and only during  that period.  If you try to “love yourself” at age forty, good luck.  You need to be loved when the critical period for love is relevant and that is during gestation and infancy.  That sets your life.

    I am trying to figure out how you love yourself?  You tell yourself “I love you?”  You hug yourself?  Buy nice things for yourself?  What??  There is no good answer because it  is nonsense. This is doubly true if a great actor goes to therapy; he will incorporate the therapy and therapist into his narcissism and not change  one scintilla.  He can’t.  He  is  driven for love and manages to find a profession where  he can think he can get it:  Applause, “they just loved you tonight, “ blah  blah.  That is  what he gets for love but he keeps on perfecting his craft to get more and more.  I have treated some near-greats but the dynamic is the same.  Love me, love me.

  I have treated young actresses who run the minute there is an interview for  a role.  There is a desperation about it as there is so much at stake for them: a chance for love, approval, appreciation, attention; everything that was missing in their home-life.  They will settle at age twenty for hundreds “loving them” for what they missed early on.  And what they missed  early on is  gone  and will never be retrieved.  What they can retrieve is reality; feeling unloved.  And dialectically, that will finally enable  them to feel loved again.  The repressive barriers  have been penetrated and there is again access to real feelings and the ability to feel real love.  A major actor wrote a book about that after his therapy.  The point is that when you are loved you feel it and act it; you don’t go around saying, “I love myself.”  You don’t think about it because whatever you do is natural; the way things need to be.  You don’t run around thinking , I am tall.  That is simply the nature of things. So is feeling loved.  And if acting and getting love from thousands were satisfying then the actor would not be so driven to do it again and again.  But it is like a tranquilizer; it only lasts for a moment.  It is not truly fulfilling because the actor often cannot truly let love in.  Yes of course, there is the true artistry of acting and the actor wants to do it over and over, but I am discussing the inner drive, the ultimate motivation.

So why are actors and directors so depressed when not on stage?  Because they feel what  they really feel, profoundly unloved; they are bereft of their defense.  When they work they can struggle for love,  and there is hope again.  They see the applause, the approval and appreciation. It allows their defenses to work again.  And all is well in life.  They will undergo years of rejection, as they did in their early life, for that crumb of love.  They expect rejection; it was their mode of life early on; they know it well.