Seeing Character Through an Actor's Eyes

In order to perform a role, an actor must figure out what the writer meant when he or she wrote their work. An actor needs to know as much as they can about their character, and in fact, must invent a large body of material based upon the writer's work. This invention of missing details is a large part of an actor's creative process, and lies at the heart of individual interpretations of particular roles. Often note is made a certain actor's version of a famous role, such as "Orson Welles's Othello," "Laurence Olivier's Lear," "Helena Bonham Carter's Ophelia." Each great performance of a noted Shakespearean role has its own particular flavor, and the actor in that role highlights aspects often overlooked or underplayed by different actors.

Because actors are constantly searching for clues to character behavior in the text, it is imperative that the writer be aware of the different levels of information which create character. Furthermore, it is the awareness of these different levels that will enable a writer to create truly memorable, dimensional characters.

Here are some examples of these underlying clues that sculpt performance:

"Thelma & Louise"
When Thelma is nearly raped in the parking lot of a honky-tonk bar, Louise shoots and kills the perpetrator. the only reason she gives for this pivotal action is that something happened to her in Texas that was so horrible, that when the two are later on the run, Louise insists that they avoid the entire state and take a long detour around it, instead of taking the quickest route to Mexico and escape.

This intertextual information is crucial to both Louise's character and to the entire story, and certainly Susan Sarandon, the actress who portrayed Louise, knew the exact details of the event in question. We, the audience, might simply assume that Louise herself was raped, but I would further assume that Sarandon recreated the event in horrible detail in order to lay out the psychological groundwork for her character.

The screenwriter, Callie Khouri, must have also known the exact details of the event, and her version was probably very different from Sarandon's -- yet both of them were compelled to understand this key event, albeit from different perspectives.

"Shawshank Redemption"
Where does Andy Dufresne get the granite resolve it takes for him to survive and flourish within the walls of Shawshank Prison? The script actually gives very little hint to his astonishing determination, yet onscreen, that determination radiates from every pore of Tim Robbins's body.

Indeed, the first description of Dufresne in the script reads: "ANDY DUFRESNE, mid-20's, wire rim glasses, three-piece suit. Under normal circumstances a respectable, solid citizen; hardly dangerous, perhaps even meek." And soon after, when he decides that he can't kill--or even threaten--his cheating wife and her lover, he is described thusly: "He doesn't look like much of a killer now; he's just a sad little man on a dirt path in the woods, tears streaming down his face, a loaded gun at his side. A pathetic figure, really." We also find out that Dufresne was a banker before prison. Hardly the kind of man we would expect to be in possession of rock-solid intestinal fortitude. So--from where springs the courage and strength of character he later evinces?

True to screenplay form, we discover and understand Andy's character via events shown in the present, specifically through his actions. These actions reveal him to be extremely resourceful, resilient, and patient, but they do not stem from anything in his past that we can directly see onscreen. Instead, screenwriter/director Frank Darabont and actor Tim Robbins must have had a strong sense of both Dufresne's history, and also created a specific decision in Dufresne's mind in which he resolved to do whatever is necessary to survive in Shawshank. Although we don't actually witness this decision onscreen--there is no big moment of character epiphany--we see the results of this decision and unconsciously accept that such a decision exists, just as we accept that oxygen exists without being constantly aware that we breathe it.

"Jerry Maguire"
What motivates Jerry to write his "Mission Statement" in the beginning of the film? We are only given a few thin clues to the occurrence of this pivotal event, which takes place quickly (on page 6 of a 132 page script). In a series of short scenes accompanied by Maguire's voiceover, we see that the business of sports contains a mixture of glory and naked greed -- and greed seems to be winning.

The final segment before Jerry's epiphany is a scene in which the 14-year-old son of a football star confronts Maguire about his father's fourth concussion. Maguire glibly dismisses the kid's concerns. Screenwriter/director Cameron Crowe ("Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Singles") inserts a beautiful piece of description, which reads, "The kid stares at Maguire. It feels as if the kid is peering into his soul... and all he sees is trash." Then the boy swears at Maguire and stalks away. This incident deeply disturbs Maguire, but it is merely the straw that broke the camel's back, as his newfound feelings have obviously been bubbling just beneath the surface for a long time; perhaps even since when he first became a sports agent.

In order for Maguire's epiphany to be believable, we, the audience, must sense Maguire's inner struggle to regain his humanity, and feel that it has been going on for some time. Crowe peppers the script with these clues. On page 8, Maguire notes about his Statement, "It was the me I'd always wanted to be." And certainly, this phrase and its weighty sense of previous (yet invisible to the audience) history sums up Maguire's struggle to go from profit-centered manipulator to real person. We also see a shot of Dicky Fox, a man Maguire describes as "the original sports agent" (and who seems like some kind of a hero or role model to Maguire). Fox says, "The key to this job is personal relationships," a phrase which also becomes a kind of underlying mantra behind Maguire's new motivation.
Certainly both screenwriter Crow and actor Tom Cruise knew exactly from where Maguire's humanist streak originated, and that it lies at the core of his being.