Actor Identity: When Characters Play Characters

How does an actor act as though he’s acting? Every time an actor takes the stage or steps in front of the camera, they are assuming someone else’s identity.  They are trained in the art of stepping into the shoes of anyone from a doctor to a murderer, from a swashbuckler to an ancient wizard, and everything in between.  

But sometimes actors are asked to go above and beyond the usual call of duty.  Sometimes they are asked to play somebody who has to play somebody else.  There are also some rare cases, when an actor has to play somebody, who plays somebody who, yes, you guessed it…plays somebody.  I think of it as a Russian doll performance.

These performances create immediate dramatic tension: will the deception be uncovered? A movie like Mrs. Doubtfire toys with this tension, with Williams, playing Daniel Hillard playing Mrs. Doubtfire, losing his face under the wheels of a truck, or the cake-frosting-face plopping into his tea. In this film his performance is too good, however, as his invention of Mrs. Doubtfire is infinitely more charming than the irritating, ADD ridden, unemployed voice-actor Daniel Hillard. His family, unsurprisingly, prefer the act.



Even more hilarious is the Arrested Development episode where Tobias Fünke (David Cross) plays a Mary Poppins/Mrs. Doubtfire hybrid named Mrs. Featherbottom.  

 

Tension of discovery aside, roles-within-roles also highlight interesting questions about the viewing experience. How well should an actor’s character act? For characters like spies (The Saint), undercover cops (The Departed), or con artists (Matchstick Men) the answer is easy: these characters are all expected to be able to act well. In fact, fooling the audience is often an integral part of the plot line.

In other roles, the actor may need to obviously dumb down the acting skill of their character, to show that they are acting. Since most regular people aren’t good actors, the character can seem more real by being worse at acting. A stiffening of speech, hesitation, visible nerves… actors can potentially make the plot more convincing with a careful diminishing of their own acting skill. This “bad” acting turns out to actually be very good acting!

There are a few possibilities for viewers: they may be paying so much attention to the way the character acts that they forget the original character is being played by an actor altogether. The split makes the original fictional character seem more real. However, showcasing acting in these roles can backfire, calling the viewer’s attention to the fact that all these identities are being faked. Suddenly, seeing Matt Damon in a state of (however intentional) awkward acting might call attention to him playing a part in the bigger sense, potentially damaging the viewer’s suspension of disbelief.

In Face/Off, John Travolta’s cop character and Nicolas Cage’s criminal character end up with each other’s faces. This leaves the characters supposedly in each other’s bodies. For the audience to believe that the two characters had in fact traded faces and identities, they needed to recognize slight traces of the person behind the face, despite the character’s attempts to become their sworn enemy.  Whether you liked the film or not, it’s hard to deny the quality with which Cage plays Travolta playing FBI detective Sean Archer, and in turn how Travolta plays Cage playing terrorist Castor Troy. Even when paying close attention, thinking about who is playing who is playing who gets confusing. During the film, this kind of deconstructions takes even more effort, which is why I think that overall, during times like this, the audience finds it easier to give in and let go. Since keeping track of the characters flipping roles is hard enough, the actors themselves benefit from the diversion.



What happens when you combine the writing genius of Charlie Kaufman and the cutting edge directing of Spike Jonze, with the award-winning acting stylings of John Malkovitch and John Cusack?  You have a wonderfully-bizarre story Being John Malkovitch where John Malkovitch has to play not only himself, but he has to play himself being manipulated from inside his own brain by John Cusack, who’s playing a puppeteer named Craig Schwartz.

The most recently famous film of this kind has got to be Tropic Thunder, where Robert Downey Jr.'s performance of a character that is an actor playing the character of a black man (whew) earned him an Oscar nomination. (added after StumbleUpon comment - thanks!)




Of course, calling attention to the way a performance is produced has happened for centuries, sometimes very explicitly bringing the form and medium into the content. The effect on the viewer’s suspension of disbelief can be intended, and with a point. Indeed, when Hamlet teaches the actors of the play-within-the-play how to act well, he also mocks a theatre company which was competing with Shakespeare’s own. The 1952 classic Singin’ in the Rain depicts a film production to comment on the transition from silent film to sound films, a tension long past by the 1950s but nonetheless able to reflect the contemporary worries about the shift from film to television. Sure, suspension of disbelief may be sacrificed as we start thinking about how the story is performed instead of being lost in the story itself, but these plays and films are classics because they tell much more than a story.