I have always felt that context was decisive, when it came to acting styles. I have heard it said that an actor should approach King Lear in the same way he approaches a French farce, and while I understand the point, I think it goes too far (as most generalizations do). The point of approach is important, and if there is a sense that you are condescending to the material, that you feel it is somehow beneath you, then that is obviously not good. I used an example from Katharine Hepburn’s life to illustrate this point in the post I wrote about her at HND. She was known for melodramas and weepies, up until that point. She had won an Oscar. She literally did not know how to “do” screwball comedy, and kept telegraphing to the audience, “I’m being funny!” It took a lot of work for her to get into the right context. And by context I mean: the stakes are just as high in Bringing Up Baby as they are in Macbeth – that is one of the reasons why it is so funny, and why comedy in general, when it does work, works. Stakes. Everything one does when one is acting must have stakes behind it. The stakes must be incredibly high. It may seem ridiculous that Cary Grant is wearing jodhpurs digging up the yard looking for a lost dinosaur bone, but why it is so funny is because it is so serious to HIM. If you condescend to the material (“David Huxley’s problems are just silly compared to Hamlet’s problems”), then the entire project suffers. You have not created the proper context for your work. The context of King Lear is different than the context of Noises Off, and the actor who can go from one to the other, seamlessly, adjusting his or her approach and talent to the material, is a rare gem indeed.
Another example I can think of is Gena Rowland’s acting. If you saw her only in her husband John Cassavetes’ pictures, you would be forgiven if you thought that she only had one context, and that was Cassavetes’ context. She so inhabits his world, of manic madness and alcohol addiction and neurosis, that she has melded completely with her director. But then you see her in Woody Allen’s Another Woman, and suddenly there is a revelation about this woman’s talent. I remember Mitchell saying this to me, years ago, in college, when we were talking about Rowlands – and I just looked up Roger Ebert’s review of Another Woman and find, gratifyingly, that he says the same thing:
There is a temptation to say that Rowlands has never been better than in this movie, but that would not be true. She is an extraordinary actor who is usually this good, and has been this good before, especially in some of the films of her husband, John Cassavetes. What is new here is the whole emotional tone of her character. Great actors and great directors sometimes find a common emotional ground, so that the actor becomes an instrument playing the director’s song.
Cassavetes is a wild, passionate spirit, emotionally disorganized, insecure and tumultuous, and Rowlands has reflected that personality in her characters for him – white-eyed women on the edge of stampede or breakdown.
Allen is introspective, considerate, apologetic, formidably intelligent, and controls people through thought and words rather than through physicality and temper. Rowlands now mirrors that personality, revealing in the process how the Cassavetes performances were indeed “acting” and not some kind of ersatz documentary reality. To see “Another Woman” is to get an insight into how good an actress Rowlands has been all along.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Rowlands is able to so completely adjust her context, depending on the project she is in, that when you see her in this or that part, you think, “THAT is her at her most natural state.” But it’s all different states. She does not bring the Cassavetes energy to the Woody Allen picture. It’s not just that her energy is different, she seems to have actually switched souls. This is not a gift that all actors have. Some are eager to show “range”, yet they have no idea how to operate in a context other than the one they are already familiar with.
Johnny Depp has always been an actor who is able to switch contexts with breathless agility. I guess you would call him “versatile”, but I am not wacky about that word, because it sounds too practical, too much like a trick. Depp has never had a signature part, although I suppose the word “quirky” comes up a lot with him (He picks “quirky” parts, he’s “quirky”!) another word I am not wacky about, because it’s too easy, too pat, it doesn’t come close to explaining what is going on with this actor. I don’t have enough distance yet from his body of work to see what it will look like after he is gone, but I have a feeling it will be one of those things that just continues to magnify in stature as the years pass. But who can say. For now, we are just left with the movies he makes, and also the pretty much inarticulate interviews he gives, where he is cagey about talking about acting, and doesn’t seem to have a language to describe what he does. (I experienced this in person, as well, when he came to my school.) Acting, for him, seems to happen in a realm that has nothing to do with words. It’s like a painter, perhaps. If it’s not on the canvas, then all the explaining in the world won’t matter. “What I was GOING for was …” Nope. What matters is whether or not you succeeded. So I’m not sure, I cannot speak for Johnny Depp, and I won’t even try. I can just give my response to this guy.