The Science of On-Camera Acting

by Andréa Morris

  Some actors report that they do not feel anxious going into auditions. Some HI actors say they feel excitement instead of anxiety. Excitement, however, shares a heightened intensity with emotions like fear and anxiety. Again, it’s much easier to switch from an excited state to an anxious state because of the corresponding intensity level. Once the intensity is in your body, you are primed for heightened responses, both desirable and undesirable. Heightened intensity progresses through increasingly stressful auditions, like reading for a venerated director or network testing for a series regular role on a television show where a sizeable quote is negotiated in advance. Situations like these are where your acting chops are put to the test, and a flickering asymmetry as you try to conceal self-doubt can inadvertently sway the confidence of those in a position to hire you.

  Screen actors must learn how to control the asymmetry of nerves that appear involuntarily on their faces when slipping on a line or a crucial beat, or for whatever reason losing their center in an audition. The asymmetry appears as a clash of two emotions expressing themselves simultaneously while you try to believe the reality of the scene but also feel the reality of how the audition is going. The expression of anxiety or fear may be subtle, but the asymmetry as fear and confidence duke it out on your face is never subtle. More damaging than tripping on the line is the asymmetry of conflicting emotions flitting across your features. Any casual observer interprets the incongruity as bad acting.

  If auditioning for a vulnerable role, or anything that requires that the character feel unsure, nervous, or insecure, then these conflicting emotions can be channeled beautifully into the character’s internal conflict. If auditioning for anything else, this emotional leakage is likely problematic.

  Two groups of facial muscles are at work when trying to mask fear. Because the actor’s mouth is usually taken up with the task of delivering dialogue, actors seem able to control the lower half of their face, but the eyes and forehead will likely betray you. The contracting groups of muscles are the muscles around the eyes (orbicularis oculi) and forehead and brow (occipitofrontalis, corrugator supercilii), though we are going to focus on the muscles in the forehead. I have found that relaxing the muscles of the forehead triggers the relaxing of the muscles around the eyes.

  Figure 1 is neutral. The forehead and eyes are relaxed. In Figure 2 the forehead and muscles around the eyes are priming, beginning to contract and display the subtle leakage of nervousness. If you are trying to stay rooted in a confident character, an asymmetry emerges as your eyes begin to reveal the subtlest hint of vulnerability. Figure 3 shows a more advanced leakage of fear and anxiety. Figure 4 is an unrepressed expression of fear and anxiety.

  An actor will usually exhibit a small level of leakage seen in figures 2 and 3. The subtle difference between Figure 1, 2, and 3 may seem almost imperceptible, but audiences watching your face blown up in high definition are exceedingly adept at detecting subtle indications of honest and dishonest behavior. An actor’s ability to stay out of their head, both the analytic mind and the muscles of the forehead, is vital.

  Some actors (especially those loathe to admit they’re anxious) get so uncomfortable they’re prone to eyebrow acting. This is terribly unsubtle and happens more often than you might imagine. It involves repetitive raising of the eyebrows as seen in Figure 5 below:

  Making an unconscious habit of relaxing the forehead on command takes practice, repetition, and feedback. One of the best exercises I have found for this is placing the actor on a mark in front of the camera and having them wait patiently as I adjust the lighting and frame. Recreating certain on-set experiences to correspond to crew members tweaking last-minute technical details for a shot, recreates nervous triggers for actors as they await: “Action!”

  Once I finish this adjustment, I tell the actor that my only expectation is that they be all right with making a painful mess of a performance on-camera. I then hand the actor a couple of scenes from a script and ask them to read for a role of someone with unwavering confidence. The scene has big speeches. I let the actor look it over maybe once or twice, but for the sake of this exercise the actor must cold read, reading a scene aloud and unrehearsed. I instruct the actor to commit to the character and to continue with the scene until I tell them to stop. The actor is given a chance to settle into character before launching in, usually quite convincingly for the first few seconds.

  Before long the actor stumbles over a line, which gives them a little nudge from the confident center of the character. The trip up triggers the first sign of asymmetry in the eyes and forehead as the brow and muscles around the eyes contract slightly. At this juncture I tell them, “Keep going, but relax your forehead,” and they do so while continuing to read. The next moment the asymmetry creeps back in and I repeat, “Relax your forehead.” This can go on for much of the scene as the actor relaxes, launches back in, garbles the line, and reveals the classic asymmetric clash between the confident character and the self-conscious actor. With every trip up they struggle to keep the cool, breezy confidence of the character. I repeat the instruction making them aware of the physiology taking place in real time. If the forehead contraction still persists, I place my fingers gently on their brow to keep it from contracting as they read. The actor can feel when they are unconsciously expressing fear by noticing the pressure of resistance from my fingertips. This physical exercise helps make them aware of when they are breaking character and leaking nervousness. And it offers an outside-in way of controlling this.

  Once finished, we play back the read. The feedback from watching reinforces the cues, and the actor very quickly internalizes the practice. It’s simple, technical, and highly effective. While adopting this new habit, the conscious attention required to relax the forehead during stressful situations actually serves to distract the actor from the anxiety brought on by the situation. As we discussed in Part One, it’s much easier to act when the analytic mind is occupied with a task.

  As with the process of reverse engineering an emotion, when this habit is integrated and seeded in the unconscious, the relaxed forehead and eye muscles themselves trigger a more relaxed state. This allows the actor to commit more fully to the character, the environment, and the moment.

  A few notes

  Some actors grow indignant when interrupted in the middle of the scene to give an adjustment. Although being interrupted is never pleasant, if you want to correct a behavior it’s most advantageous to catch it while it’s happening.

  A procedure popular in Hollywood at the time of publication needs to be addressed: there are advantages to making a habit of relaxing your forehead over freezing it with Botox injections. For one thing, if your forehead is frozen your eyes may still bulge, causing facial asymmetry. Secondly, it’s quite a challenge to play vulnerable characters when you cannot express vulnerability with your forehead. Having the ability to express vulnerability while disabling unconscious forehead tension gives you more breadth and control.

  The smell of fear

  The smell of fear has always been a figure of speech, but new findings reveal that humans can, in fact, smell fear. The smell of fear is a pheromone that is secreted in our sweat. Although the smell of fear is registered unconsciously, it is easily transmitted in audition settings when you perform live and up close, and you are nervous. Casting directors and others in the room who are in close proximity to you inhale the pheromone that unconsciously triggers varying degrees of unease in them—an unpleasantness unconsciously associated with you.7 Fear is one of the most important emotions an actor must work with. An antidote to transmitting nervous energy through visual cues or pheromones is to center yourself with confidence.

  Confidence under pressure

  Working as a screen actor takes impregnable nerve and what often comes across as a delusional degree of confidence to pull off over the long haul. Confidence is a great ally in the face of almost constant rejection. You may have heard that if you don’t develop rhino skin you won’t last in this
business. But having a thin, translucent skin, being open and vulnerable, are the markers of actors who move audiences. You’ve likely also heard that you can’t take rejection personally…but you’re probably going to anyway. It’s truly questionable whether you can be an artist and pick and choose what’s going to affect you. You’re putting your heart in it, your body’s your canvas. You’re being truthful, honest, being told to just “be yourself.” And feedback often comes in the form of something unmistakably personal. Not taking rejection personally is just another task lobbed to your feeble working memory that it can’t possibly handle. So many actors wind up feeling bad about the rejection and then feeling bad about feeling bad about the rejection.

  Your self-image

  Like a character backstory, you have your own backstory; a lifetime of memories that makes up a concept of who you are. This is called your autobiographical memory base. As the study “Memory and the Self” in the Journal of Memory and Language states, “Autobiographical knowledge constrains what the self is, has been, and can be.”8

  Memories of rejection are sewn into the fabric of your self-image, which in turn narrows the parameters of what you can accomplish. To make matters worse, biologically our brains have evolved to retain memories of negative experiences in order to avoid them, a self-preservation measure for survival and reproduction. Psychologists call this human characteristic negativity bias.9 You are biologically primed to incorporate more negative memories into your identity than positive ones. In the wild, negativity bias helps keep you alive so you can reproduce. In modern society, negativity bias can keep you from achieving goals that extend beyond the basics of survival and reproduction. Perhaps actors don’t need an absurd degree of confidence as much as a more accurate balance between the good and bad memories that make up your self-image.

  The following exercises train your brain to repopulate your identity with emotionally charged memories of past accomplishments, reinforcing your self-image against negativity bias. The resulting confidence helps you carry out stronger performances, which aids in achieving your goals. This is a self-perpetuating thought cycle to help foster success. I want to caution against equating a more positive identity with magical thinking. A positive disposition is attractive, emotions are infectious, and we want to be around those who make us feel good. A great deal of fortune in life, the good and the bad, whether you are aware of it or not, is determined by social influence. Yet popular schools of thought on positive thinking make claims that thought has almost supernatural powers to enhance prosperity. A recent article in the New Yorker cites several studies that show “fantasies hamper progress” 10 in some instances. In fact, the journal Psychological Science published a study in February 2014 titled “Positive Thinking about the Future in Newspaper Reports and Presidential Addresses Predicts Economic Downturn.” The first sentence in the abstract reads: “Previous research has shown that positive thinking, in the form of fantasies about an idealized future, predicts low effort and poor performance.”11 Additionally, popular belief systems about positive thinking often ascribe blame to the victims of grave misfortune for not having positively thought themselves into a better outcome. I have seen this distorted worldview isolate those most in need of compassion and support.

  Therefore, it’s safest to recognize thought as a yet-to-be fully unpacked mystery, and refrain from presumptive speculation or oversimplification. Instead, I’d like to focus on a general appreciation for the power of thought. Observable facets of thought impact our emotions and physiology in complex yet tangible ways that play out in the social strata that shape our lives. The upcoming exercises are designed to cultivate confidence. Magic would be great, but confidence on its own has a measurable payoff in the social order of human artistic expression and the business of entertainment.

  Note: positive visualization exercises have been used for years by cognitive and sports psychologists. For those interested in an in-depth discussion of such exercises in a sports context, see The Mental Edge by Kenneth Baum.12

  Exercise #1: positive identity

  Reflect back on your past, jotting down as many memories as you’re able to recall about times when you felt confident, poised, on your mark, on the ball, and in the zone. These memories don’t necessarily have to pertain to acting. Get all your best acting memories down, but if you have memories from a sport, another art, discipline, or any other area of your life, write them down as well.

  Once you have a list, set aside ten minutes, find a comfortable place to sit, relax, pick the memory furthest back, and start daydreaming. With your eyes closed, bring this memory back into your mind and crank up the sensorial and emotional volume on the memory making it especially vivid. Positive emotions are the key. The most important aspect of the daydream is to experience the positive emotions and sensations to their maximum intensity and then let them simmer inside you. When you wrap up this relived memory, make sure it ends on a positive feeling.

  Go down your list of these memories and settle into a sensory and emotionally charged visualization for approximately ten minutes a day. In about two weeks your concept of self will have reintegrated these positive memories, lifting psychologically biased limitations and literally broadening your capabilities. After the two weeks, you may repeat this exercise as needed.

  Exercise #2: immediate goals

  The second phase of these exercises is something you do before auditions. If you do not have auditions lined up, imagine that you do and perform this exercise for your imagined auditions. Imagine yourself going through the entire process leading up to and through your audition. Maximize the senses as you imagine this audition going superbly and amplify the positive emotions associated with peak performance. As you leave the audition, rev up the feeling of having performed your best. Max out those positive feelings as you slip out of your visualization.

  Not only do you not have to believe the visualization for it to be effective, you must stop yourself from trying to believe it. While making the visualization as vivid and emotionally charged as possible, resist every urge to try to convince yourself of the likelihood of this possible outcome. Don’t let your working memory work too hard on your fantasy. Effort and pressure are counterproductive. Simply enjoy the visualization as you would a daydream. The power of a vivid daydream is not for working memory to muddle. The effect of a vivid visualization passively affixes itself inside your procedural memory. Procedural memory may then take this visualization as an unconscious directive.

  I recommend doing the immediate goals exercise at least once a day for the first two weeks, then once a week or as needed for maintenance.

  Positive memories and targeted visualizations allow your body to disassociate from memories of bad audition experiences. You will no longer unwittingly use past negative experiences that feed your negativity bias as guideposts for future auditions. It’s simple but it takes discipline to commit to these exercises. They require a delicate hand and no pressure. They require repetition and consistency, even (and especially) if you’re cynical about these types of exercises. Make note of new, positive experiences and do a visualization to fortify your connection to them. Anchor new success with your self-image.

  Negative thoughts

  As we discussed in Part One, ironic rebound is the phenomenon where unwanted thoughts come up with even more persistence and frequency the more unwanted they are. This is why actors who prepare for a role using a classic analytic method can run into yet another problem when they are instructed to “forget the work” for performance. In her book The Willpower Instinct (a book I highly recommend), Dr. Kelly McGonigal discusses some of the work of her colleague at Stanford University, Dr. Daniel Wagner.13 Wagner is one of the scientists14 who proffered the theory that thought suppression routinely fails because two different mechanisms of mind split the task “don’t think about X.” One part of our brain, the operator, uses a great deal of mental energy and effort looking for anything else to think about. Meanwhile, another part of our
brain, the monitor, runs automatically and draws very little energy in its constant search for signs you might be feeling or thinking the forbidden thought or feeling. As you might imagine, pressure in performance and audition settings risks overtaxing the mental energy required for the operator to function. When the operator is exhausted you’re left with an unchecked monitor running on autopilot, constantly bringing to mind the forbidden thought or feeling. “The brain is constantly processing forbidden content just outside conscious awareness. The result: You become primed to think, feel, or do whatever you are trying to avoid.”15

  Trying not to think of something makes you primed to think of it. To make matters worse, the more emotionally charged the thought, the harder it is to suppress16and the more persistent the thought the more likely you are to assume the thought is true. To stop this train wreck:

  Avoid working creatively in a way that encourages analytic thought and then requires you suppress (throw away) any thought about the work.

  Accept any persistent thought. It’s just a thought, it can’t hurt you.

  Question whether the content of the thought is valid. For example, it’s been a rough day on set with a difficult scene and right before you hear “Action!” the thought, “I can’t get this right,” pops into your head. Do not try to suppress the negative thought. Instead, question whether the thought is true. You will probably realize that there is nothing inherently or inevitably true in the negative thought. Accept the thought, invalidate the content, and move on. Even if the content of the thought is inarguably valid, you’d do better accepting the thought or feeling than trying to suppress or deny it.