Acting and Writing.

What is the creative difference between acting and writing apart from the obvious mechanics?

Why would I ask this question, first of all? Because I heard someone discussing it on the tube but I won't bore you with what they said because that's not my opinion – I'll bore you with what I think instead.

There is not a lot of difference at all – actors and writers have their own way of creating characters. Some sit in cafés or pubs and study people and some even go to the zoo.

I was playing a psychopathic murderer in a play once – Night Must Fall by Emlyn Williams – and there was a scene where the stage was bare apart from an old woman sitting in her wheel chair. It was dark and quiet and as she sat there the wind howled from outside and it was very scary then suddenly I poked my head through the curtain and the audience gasped and screamed.

The woman looked at me and was relieved as she knew me – Danny! Danny! she cried, then I came in and talked to her for a while.

As I was talking to her the audience could tell that I was going to kill her, chop her head off and put it in a hat box – at least that's what they thought and by the time the scene closed they knew that's what I was going to do.

There was something about the dialogue that the writer had written which needed something from the actor; I was saying one thing but meaning something else; I couldn't just stand there with my hands in my pockets or try to speak evil or look menacing. People don't pull faces and show their inner emotions if they're trying to trick somebody so what should I do – in my case I usually ask what would I do in that situation?

Then someone – not the director – gave me a note. He said I needed to stalk the woman like a lion or a tiger; and he was right. That's what I meant about going to the zoo!

So I paced around the stage as I talked to her and it worked. I was as charming as I had been in the previous scenes with her but there was something about me which gave the message to the audience that I was up to no good.

Some actors would say, never mind the audience - worry about 'the work' – I know what they mean but we are doing it for the audience; who else?

In that case the writer had given me the bare bones and I had to put flesh onto them.

The lines – or the dialogue – should come last in a characterisation even though you learn them first; you learn them first to get them out of the way but these days with film acting you don't learn anything as you don't rehearse much.

Rehearsals are a learning process and this you do as you rehearse. Sometimes on a film I have only just about got the lines into my head before having to say them; so I deliver them as if that's my raison detre then go away; nothing learned.

Later I might think maybe I should have done them this way or that way and the day after that I had forgotten them altogether.

That's what you have to do as an actor but it's a shame as the chances of you seeing that performance many years down the line and cringing is quite a possibility.

Whereas the performance in a theatre, which disappears into oblivion, is rehearsed, practised and has the benefit of being performed many times to near perfection.

Some of the great film directors, such as Sydney Lumet, would have a period of rehearsals which is why their movies have great performances – I mean look at Dog Day Afternoon.

But back to writing and acting – they are the two things that everybody thinks they can do; they think they can do this because they can put words on a page – writing – and they can speak – acting!

But that's not all there is to it.

The best scripts, movies, books, plays or whatever are character driven; the alternative would be plot driven.

There are some great films, I'm sure, which are plot driven; I haven't seen the Star Wars films but I am told they are plot driven with lousy dialogue and poor development of character but I am also told they are great films.

Look at the film Avatar – no nothing to do with an Indian deity - which was a pioneering film which everybody thought was the answer to the future, a new way of making films, with 3D and all that; only the characters were one dimensional and the dialogue was terrible but then again – I didn't see it.

A film I did see was Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which I loved; I loved it because the acting was good, the characters were well drawn, the plot took a lot to figure out and I like to have to work things out for myself.

Of course a lot of people didn't like it, because they couldn't follow it, but people thought the same when the TV series was popular in 1979 with Alec Guinness playing Smiley; I wonder if they'll make the sequel Smiley's People?

So writing and directing are one and the same apart from the logistics of it – they both create characters and some of them even go to the zoo.

Here I am in Night Must Fall – many years ago:

as Danny in Night Must Fall.