I think it's a very subjective thing, right?

Who's great, who's not?

And the Oscar goes to...

And the Oscar goes to...

And the Oscar goes to...

What differentiates good acting from great acting?

Brad Pitt.

Laura Dern.

Brendan Fraser.

The Whale.

I think it is interesting because I think if you don't understand acting, then you also think that you kind of just turn up and just do it.

Listen, you gonna raise my son now?

Huh?

You gonna raise my son?

There's so much work you do beforehand so that you can arrive on set, you're so prepared that you can deliver that work in a very short space of time.

The very subjective nature of this question makes it hard to pin down why certain performances make you feel emotionally moved, while others feel, well, stilted.

But I think people don't understand that preparation can take up to four, five, sometimes even six months.

The building the psychology and getting ready for the piece itself.

Actually getting to act is such a minuscule part of the experience that you have to love it that much.

I spent a lot of time on 47th Street, so I spent a lot of time with a lot of gamblers who had bad problems and lost a lot of things and lost their lives because of it.

It's good to learn something.

I walked away thinking I knew everything.

Right now, it's a year later, I'm like, I forgot so much.

When I prep, I do timelines and backstories, and I work with a dialect coach and a movement coach and an acting coach.

And I just, yeah, I need to do a lot before I show up to set so I can throw it all out the window when I get on set.

Is a great actor just someone who can cry on cue?

I sometimes cry a lot.

You're not a softie, though.

You don't cry easily, do you?

I get teary-eyed, yes.

My kids always say, I've never seen you cry.

I want to see what you look like when you cry.

They scream that, please cry.

You don't cry?

I don't cry that much, no.

You've had to cry in a movie, though, haven't you?

Yes, a lot.

I've done like five times where I had to go full-on crying, and it's not easy for me.

Crying on cues is something you can do.

It's always like stifling for an actor when it's written in the scene, like they begin to cry or they cry.

And then you're like, yeah, this is the scene where I'm gonna like, I'm gonna lose it, like snot's gonna come out of my nose, I'm gonna freak out.

I'm not some, I'm not like a tear performer.

I spent my life growing up like trying to make myself cry.

I can't do that.

I can't do that.

Can you do that?

Yeah, I can't do that.

No.

I kind of give myself a little bit of a safety net when I say to the director beforehand, I'll be like, yeah, I might cry.

But I might not cry, I might not.

But I am totally stealing that.

Because you can't control everything.

Right.

So you can only control your intention and your degree of engagement.

In fact, when you're free of the idea of the result, sometimes the engagement can run so much deeper.

Focusing on being sad or angry often leads to indicating that emotion, and aiming for a result leads to a performance that feels forced.

There was a scene in The Master I shot with Joaquin.

I had in my head how the scene was going to go.

Yeah, you had the result before.

Exactly.

Freddie, wake up.

He was not waking up.

I was supposed to wake him up, and he wasn't waking up.

And I was like, I freaked out.

Because I was like, no, here's how the scene goes.

See, I go over, I shake him.

I didn't roll with it.

And I learned a lesson from that, though.

I mean, eventually we got there, but I had in my head how the scene was going to go.

Wake up.

Wake up.

Acting is active, and therefore an actor's focus is often on an actable objective or goal rather than an emotion.

If you can walk into an actor and say, just crowd the other guy.

Crowd him.

That's such an active thing that the actor can do.

You don't want to give, like, I mean, you can give faster, slower, but that's usually not useful.

Things like, and the goal in this scene is, make yourself understood or something like that.

Like, change their objective.

Redirect their objective.

Because then you get to see their wheels turn about, how do they do that?

You're not giving them the results.

You're giving them, like.

An intention.

This is the intention.

And there is often a temptation to believe a great actor is someone who censors themselves, aiming for subtlety and the most emotional of scenes.

I showed up on set.

I said, I'm going to do my work as an actress, and I'm going to make it real small, Denzel.

But this, too, is a false notion.

And he was like, what are you doing?

And I said, well, I'm doing a small for the screen.

He said, why?

And I said, because it's too big.

It's big.

He said, well, do what you think is too big.

And I remember I did it.

I've been standing with you.

I've been right here with you, Troy.

And he said, I don't think that's too big.

Great performances don't hinge on an actor choosing when to hesitate, stutter, wink, or grimace, but rather being in the moment.

Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine, that vulnerability, and you get that feeling of, I guess it's cathartic in some ways.

Moment-by-moment acting is what allows a small flicker of emotion to cross an actor's face in between the lines.

In order to do this, they must be free, completely unselfconscious, and vulnerable, which as human beings is easier said than done.

We're so conditioned not to play, and we're so conditioned not to, you know, to be loose.

And we're so conditioned to, we're so conditioned to having stuff mean.

We're not, we're not comfortable with things that we can't quite explain.

A big part of an actor's ability to be vulnerable relies on the trust they build with a director.

An actor is laying an awful lot of this deep, intimate, personal stuff out there.

And a good director, it seems to me, is both the third eye, but also a comforter.

I think I hear more often that directors don't communicate.

I think that's probably the complaint I've heard from crew and cast.

There are very few directors who have that language.

You've had a thought.

You've been working on these lines.

You've done all of your research.

You've built your backstory as an actor.

And those directors that can still come and tell you something, and you go, oh, wow.

That helps, that helps.

Yeah, let me try it that way.

Yeah, that rarely happens.

It's, you know.

Like, do you know that when a director comes in and you can tell that you haven't gotten it?

Yeah.

And they're like, we got it, we got it, we got to move on.

And then you're like, can I go for one more?

It's like, no, no, no, we got it.

I'd love to go for one more.

And then they go, okay, if you're going to go for one more, do this.

Yeah.

Like, and then I think trust is just destroyed.

Oftentimes, what differentiates a good performance from a great one is the quality of writing an actor is working with.

And I think that my first job is to be a really good writer to the actors.

So many times you see so much description of what the character is supposed to be feeling and stuff in screenplays.

And it's just a big mistake.

It has to be done through dialogue and what they do.

What are they going to do?

Are they going to walk across the street?

You know, then that's a character trait.

You know, they're making that decision.

I think a lot of the time, I don't know if you found this as an actor, but you read scripts and they describe characters as being that.

But then the character isn't in the dialogue or the text or the script directions.

When writing is not good, you have to fill in the blanks.

And I always say the actors who should get the awards are the actors who have to make bad work good.

However, when great writing and great direction align, it lays the foundation for great acting.

And this frees up actors to make interesting choices.

You have multiple different ideas which you just think would be kind of fun.

And also sometimes you think about things which should be exciting for the other actor.

So it gives them something to react to.

When I read it, I just I wanted to do it because the greatest thing as an actor that you can lean into in film is a trust in your director.

You know, trust in their choices, not that you always go with them, but that you trust in their single-minded approach and their perspective.

To make a strong choice, you know, whatever it is.

Like I saw you make choices and do things that I could just see that you were just in your head were going, oh, I'll do that now.

It's just the most exquisite thing I've ever seen.

Great acting often comes as the result of actors who aren't afraid to take big risks in the choices they make.

She walks and then she almost staggers and then she tiptoes.

And it's extraordinary choice.

That kind of detail that she's aware of in the way she uses her body to express the character, even with her back to camera, that to me should be a masterclass for anybody that wants to be an actor.

And an important part of the choices an actor can make is knowing how to use your instrument to serve the role.

I think Phil just intuitively knew that this person should be light on his feet.

I certainly never thought I'd look at Joaquin standing like that.

From how they walk?

One thing can give it to you.

A walk can give it to you.

Joaquin is so specific in the way Arthur's run looked.

I thought it was really something.

You watch her walk.

She was watching The Searchers.

And she was doing John Wayne.

She was doing John Wayne the whole time.

How they talk.

I know a lot of British people that can do excellent American accents.

Yes, me too.

And the pool's a little bit smaller on the American end.

When I read a script, the first thing that comes into my head before the visuals or anything is, what is this person going to sound like?

Getting all of those cadences and pauses and the strong, elongated words, it really got me into the whole voice and everything.

You and the Johnsons have already done so much.

I just sort of had to lean into the sounds and go, they're going to come, they're going to come, and just listen to her, listen to her, listen to her, listen to her.

And slowly it would wash into my mouth, my body, my brain, my psyche.

And then suddenly she was there.

Jim, let's go.

It's not going to get better than this.

Copy that.

And a big part of what makes a performance great is listening.

Do I make myself clear?

I'm sorry, I wasn't listening.

Ow!

Always make sure that you're listening, because your reactions will be different if you're listening to the other person properly.

What was that?

The misconception that exists somehow is that a great actor delivers great lines, but a great actor listens to great lines.

Just listening is my favourite acting to do.

I think it's listening to the way what the other actors are offering, or maybe the mood they're in that day.

Because for me, acting is really just being in the moment as well as I can.

And then I just listen and I just answer.

But a great performance rests on more than just the actor alone.

And that's kind of partly what I love about this.

There is a kind of social aspect to it.

You're part of a team, you know, on set.

What's rarely talked about is what we do as a collaborative sport.

We're part of a collage, man.

Yeah, exactly.

But even so much as wanting your component of that collage to fit perfectly into the collage, you really have to kind of give it all up.

It's not just you doing a thing, it's the community doing the thing.

It's not everybody wants you to do great or you to win.

It's everybody wants to do well by this offering that we have to give.

Deciphering a good performance from a great one is personal.