ABSTRACT
Hitchcock said that if he were running a film school he would not let students near a camera for the first two years. In today’s world, that film school would soon find itself bereft of students, for the camera serves as a validation that one is indeed pursuing a career in film. But too often, for too many new directors, the camera and its incumbent technology get in the way of what we will be touching on in this chapter: directing the actor. It may be instructive here to point out that there are fewer directors of photography who have made it as directors than there are actors who direct — many more actors: John Cassavetes, Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Sean Penn, Mel Gibson, and Clint Eastwood, to name but a few. Actors, aside from having experiential insights into the craft of acting, have also (those who have studied formally) been immersed in the “soup” of dramatic storytelling, and have accepted (those who become successful directors) the dramatic imperatives.
