No Icing.

If you’re asked to bake a cake just do that.

Don’t add any icing.

Your direction is to walk across the stage. Just do that. Don’t add. DeNiro says it’s the most important thing and the most difficult.

Use your observation – one of the pillars of acting – to see how you do the simplest things. Observe others doing the simplest things.

Human behaviour.

That’s practice you can do when not in class. Take that up seriously. Professionally.

There’s a story – perhaps apocryphal – that Lee Strasberg said the only actor he ever saw walk across the stage the way a human being walks was Eleonora Dusa.

Maybe he did, and maybe she did. Point is, we like the story because it exemplifies the importance of simplicity and truth.

Here is someone we know did.

Hellen Mirren in the trailer for her Masterclass series walks across the stage and sits in a chair. Then she says, ‘I just did what I considered one of the most difficult things to do in my profession of acting which is to walk as yourself.’

Be sharp with yourself in how you do this work. 

Part of what makes it difficult is that it isn’t dramatic. No screaming, crying, fighting. No pages of dialogue, complicated blocking, green screen acting. So, it can deceive you in its simplicity.

It might seem boring.

Uta Hagen always had a scene study door wherever she taught. For her, entering was a decisive moment. Again, so simple and obvious, but on examination and practice loaded with importance and potential. 

She stressed the qualitative difference between being outside the door and entering. Just that act.

When the cake is well baked, it’s tasty.