Emotions and acting are a dangerous combination. While you can’t really have one without the other, both concepts constantly threaten to overwhelm its counterpart—resulting in an acting performance that feels either totally unhinged or far too reserved. We have an entire article on acting emotions elsewhere on the site, which speaks exactly to this topic at length. Today, however, we’re going to talk about how to act angry, as there is no other emotion that is quite so challenging to bring to life on stage or screen.
If you want to learn how to act angry, spend time understanding the context of your character’s journey and relationships. This will help you contextualise their feelings, and determine what it is they would do with the emotions they feel. Next, ask yourself how your character would react in a moment of anger—as their reaction is likely out of sorts with how they normally hold themselves. Never forget that emotions in acting spur characters to action: ‘playing the emotion’ and simply showing the audience how you feel will always result in a bad performance.
This is the crux of knowing how to act angry as your character. Emotions are not actions: they don’t move the plot along or keep things interesting. Audiences don’t pay to see your character feel things, they pay to see what you do because of how they feel. Everything in this article that follows is in support of this core concept.
Being Angry versus Acting Angry
You can always tell when an actor is showing you how angry they are. They’re gruff, they’re loud, they make big physical offers. They pull faces that show you How Torn Up They Are. If you were to ask them what the hell they were doing, they’d probably say “I’m really angry in this bit!” without being able to say why. And while they all think they’re doing a crash-hot job, they usually look like this:
This is because a lot of actors think that acting angry is about showing emotion rather than feeling it. It’s further complicated because a lot of the signifiers of anger we listed above (gruff, loud, violent) may well be a manifestation of your character’s emotions.
But that’s all they are. Signifiers. Anger, as with all emotions, is internal and personal. So the choices of how your character reveals their feelings have to come from within and be informed by their particular journey and personality.
And that’s if they reveal them at all: some people display their anger proudly, some even heal from letting go! Others will push it down and deny their anger, letting it corrode from within… It’s up to you as the actor to determine how in touch with their feelings your character is.
The Context of Anger
Knowing how to act angry is to know where the emotion comes from. Start your process (where else!) with some script analysis to get a handle on your character, as well as their placement within the story. Start with the big picture, and then focus on the particulars of the scene in which your character’s anger manifests.
Story and Story World
Does your character’s anger come from an aspect of the plot, or the world of the story in which the narrative is set? Perhaps your character is reacting to an injustice, a hostile society or an inequity made obvious by external forces?
Such details can give excellent context as to their feelings. However, much like a super objective that drives a character’s overall journey, this larger context will likely not be enough when exploring the anger within a given scene. It is not enough that your character is “simply an angry guy”: find the particulars within that moment.
Given Circumstances
This is why the concept of the given circumstances can be extremely useful. Questions of who, where, when, what, why and how allow you to get specific about the kinds of aggravators that might cause anger in your character.
An otherwise simple exchange at a toll booth can become a scene of simmering suspense if the “where” circumstance is “ten minutes before the character is due at the Important Meeting otherwise they’re fired”.
Moment Before
If your character arrives angry in the scene—perhaps bursting through the door in a tornado of insults and thrown punches—ask yourself “why” by interrogating the moment before. This is this stimulus that causes your character to step into the scene in the first place, and is usually tied to their objective.
The moment before is one of the best places to find the anger of your character. As an exercise, you can try improvising the moment before the scene in question to find some continuity between what caused their anger and how they feel as a result.
Character Relationships
One of the most important dynamics in learning how to act angry is to consider your scene partner. Character relationships reveal so much about your role, not to mention the person opposite you. So spend some time thinking about whether or not this person caused your anger, contributed to it, will exacerbate it or help to calm it.
How is your character’s anger flavouring the interaction? Are you close enough to your scene partner that they’re accepting of your anger, even understanding? If you don’t know them as well, your anger might frighten them in a way that actually harms your objective pursuit.
Often, the presence of another person means your character has to control their anger to get what they want—even when the person they’re speaking to might be the root cause of such negative emotions.
History
Consider the shared history between your character and that of your scene partner. You could try making a character relationship map that details relationship, needs and wants to best explore their dynamic. And if there’s something in your past that causes anger or a rift between you, be specific about it and ensure that both actors agree on what this backstory might be—especially if firm details are absent from the script.
Status
The status of your character is another important modifier. If you’re an underling speaking to a superior, you’ll need to modify the way you show your anger, perhaps tempering it with some restraint or respect. Likewise if your character has an elevated status or power dynamic in a scene: just because your character can be angry without restraint doesn’t mean they should.
Plotting Angry Actions
Everything we’ve spoken to so far is about the context of anger: how to justify the anger of the character and identify the root cause. Next, we can talk about how to act angry in the literal sense: what, specifically, you can do as a performer to remain convincing and not go over the top.
Actions
Start with the statement “I feel angry.” Cool! What do you do about it?
Seriously, it’s that simple: your character feels a certain way. How does that feeling become action? What kinds of verbs might you use to plot tactics in a scene, informed by their heightened emotions?
For anger, strong actions play well: threaten, intimidate, shove (figuratively), mock, interrogate, humiliate, devastate, stand over, destroy. Humans tend to acrt negative when they feel negative, so let this inform the way your character carries themselves in a given situation.
Adverbs
Elsewhere on StageMilk, we’ve spoken about adverbs as the greatest secret weapon for actors. Adverbs, applied to actions, can modify the way a character pursues a goal dictated by circumstance, personality or (particularly in this case) emotion.
A usually-gentle character might try to “threaten” somebody “reluctantly”, whereas a time-poor character might try to “comfort” somebody “hurriedly”.
An angry character might “dismiss” somebody “cruelly”—adverbs are especially helpful when the anger of a character is circumstantial, and less tied to the plot or scene partner. This helps you acknowledge your character’s feelings without letting them overpower what else is happening in the scene.
Check In
The great advantage of a scene partner, in a scene where your character is angry, is that none of your actions occur in a vacuum. Check in with them to see what effect your anger has on them. Does it change the way they view you, interact with you, oppose the pursuit of your character’s objective?
Sometimes, the anger of a person can be totally deflated by the way a person reacts to them. Other times, the wrong reaction can cause them to feel even greater anger—spurring them on to more extreme feelings and actions.
So as you navigate the scene, stay reactive. The best reaction in a given moment might require some exploration to find, which is what the rehearsal process is for. The only way to fail is to do nothing at all.
Let The Pot Simmer
One last piece of advice for how to act angry on stage or screen. This one is a classic, and applies to all extremes in scene work. Whether your character is drunk, crying, in pain, overjoyed or furious: keep a lid on it. Let the pot simmer, by all means. Let the bubbles of anger escape in crucial moments! But the minute the pot boils over, all you’re left with is a mess.
So exercise restraint. There’s no way to put an actor’s emotions back in the proverbial toothpaste tube. And the minute you do go all-out and give in to anger on stage, the first thing your audience will do is switch off.
Why do we give this advice? Why do we tell actors not to cry or yell or beat their chests and tear at their clothes? Because the human impulse is, overwhelmingly, to repress these feelings. Once we let them go, it’s a whole different character in a whole different world. So pick this moment carefully.
Chill out. And good luck!
