Realistic acting. It’s the holy grail, isn’t it? After all the preparation—all of the anguish that goes to discovering a character, preparing a role, rehearsing and bringing it to life on stage or on screen—you really do hope your performance finds some semblance of real life: what you might loftily call “truth”. However, it’s not something that even good actors can guarantee in their performances. If you want your acting to feel real, you need to work for it.
Realistic acting describes a quality of performance that feels grounded, natural and true to the circumstances of the character and story. It is achieved through considered study of the text, and by making subsequent choices in one’s performance that feel connected to the character’s emotions and experiences—rather than what might be most entertaining for the audience.
In this article, we’ll give you everything we can to get you onto the path towards realism. We’ll explore how to find it, how to keep it and the fascinating instances where realistic acting might need to go out the door….
Let’s dive in!
Should Acting Be Realistic?
The short answer to this question is “yes”. Realistic acting is what allows audiences to connect and empathise with a character. If their actions within a scene don’t feel truthful, the character can risk coming across as a caricature—or simply an outright fake.
Realistic acting also helps connect audiences to characters whose stories might differ wildly from their own lived experience. Most of us will never know the betrayal of Hamlet’s uncle Claudius. (And fingers crossed our uncle doesn’t murder our father, the king, and marries our mother in a pretzel of incestuous dramatics.)
What do you do if the story you’re telling is fantastic or
True to the Character, or True to You?
Let’s examine an important truth lost on many actors. Realistic acting doesn’t mean that the character resembles you, or acts the way you would in that situation. The only exception is if you’re literally playing yourself. Which is highly unlikely.
Can actors draw from their own personality and experiences to play a role? Absolutely! There’s a rich history of drawing from experience and emotion to find ‘truth’ in acting; proponents of the Method system/s tend to cop an equal amount of praise and flak for these very processes.
The risk is, however, is crafting a performance to think about what you might do, rather than your character. Because, while they may be similar to you in some (or many) respects, they are their own, distinct person. They’re going to navigate a story in their own way, and it’s your job as the actor to discover that. Not fit with what suits you.
If you wilfully try to make the character resemble yourself, think like yourself, act and react like yourself … you’re not doing the character any favours. In fact, your craft becomes all about you—rather than serving the and telling the story.
Knowing The Text
So if we can’t reliably search for truth in ourselves, where do we look for any hints to make our acting seem realistic?
We start with the text. It’s all about the words on the page. Realistic acting begins and ends with script analysis. You need to glean the author’s words for any and all hints about your character, their overall narrative arc and the larger story world they inhabit.
You’ll gain a far stronger understanding with facts and questions under your belt than simple gut feeling. What’s more, you’ll be able to support your ideas and interpretations with the original text backing you up—something looked upon favourably by most directors and writers.
Even when you’ve finished your initial pass of the script, you can lean on analytical tools that help you ground and discover your character. Answer the questions in the given circumstances for context, use the ‘moment before’ for motivation and to discover the stakes (more on this later.)
Discover the Want and Fight For It!
Conflict is the essence of all drama—the secret ingredient without which we’d find any excitement on stage or screen. And driving that conflict is a clash of ‘wants’ that propels characters into thought, feeling and (most importantly) action.
What does your character want? What is their objective? Realistic acting is driven by your character’s relentless pursuit of their goal. Not relentless as in “big” or “dramatic”, but relentless as in never ceasing, even in the quieter moments of a narrative. Even if all hope for the character looks bleak.
Objective pursuit leads to realistic performance for a very simple reason: it’s human. In fact, it’s what makes drama human, even when the story of a character may be so removed from our lived experience it is literally fantasy or science fiction. If you can find the character’s want, and articulate that through the way you play them, your acting will feel realistic.
Acting devoid of an objective tends to feel ‘wooden’, or fake. That’s because a character without a clear goal in mind feels like they’re imitating life rather than living it. There’s no drive, no narrative arc. They’re no better than a warm prop.
Finding the Stakes
Stakes refer to what a character stands to gain and lose by their actions in a given scene. The higher the stakes, the more impactful and dramatic the story: because the risk and reward is greater.
How do stakes contribute to realistic acting? Our advice is to focus on the “lose” more than the “gain”. Most actors don’t need to be told that high-stakes storytelling is the most exciting; they willingly hurtle their characters towards danger and strife in pursuit of their objective. As we’ve already advised them to do!
But humans—real, actual humans like the ones actors are pretending to be—are fearful, careful creatures bent on self-preservation. Therefore, finding your character’s worries and insecurities is a great tactic for making them feel realistic. They may have to rush into the burning pet shop to save all the animals. But showing them undertaking such heroics with no thought to their own fears or mortality just makes them seem phoney.
Realistic Acting in Genre and Absurdity
Before we wrap up, let us discuss one last thing on the subject of realistic acting? How are you meant to be realistic in a genre far removed from real life? Are you meant to stay truthful and grounded in a gross-out, puerile comedy?
Hell yes! Any actor who thinks comedy, science fiction or a slasher flick set at Camp Darkwood doesn’t require total fidelity from their performance is going to look lazy and amateurish. When acting in something clearly set in a story world distinct from our own, the goal is to be truthful to that story world.
Does your character live in a city full of vampires? That’s the situation, then. Have them act as though they’ve lived that experience their entire lives—tap into the norm of their everyday existence.
Conclusion
So there you have it: everything you need to pursue realistic acting in your next job! Remember, in your eternal quest for truth on stage or screen, that looking real when you act isn’t some great talent. It requires, like all other things in an artist’s life, continued and concerted effort.
Work at making your characters appear truthful and grounded. Ask the questions, determine the answers and never stop shaking meaning out of the script. When you do it right, the character will feel real without you having to force it at all—that’ll simply be their state of being.
Good luck!
