Cary Grant created a personality. Brick by brick.
Here are Cary Grant’s perceptive words on “playing himself”:
To play yourself — your true self — is the hardest thing in the world. Watch people at a party. They’re playing themselves … but nine out of ten times the image they adopt for themselves is the wrong one.
In my earlier career I patterned myself on a combination of Englishmen — AE Matthews, Noel Coward, and Jack Buchanan, who impressed me as a character actor. He always looked so natural. I tried to copy men I thought were sophisticated and well dressed like Douglas Fairbanks or Cole Porter. And Freddie Lonsdale, the British playwright, always had an engaging answer for everything.
I cultivated raising one eyebrow and tried to imitate those who put their hands in their pockets with a certain amount of ease and nonchalance. But at times, when I put my hand in my trouser pocket with what I imagined was great elegance, I couldn’t get the blinking thing out again because it dripped from nervous perspiration!
I guess to a certain extent I did eventually become the characters I was playing. I played at someone I wanted to be until I became that person. Or he became me.
His process sounds so self-conscious, doesn’t it, so NOT natural. Thinking about how he was going to put his hand in his pocket, imitating guys he thought were suave, and yet, the end result, finally, was naturalness. He became that guy better than those he was imitating, if that makes sense.
How many times have you seen someone who is basically posing their way through their life? And maybe it started out that way with Mr. Grant. He wanted to appear relaxed, hoping that that would relax him inside. And eventually, it worked. Nobody lights a cigarette, comes through a door, takes off his jacket, kisses a girl … with as much naturalness as he does.
And yet, he created “that guy” from scratch.
He was so good he convinced himself, Sheila
I love his observation that 9 times out of 10 people pick the wrong “self” to play, out in the real world. Ain’t it the truth???
Hmmm.. that’s Archie’s view.. alternatively, most people are very bad actors.
Right … but that just goes to show you that critics who scoff at actors who “just play themselves” have no idea what they are talking about. If it’s hard for real people in real life to “play themselves” … then to do it ON PURPOSE is even more challenging. And to pick the RIGHT self.
Like … Cary Grant knew who he wanted to be. He WASN’T that. And so he, through his own instinct, genius, whatever, picked JUST THE RIGHT SELF that would first of all help him get by in the world, help him get a long … but would also help him get the most success.
I’m sure he had no idea how MUCH it would resonate with people, at least not at first. It was his way to get by, to leave behind the poverty background, etc.
Oh right, yeah, we agree on this, I think.. there may be a slight difference in terminology though.
“Just play themselves”, by the critics *spits* doesn’t refer to ‘themselves’ – it’s a great choice of ‘self’ – of which the critics *spits* never acknowledge.
With Archie though, he looked for what it is that would work – the genius of Cary Grant is that he convinced others what it was.
It always bothered me a little that John Wayne had to put on an eyepatch, play a bit of a drunken rogue, and generally “act” act before he received an Oscar. Like Cary Grant, he created a vision of himself, and that vision defined almost every character he played. He was an American icon. That is not an easy thing to do. Many people forget that Clint Eastwood was once viewed with derision, and as a lightweight. I remember telling some friends during college that he would one day be looked at as a sort of Humphrey Bogart, and they all looked at me as if I had said Jewel would one day be seen as another Robert Burns. When one looks at the history of the Oscars, it is amazing how many Oscars are given to actors who play characters with obvious deformities, handicaps, severe mental impairment, etc. It seems sometimes that one needs to act the clown to get any recognition.
sometimes…your blog makes my brain hurt. in a good way.
really…every day i try to make my blog a little more like yours. i probably fail, but i wanted you to know that.
beth:
Why thank you, ma’am. When I started up this blog, I gave myself a goal:
“I would like to make people’s brains hurt.”
:)
i’m working on a piece right now, btw, that you might find interesting.
erm…but i can’t churn them out as fast and furious as you.