{"id":37298,"date":"2011-05-05T09:08:12","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T13:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=37298"},"modified":"2012-04-17T07:56:30","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T11:56:30","slug":"quotes-on-acting-john-barrymore-by-the-time-im-visible-to-the-audience-i-am-ibbetson-quite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=37298","title":{"rendered":"Quotes On Acting: John Barrymore: “By the time I’m visible to the audience I am Ibbetson, quite.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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John Barrymore, interviewed on acting:<\/p>\n

An actor’s performance, at best, is the way he happens to feel about a certain character … I’m a bit of Peter Ibbetson and a bit of Jack Barrymore. At least, I never utterly forget Jack Barrymore – or things he’s thought or done – or had done to him. It’s a curious mental state. I never can understand the actors who say they lose themselves completely in a part. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Yet there’s a double identity that’s very real – to me – and somehow, never quite the same …<\/p>\n

I’ll try to explain:<\/p>\n

I leave my dressing room to make Peter [Ibbetson]’s first entrance. I am Jack Barrymore – Jack Barrymore smoking a cigarette. But before I make the entrance I have thrown away the cigarette and become more Ibbetson than Barrymore. By the time I’m visible to the audience I am Ibbetson, quite.<\/p>\n

That is, you see – I hope to make this clear – on my way to the entrance I have passed imaginary flunkies and given up my hat and coat. Peter would have had a hat and coat – naturally; and would have given them up. And he’s a timid fellow. He gives up his imaginary hat and coat to these imaginary flunkies just as I, Jack Barrymore – and very timid then – once gave up my hat and coat to flunkies at a great ball given by Mary Astor.<\/p>\n

Of course I don’t always make Peter’s entrance with the memory of a bashful boy at Mrs. Astor’s ball. That would harden the memory – make it useless. You couldn’t keep on conjuring up the same thing. You have to have different things to get the same emotion.<\/p>\n

At times I think of my own mother (when choking Colonel Ibbetson) putting me to bed – how sweet she was. Then I can put a lot of gusto into choking the old rascal.<\/p>\n

One time – when my brother Lionel played him – I had him get some horrible, some cheap and nasty, perfume. A whiff of that and I could feel a fine frenzy. Not that I ever actually whiffed it. But the idea of this old stinker smelling like what he really was – you understand – or maybe you don’t at all – I’m afraid I’m a bum psychologist …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Barrymore, interviewed on acting: An actor’s performance, at best, is the way he happens to feel about a certain character … I’m a bit of Peter Ibbetson and a bit of Jack Barrymore. At least, I never utterly forget … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[778],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37298"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37298"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53609,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37298\/revisions\/53609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}