English Listening B2 Section 1 - Episode 10 - Track 03
Fill in the Blanks Exercise
Presenter: Hello and welcome to the On the Stage podcast. This week, I'm joined by film critic Linda Marshall who is going to be talking to us about one of the most
of an actor's work: getting into character. Good evening, Linda.
Linda: Hello.
Presenter: Now, what does getting into character
mean?
Linda: It means making your character
to your audience. It's quite easy to imitate certain emotions and pretend to be affectionate or bad-tempered, but to create a
person is much more complicated than that.
Presenter: Students at RADA study the Stanislavski acting
, don't they? How does that help?
Linda: Well, Stanislavski said there were
questions that an actor had to be able to answer about the character that they are going to create. Some of them are about the character's personality and their lives such as Who am I?, Where am I? and When
? Others look at what the character wants and ask What do I want? and How will I
my goal?
Presenter: And some well-known actors are really
about their work and do quite a bit more than just answer Stanislavski's questions.
Linda: Mmm, they certainly do. Meryl Streep, for example, is famous for her accents, but they
a lot of work. For the film about the Second World War, Sophie's Choice, she spent two months learning Polish, and then she would
her house for days reading poems with a Polish accent.
Presenter: Why did she do that?
Linda: Because she wanted to learn how to say
things like a Polish person speaking English would.
Presenter: It worked because she was
in the film. Another actor whose preparations are also quite famous is Leonardo DiCaprio.
Linda: Yes. For the film Blood Diamond, which was set in an African country at war, DiCaprio spent a
of time with soldiers who had fought in wars in Africa. And he also spent time in a lot of psychiatric hospitals when he was preparing for the psychological thriller Shutter Island set on an island that is home to dangerous criminals with
problems.
Presenter: Well, thank you very much, Linda. It's clear that being an actor involves a lot more work than most people
!