Los Angeles Magazine / March 1, 2001
BY: Amy Wallace
ALEC GUINNESS USED to say that he built his characters from the shoes up. Laurence Olivier began with the nose often reshaping it with putty. Al Pacino insisted on the elegant camel-hair coat he wore in The Godfather, Part II. Externals matter, he explained.
BUT WHAT OF THE INTERNALS — the invisible tools an actor uses to make the made-up real? Compared with the surface details, the inner workings are hard to parse. Some actors fear that to deconstruct their talent is to risk its loss. Many clam up when asked how they do it. Or worse, they talk in gauzy platitudes.
WE DECIDED TO SPEAK TO actors about not their own work but the work of others. We asked Joan Allen and Ed Harris — who just turned in what many believe are their finest film performances — to name a few movie scenes that have affected them. Then we popped the scenes into a VCR and let them talk.