Acting or mere impersonation: You decide

Came back from a week off to this e-mail:

Dan,

I think you would be the perfect person to lead a campaign about something that has frustrated me lately. I am continually (almost on a yearly basis now) disappointed in the inability of critics and the Academy to see the difference between acting and mimicry. Don’t get me wrong, copying the looks, speech, mannerisms, etc. of famous people is often a thankless job. What if one misses, for instance like many people thought about Anthony Hopkins as Richard Nixon? But, jeez.

There is much to be said for having to create a memorable character on screen, yet that point seems to be fading into memory. Witness the critical acclaim and awards bestowed over the past few years: Philip Seymour Hoffman , Reese Witherspoon, Jamie Foxx, Marion Cotillard , Joaquin Phoenix, etc. Great performances to be sure, but they did have the advantage of makeup artists, hours of opportunity to view film, listen to recordings and the such to get them into the character. For my money, Stanley Kowalski is much tougher role to play convincingly.

If the current trend continues – and unless somebody steps up and points out this issue, it will – why not just give Oscars and other awards to the likes of Rich Little, Jim Morris and Tina Fey , not to mention those who will play present-day-icons-with-problems in the future, like Marlon Brando, James Brown or Woody Allen?

I can’t fault the performers, but can’t critics help distinguish between acting and imitation? Here’s hoping so.

Thank you for being the sounding board for my rant. I must sound like Abe Simpson writing to Modern Bride Magazine .

Matt Sullivan

Here’s my reply:

Thanks, Matt, for your letter. I agree with parts of it, though not all.

If all an actor does is impersonate, and that actor in particular has no acting resume that allows us to see what else he or she can do, than I think you make a good point. One example I would cite is Jim Carrey’s impersonation of Andy Kaufman in “Man on the Moon.”

The trick, as I see it, is to become the character, then interpret that character in accordance with the dictates of the overall film. That, I think, is what, say, Hoffman and Cotillard in particular do: They both go beyond what’s on the page, or the makeup kit, and manage to capture the depth of the real character.

Carrey, by contrast, never goes delves below the surface – though that may have been his intent since Kaufman himself was so hard to figure out.

You make a good point, though, and it’s one that I would be interested in hearing other opinions on. Creating a character from scratch is, you would think, a lot harder to pull off than simply filling a template. I do recall, though, that Brando had his share of critics, who had trouble calling what he did acting, it being so brutally real instead of being traditional stage acting.

Anyway, thanks for the letter.

– Dan