Cate Blanchett put socks in her knickers for Dylan. Meryl Streep studied Thatcher’s mannerisms. Nicole Kidman learned to write like Woolf. Playing a real person means focusing all your energy and skill on an impossible goal: becoming someone else. And what if that someone is already famous or, scarier still, alive? When Eddie Redmayne played Stephen Hawking, perhaps the most recognizable scientist in the world, he acknowledged that becoming a living person brings a “different type of judgment” from audiences used to the real thing.
Sound daunting? Here are five steps to make it less so. If you’re about to play a real person, living or dead, this is how to get started.
1. ContextBefore you put aside a year to study Abraham Lincoln’s letters like Daniel Day-Lewis, it’s important to understand the context of your portrayal. For Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon in “Walk the Line,” playing Johnny Cash and June Carter meant committing to verisimilitude: creating performances that feel authentic, credible and lifelike. But if you’re in a sketch, that level of research probably isn’t appropriate. And what if the director doesn’t want you to walk, talk or look like
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