Brian Timoney’s World of Acting Show
Episode 13: Robert De Niro Acting Lessons
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One man – One mission: To rid the world of low-standard and mediocre acting, once and for all.
Brian Timoney, the world’s leading authority on Method Acting, brings you powerful, impactful, volcanic acting and ‘business of acting’ techniques in his special Acting Podcasts.
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Brian: Hi, it’s Brian Timoney here and I’m joined with Joe Ferrera – welcome, Joe.
Joe: Thank you very much, Brian – lovely to be here.
Brian: So, listen; today is all about – it’s an acting lesson from Robert De Niro. You may have heard of him.
Joe: The master. Yes, I might have heard of him, yes, a couple of times – or “Bobby” as he likes to be called.
Brian: It’s “Bobby” if you’re on first-name terms, it’s Bobby.
Joe: Yes, absolutely.
Brian: And as we know, he’s a brilliant Method actor. And I saw this video actually – I’ll need to include it in the transcript links for this podcast [Robert De Niro Giving Advice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4K2znuYjwI] – but basically he gave this one-minute piece of advice on acting, and basically it was this, in a nutshell: he said, ‘Look; as an actor, you always think that you need to perform.’ He said, ‘I get caught up with this. You think you need to do more, react more.’ He says, ‘You know
www.worldofacting.com what? A lot of the time it’s about doing nothing. It’s about doing very little. People in everyday life are not reacting all over the place with their eyebrows and…’
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Joe: Yes – and this and that, yes.
Brian: ‘…pulling faces. People just take information in and then they respond.’ He said, ‘So it’s about not doing as much as you think; it’s about doing less.’
Joe: Yes!
Brian: And I think this is one of the hardest concepts for actors to understand. And it’s not about doing nothing, either.
Joe: No.
Brian: Because I’ve seen some actors who have taken on board the idea, ‘Oh, well, you know, on film, on screen you just do nothing,’ and while Robert De Niro said, ‘Do nothing,’ he was sort of being tongue-in-cheek to a certain degree because you’ve got to fill that with something. There’s got to be something inside of you. And that comes through the eyes; it comes through you. And if you just did nothing, it’d be fairly blank. Something needs to be alive in. you. And when something’s alive in you, that can get picked up on, on camera. It doesn’t mean that you need to pull faces. And I think that’s what he’s getting at. What do you think about that, Joe?
Joe: Well, I think that first and foremost you should learn from the best. And secondly, it’s like you look at what he’s saying and don’t just look at that in terms of like Robert De Niro’s career, because he’s saying that after a whole, vast career – he’s been in the business nearly 50 years! You know, it’s amazing! And when he’s trying to help us; he’s sending you a message saying, ‘You know, you don’t have to do anything,’ what I feel like he’s saying to me is, ‘Joe, personally’ – which is even giving me goose pimples now – it’s like, ‘Trust yourself. Trust that you know you’ve put the work in, you’ve prepared, and you get a piece of information – and let it happen to you rather than you feel you’ve got to show it, like, Aha! or this, or that, or eyebrows have got to move, or gestures have got to happen.’ He’s really saying allow yourself just the pleasure of doing nothing, and letting your instrument – which you’ve discussed last time as well – do the work for you. And he’s brilliant at that because, you know, let’s not pull any punches – in Taxi Driver he pulls a lot of faces! You know, he does that thing in the mirror and he gesticulates, and it’s been done
www.worldofacting.com over and over a million times – but that’s because he’s in a moment and he’s using his creative intelligence to allow himself to do that. Also, he’s saying to us, ‘Leave yourself alone. Trust yourself. Trust that you’re enough in all the homework that you do.’
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Brian: Well, I think this is an important point: that you’ve got to trust your unconscious.
Joe: Absolutely.
Brian: The great Russian director/teacher Vakhtangov once said that great acting in a way is about trusting the unconscious and revealing yourself through the unconscious. And what we mean by that is that, you know, you and I are sitting here right now, Joe, to chat, and our hearts are pumping, our eyes are looking about, our bodies are regulating our temperature – there’s all kinds of things that are going on inside of us that we are not thinking about but are happening.
Joe: Yes.
Brian: And there’s a theory that goes that the unconscious is 30,000 times more powerful than the conscious mind…
Joe: Wow.
Brian: So the conscious part of it that thinks, ‘Oh, I think this/I think that’ is so minimal compared to the unconscious.
Joe: So minimal, yes.
Brian: So when we do all our homework – you know, and Robert De Niro is not a slouch when it comes to doing character creation, is he? I mean, in Taxi Driver, he basically went and drove a taxi for a month.
Joe: Yes. And that story that you always tell that I kind of like and just sit back and have a laugh at myself, which is when he did Meet the Fockers, and Ben Stiller’s watching him prepare for the scene – you know? Do you want to elaborate? You know the one I’m talking about, yes.
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Brian: Yes. So, basically, a friend of mine was on set and he watched this actually happen. It was on Meet the Fockers – I think it was one of the sequels actually – and he has this scene where Robert De Niro’s character hyperventilates and he collapses, And Ben Stiller has to get up and sort of give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. And Robert De Niro filmed this all day, this scene, and you know that every time he went to film that scene, he got down and did like 50 press-ups to get out of breath and work himself up. Now, this is a guy who’s in his sixties, Joe – I don't know what he is, 64/65, I don't know.
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Joe: Yes – I think he’s almost in his seventies now.
Brian: Seventies now? It shows you how time flies.
Joe: Yes.
Brian: And this guy is one of the best actors in the world, and you could probably say, ‘He doesn’t need to do that.”
Joe: He doesn’t need to do that.
Brian: Well, maybe he doesn’t – but that’s what makes him so good [laughs].
Joe: Yes! That’s what makes him amazing – yes! Maybe he doesn’t need to do that, but maybe, in his processing and understanding in that particular scene – that’s why it’s so important when he says, ‘You don’t have to do anything. You can receive a piece of information and you don’t know how you’re going to react.’ In his understanding, this is that as well; he’s saying, ‘Look; I don't know how I’m going to react, so let me get out of breath in a genuine way and then let’s see what happens from that.’ And that takes a certain amount of artistic bravery, that you can say to yourself, ‘You know what? I’m going to try this – and I’m not doing it just to slow down the production; I’m doing this because on camera something will be seen, and it’s going to be interesting, and it gives Ben something to work off and it gives everybody something to laugh at.’ And he’s willing to put himself on the line that way. And I think that that’s what we’re really talking about: it’s like how brave are you to allow something to happen where you “leave yourself alone” – which is a term that we use a lot in the Studio – leave yourself alone after you’ve done the work, after you’ve done the preparation – right? Because your subconscious can give you a
www.worldofacting.com choice that is beyond your regular way of thinking. And that’s where we’re trying to always achieve, isn’t it? Working from our instinct.
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Brian: It is – from instinct. And actually, when we’re living everyday life, you know, you don’t go to the sandwich shop and go look at what’s on offer and go, ‘Oh, there’s chicken and tuna. Well, I’m not having the tuna because I had a bad experience with it when I was five years old and I don’t like tuna; therefore I’m going to have chicken.’ You just walk in and go, ‘I’m going to have chicken.’
Joe: Yes.
Brian: Now, that seems like a simple example, but that example is really about what is happening when you act. You shouldn’t be thinking about the character’s history and their choices and background when you act.
Joe: No.
Brian: It’s like you’re in the moment at that point. So all that information has to be in your unconscious. And you’re right, Joe – if you feed that unconscious with the right material, it can come up with some amazing stuff.
Joe: Much more compelling and interesting than our conscious mind, which is going to be a limited actor. And that’s the difference between when we hear another actor – and I’ve worked with them – going, ‘I just do very little.’ I’m like, ‘Well, there’s doing very little and there’s doing nothing.’ You just can’t turn up and learn the lines and think that you’re going to get away with it. You know, some actors seem to work that way and they have a career, but the ones that we watch and that I pay my money to go and see don’t ever seem to work that way. And yes, they’ve whittled something down to its bare essence – but that’s because of all the other stuff that they’ve done. And Robert De Niro is a master at that.
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Brian: Well, one of the things as well, Joe, I think is really important about this is sometimes people use this expression, ‘Less is more’, and I think some people get the wrong idea behind that concept because we’re not saying we’re not doing anything; what we’re saying is that we’re doing less in order to do more – as in we’re
www.worldofacting.com getting ourselves out of the way. We are not getting involved in the mental process of when you go into work thinking, ‘Am I going to be good? How am I going to say this line? I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that.’
Joe: Yes.
Brian: We are getting all of that crap out of the way, and what we’re going to do is we are going to nurture the character to the point that when we step into that role and we’re in that scene, we’re just going to let it happen.
Joe: Yes. And that can seem very, very daunting.
Brian: Yes.
Joe: Because the script is what you want to hold onto. That’s what your attachment is: you’ve got a point of view; you read the script; you want to do it this way – oh, everybody does an angry line in an angry way, you know? And actually, when you’re talking about Robert De Niro, it’s that he’s cultivated himself; I think the essence of allowing himself to read a line or to say it in a way that maybe he hadn’t thought about, and therefore that’s why he’s Robert De Niro. You go, “Oh, wow – that’s amazing!”
Brian: Well, it’s all in the choices, isn’t it?
Joe: Yes.
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Brian: It’s coming up with different choices. You need choices. And do you know what? It brings me back to this concept and thought that I’ve always had, which is you can’t give what you don’t have – so that when you’re going into a scene and you’re going to give it over to the unconscious and be in the moment, you can’t, if there’s nothing alive in you, if there’s nothing happening inside of you, then you don’t have anything to give.
Joe: Yes!
Brian: And so you can’t do nothing is what I’m saying. If you do nothing, then you’re giving nothing.
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Joe: Absolutely.
Brian: So, all that background work and all that preparation that De Niro does, for example – like he drove a taxi for a month in New York; when he did Raging Bull he actually became a boxer I believe.
Joe: He trained with Jake LaMotta. Jake LaMotta trained him. He was playing Jake LaMotta and he trained with Jake LaMotta to be him, yes.
Brian: Yes. And this is how actually, in a way, the Method became popular as well but also mystified, because people kind of construed that that’s what Method Acting is all about, which is not true.
Joe: It’s not true at all.
Brian: But the concept of deep character work in order to feed the unconscious is definitely true. And that’s what the message, I think, is in this podcast: that you’ve got to get very detailed, to the point of obsession, on the character.
Joe: Yes – going back to our whiplash, to “actor lash”.
Brian: Actor lash, yes – you’ve got to like give yourself whiplash, yes. And get to the point so that when you go into the moment, it’s all there.
Joe: Yes, really, because what we’re trying to do, guys, if you think about it, if you’re coming in to play somebody – let’s think about it: who would you want to play you? Would you like them to play you sort of like, ‘Well, when were you born? Yes, okay, I’ve got the rough idea,’ and then they go out and play you in a role? Or would you want them to get all the details about you guys? You know, if Meryl Streep was to play you, would you have Meryl Streep play you or somebody else who just kind of turns up and goes, ‘Well, you know, I’ll just do my thing’?
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Brian: And how much would you want them to know about you? The actor playing you – how much would you want them to know you? You’d want them to know everything.
Joe: Everything!
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Brian: Everything. You’d go in detail.
Joe: So if you’re going to play a character that is a gangster or a neurosurgeon or a lawyer, of course it would benefit you to know as much as you can about that so that then you free your subconscious, to allow yourself to be in the moment. Because if your mind is worried about, ‘Oh, what do barristers do?’ or ‘What instrument do I need to do this piece of neurosurgery?’ that will take you out of being in the moment. You won’t be able to actually have and relate the experience, the emotional connection, to the rest of the audience that are watching it, or to the script, and it just alienates you. You will look “actory” – who wants to do that? You know, we’re very often, in the business, saying, ‘The acting industry’s dead. It’s about being a person on film. It’s about relating to people.’ That’s not strictly true, because acting is the whole concept of everything, for me: creativity, artistry, all your influences. But we want to see people being. We want to see human beings being.
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Brian: Yes, because we often say like, ‘Acting’s off the agenda…’
Joe: Yes. We don’t want that.
Brian: We don’t want acting; we want human beings – because you know what? The days, I believe anyway, of the old “lovey-darling actor”, it’s long gone really.
Joe: It’s long gone now, yes.
Brian: And really we’ve moved on and people want to see real…
Joe: Also – sorry, Brian but it’s such a great point – also the audience have been exposed to greater acting because of people pushing the boundaries of art in acting, and therefore when you go into a theatre or when you go and watch some TV now, you’ve been subjected to and exposed to some amazing acting. So when you’re watching the amazing guys, this is how they go about their work. And because you’re interested in that kind of work, because it connects with you, because you’re seeing something that – you know, you might see something in yourself in a character and you identify with them because of that experience that you are having in the moment. And that I think is so – it comes from people like De Niro, who push for greatness…
Brian: Yes.
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Joe: …Who ask to go beyond the everyday.
Brian: That is true actually, and I think that is another trait of great Method actors. Well, I say a great trait of Method actors – it’s actually a trait of the mythology.
Joe: Of the mythology, yes.
Brian: The idea is that we want to know characters as well as we know ourselves, and we owe it to the characters – and the audience. Because I’ve always said, right from the beginning – I met I think a teacher, way, way back when I was initially training, who said, ‘Look; people come and they pay their money – whether they’re coming to the theatre…’ (and these days, if we went to the West End, it’s not exactly cheap, is it, Joe?)
Joe: Oh, yes, it’s really expensive, yes.
Brian: It’s as much as a hundred quid these days.
Joe: Yes – for a single ticket.
Brian: Yes, for a single ticket. Or you might go and see a film, and people are paying to go and watch – so you owe it to your audience as well to do the best possible job. And that isn’t just about giving a one-dimensional whitewash of a character; it’s going into them in detail, living their life as much as you can and putting yourself in their shoes. Because I always say that if you have the opportunity to go and watch what a character does for a living, for example…
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Joe: Yes, that’s am amazing thing!
Brian: It’s a great thing, yes. I always remember, I was listening to Jon Favreau who did the film Chef…
Joe: Chef, yes – we talked about that, yes.
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Brian: …and he said, ‘Do you know what? I went and studied for six months how to be a chef,’ and he said, ‘And by the way, I wasn’t doing any sort of big dishes and being the head honcho – I went in there basically washing pots to begin with. Then I was allowed to make a salad!’ But he said, ‘I got to a certain point when me and the producer, I said, “I’m ready now to do it.”’ And, again, we don’t all have that luxury, but it demonstrates, again, the psychology behind what great actors do, which is, ‘You know what? We’re going to really learn this. We’re going to do it to the best of our ability.’
Joe: And then it shows! It shows!
Brian: It shows!
Joe: It shows on film. It shows in theatre. It shows on the TV as well, you know?
Brian: Yes.
Joe: It shows, even if it’s a TV production – it shows. And you stand out, and you can stand out for yourself, in terms of like look at yourself in the morning and go, ‘I’ve done a great day’s work. I served the script. I served the play. I served the screenplay.’
Brian: Yes. Actually, you remind me of a truism: Robert De Niro said that when he’s working on a character, every day he gets up and starts to think about the character, and he says, ‘When I go and make my coffee first thing in the morning, I know how I would make it, Robert would make it, but I make it the way the character would make it.’ And I thought, That is brilliant. That is the level of detail we’re talking about.
Joe: Yes! Detail, detail, detail!
Brian: It’s like he knows that probably even that coffee-making thing will never get seen, but he says, ‘How would the character do it?’ But there’s something in that; it’s like how does a character do something that tells you something about them?
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Joe: Yes. And then it sort of gives him a license, when he’s in the moment on set, which can be quite pressurised – not necessarily because people are demanding stuff of you in a bad way; just the location might be a problem, the weather might be a problem – you know, everybody’s trying to make something happen. But if you
www.worldofacting.com know how to make a coffee because something in you has trained yourself to say, ‘I made this coffee differently to how Robert De Niro makes it,’ in that moment that will help you. Subconsciously you’re going, ‘Okay, there’s nothing to worry about here. I can find a way of helping everybody on set, by getting this moment or…’
Brian: Well, it’s knowledge, isn’t it, Joe?
Joe: Yes.
Brian: Knowledge is power definitely, as an actor, in understanding your character, because you become more comfortable with them…
Joe: Absolutely!
Brian: …and you feel like you are them – and you are them! You know, ultimately you become them.
Joe: Yes, absolutely.
Brian: So, there we go, Joe – some acting lessons from Robert De Niro.
Joe: Yes. Still…
Brian: We’re still learning from the man.
Joe: Yes – always. Still learning from him. Amazing.
Brian: Great. So, that brings us to the end – and we’ll see you on the next one.
Joe: Yes. Thank you very much. Take care. Bye-bye.
You’ve been listening to Brian Timoney’s World of Acting. For a full transcript of today’s show, go to www.worldofacting.com. We’ll see you next time.
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