Brian Timoney’s World of Acting Show Episode 13: Robert De Niro Acting Lessons [0:00:00] 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. It’s Brian Timoney’s World of Acting – unplugged and unleashed. 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…’ [0:01:20] 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.’ [0:04:00] 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. www.worldofacting.com 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. [0:06:05] 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. [0:07:49] 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.