On the Inside

My daughter was chatting away as I was doing her make-up for her final performance of a show run. Her tiny ginger eyelashes, not used to the rigour of mascara, were delicate in my hands. 

I’m secretly kind of proud to have a 21st Century 14 year old who doesn’t care for make-up and fashion, she associates it with a ‘have to for stage’ scenario.

But it wasn't her little face or her ‘cool’ attitude to self-image that struck me.

“Mum, do you think I’ll ever be able to play a serious role?”

I was a little taken aback. 

I think I answered in the usual ‘encouraging mum’ kind of way, but it did leave me thinking. 

This funny, gawky, unabashed kiddo has been in two major plays in her lifetime and in both she has been cast in a humorous, over-the-top role. Don’t get me wrong, she loved it - yelling over a crowd and beating a gavel in a periwig as the slightly loony Judge in Wind in the Willows. Or, in this play, Long Joan Silver, donning a bandage and cane as the crazy Blind Pew, madcap leader of an evil band of pirates. She has relished it.

But is it a compliment that she gets roles because she can make us laugh and command the stage with a booming voice? Or is she cast because of her laissez-faire, ‘I’ll do anything’ attitude and the director’s security that she can ‘pull it off’?

Typecasting is an interesting concept. On the one hand it can make you a star. But does it make you an actor? How can you break out of it? And would you want to?

In an interview on the podcast Armchair Expert, screen actor Edward Norton discussed the two varieties of actors. He said there were those “iconic” actors that “we go to again and again for a set of qualities that we need from them…they’re almost like Greek mythology…they represent something.”

I think what he means is that some actors know their wheelhouse and stick to it.

Will Ferrell is going to play stupid - angry stupid, Dad stupid, lover stupid or brother stupid, and he is guaranteed to make us laugh. Jack Black will always be the reluctant hero who does silly things but still manages to win. Kate Hudson will always find the right guy in the end. Jennifer Lawrence will always be the sexy, yet tough no-nonsense woman who defies the odds. Tom Cruise will leap off buildings, Harrison Ford will mouth off and get his way, and Meryl Streep will dominate with cynicism and matriarchal ease. We love them for it.

But when does the wheelhouse become a workhouse?

Obviously, the trappings of these iconic roles have created fabulously famous careers and afford them great prosperity. 

But there must be some feeling of imprisonment? They are incarcerated by public desire and escape could very well be at their own peril.

Do you remain on the inside of a good thing? Or do you evade capture in the first place by changing things up?

The second type of actor, Norton says, are the “shapeshifters”. He places himself in the category of actors who “are a vessel for a thing that channels something else.”

I’ve always known it as being ‘an actor’s actor’ - someone who really researches a role and liberates themselves entirely. Rather than confining themselves to what they know and what they’re good at, they storm the armoury or dig a tunnel, knowing they have more to give beyond corrective categorisation.

We all know those actors. ‘Hey, I know that guy, what was he in?’ Or ‘I’ve seen her before, don’t know her name, but she’s great!’

Their ability to fully adopt a role means they can never be holed up in a performance cell. 

In many ways this can make for more longevity career wise.

But it takes a lot more work.

There is an ease to being typecast. You turn up, do your thing and people love it. 

It’s also safe for directors. They can rest in the assurance that you’ll do the job and audiences may come just on the back of your name.

Personally though, I’ve never much liked walking the line.

Growing into adulthood as the hour glass soprano, I often played the female ‘love interest’ - the girl who pines for better things and winds up happily married…or dead.

I don’t begrudge those opportunities, but I am glad I chose Norton's second option as I grew older.

More than anything, it’s the hard work that I’ve loved. I venerate the elusiveness of a wig, the evasion of an accent, the extrication of a walk, posture, expression.

The barbed wire fence is broken and that pining girl can become a vindictive villain, a nonsensical nun, a boss bitch, an uncouth upstart, or a distressed dangerous woman. 

And so, I completely understand why my daughter would rather be a shapeshifter than an icon.

Much like the make-up she refuses to ‘get used to’ and the atypical feminine culture she rejects in her own world, the solitary confinement of playing the same role again and again just doesn’t sit right.

There’s an emancipation to doing things differently and doing them well.

It’s going to be hard work, my darling. 

But I hope you do tear down those walls.