I never said all actors are cattle,
what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.
Alfred Hitchcock
Here’s the thing about getting notes: it’s the moment where every actor or crews carefully constructed self-mythology gets shredded like wet newspaper. I’m standing there, I’ve just done what I thought was brilliant work, I felt it, really felt it, channeling Brando or whatever dead genius I happened to have communed with on TMC last weekend, and then some director with Altoids and coffee breath leans in and says, “Can you make it less… you know… like that?”
And I have to take it. I have to smile and nod like I’m receiving the goddamn Sermon on the Mount.
The best actors, the ones who aren’t completely huffing their own supply, they know this is the game. They understand that acting is a collaboration, not a séance where you channel your precious instrument through the ether and everyone must bow before your choices. But Christ, the fragile ones, the ones who studied at some overpriced conservatory where they learned to treat every moment like it’s Lear on the heath, they crumble. Or worse, they get defiant. They start explaining their process, as if that matters to anyone but their therapist or their mom.
What you mom hasn’t told you is that notes are how you find out if you’re actually any good or just another narcissist with decent cheekbones. Most people can’t handle that mirror.