Destination is how and why your character moves, what Glenn Close calls how they disturb the air. Why emotion without behavior is half a performance, two ways to find your character’s physical life, and Leeann’s Desdemona waking up like a Disney princess.
Leeann on not being a natural: the singing coach who was good because she had to work at it, the nerves, wanting to be funny, and four habits that came out of doing improv badly for a long time. Get your hands dirty, play tennis, look for love, and do what you’d do.
A Tuesday at 3 PM, a catalogue, a rubber band, a toy fishing pole, and a three-year-old who believed every word. Leeann on the last time you believed a script that way, and how to work on your actor’s faith.
You walk into a commercial audition and your assigned partner is demanding chocolate milk. Leeann on how to make it go well: introduce yourself to the kid and the parent, run the sides together the right way, and build the relationship before anyone says a line.
Commercial copy is famously unnatural, and well-trained actors freeze on it. Leeann’s three questions for every script: who am I talking to, where am I, and what feeling am I imparting? With a Toyota minivan and one very good mother.
Sooner or later you’ll be paired in an audition with someone who’s nervous, new, not listening or trying to be funny. Leeann on agreement, vertical scene moves, and how to give a good audition next to a bad scene partner.
Leeann’s first television casting call: a trophy-wife role, a gray business suit, an entrance in character, and a mime. Why the bad audition became the best teacher she ever had, and five steps for the car ride home.
The technique Matthew and Leeann use as coaches and as parents: for young kids the word audition does not exist, it’s always a booking; money never comes up; and when it bombs, because sometimes it will, you let it go. From the year Jack became a booking monster.
Never dress as the role; suggest it. How Leeann has been styled for mom roles for PetSmart, Safeguard and Target, what to wear and what to leave home, and the makeup that reads as a mom and not a magazine.
Unless you are fully memorized (in actor speak: off book) you cannot be fully in character. If you are not fully in character, you are doing yourself, your audience, the writers and the directors, and your fellow actors a disservice. Harsh, but true. Now, some are blessed with photographic memories or information retention that makes …
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