The Smartest Guy in the Room
I read an interview with Mads Mikkelsen while he was crushing it as Hannibal Lecter in NBC's Hannibal. The interviewer asked how he approached playing doctor Lecter when he was, frequently, the smartest guy in the room. The crux of the question was what does an actor do so that it reads on screen that he outclasses everyone else in the scene in IQ.
His response has stuck with me for quite some time:
"Yeah, it's always tricky. Let's say you're the smartest man in the room. If you're smarter than everybody else, there's a certain amount of drama that just disappears because there is no danger. You will never, ever f**k up. He's always ending on the good side, right? It's a little like, if you read a scene and it says you come in and you are extremely sexy, the thing is, you cannot play sexy yourself. You have to make sure that they find you sexy. It's the same with intelligence. The other actors have to play me intelligent. It has to affect them. If not, we can say he's intelligent many times, but we will never get it."
I love this answer. He's basically saying that an actor (or anyone, for that matter) cannot "play" the smartest person in the room. They must have that label projected upon them.
Control what you can control and let others label you as they will.
His response has stuck with me for quite some time:
"Yeah, it's always tricky. Let's say you're the smartest man in the room. If you're smarter than everybody else, there's a certain amount of drama that just disappears because there is no danger. You will never, ever f**k up. He's always ending on the good side, right? It's a little like, if you read a scene and it says you come in and you are extremely sexy, the thing is, you cannot play sexy yourself. You have to make sure that they find you sexy. It's the same with intelligence. The other actors have to play me intelligent. It has to affect them. If not, we can say he's intelligent many times, but we will never get it."
I love this answer. He's basically saying that an actor (or anyone, for that matter) cannot "play" the smartest person in the room. They must have that label projected upon them.
Control what you can control and let others label you as they will.