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Intimacy, Empathy, and Intuition

You are what you are: The First Ingredient of Intimacy

Good actors come in all configurations—tall, short, fat, skinny, handsome, beautiful, homely, awkward, old, disfigured, handicapped, and funny looking. They know what they are, and they have accepted themselves. They have no need to keep secrets, and as a result they can share emotions and intimacy with other actors. To become a good actor, accept yourself. If you’re fat, you’re fat; if your nose is crooked, it’s crooked; if your voice is squeaky, it’s squeaky; if you’re afraid, you’re afraid. You are what you are. Accept what is and get on with turning yourself into a great actor.

In Terms of Endearment, Shirley MacLaine invites Jack Nicholson to her bedroom. They face each other on opposite sides of the bed. Shirley opens her negligée. Jack, cockily and without apology, unzips his sweatshirt and out pops his big belly. Jack lets Shirley know, like it or not, that this is who he is. Instead of sucking in his gut and hiding what could reduce his masculine image in front of this beautiful woman, he is being intimate by revealing a truth about himself. As a result, their relationship becomes more intimate.

Early in her career, Shelly Winters was typecast by the movie studios as a sex kitten. She finally escaped that trap, and today, she is a great actor who is overweight and not afraid to be what she is. In one movie scene, she dances gleefully on the bed with her skirt hiked up, showing her dimpled, pudgy legs. Both she and Nicholson unconditionally accept themselves, and like all great actors, they are not afraid of intimacy.

Intimacy: The Quality of Good Actors

Intimacy means sharing with someone your most private and personal feelings, and not hiding your inner character. People are usually truly intimate only with loved ones; but even then, almost all of our culture’s marital disruptions can be traced to problems of intimacy. People hide personal thoughts and feelings for fear of being rejected or ridiculed, of losing status, of being humiliated, or of being demoted or fired. Actors, in their work, can’t afford the luxury of keeping emotional secrets, because it is those secrets that are the core of great performances.

Being intimate also means being vulnerable and sharing your personal feelings. In true intimacy, regardless of the consequences, give and receive emotions without judgment and without interference from your ego. Be concerned only with your partner’s needs, not your own; let your deepest feelings come to the surface, and you cannot fail to give a good performance.

Memory and Fear: The Enemies of Intimacy

Fear and emotional pain inhibit you. The loss of a job, the death of a loved one, betrayal of a friend or lover, and a bad performance are some of the traumas in life. Your memory of the emotional pain from any one of these can, if you let it, makes you unwilling to be vulnerable again. How many times have you heard someone say after a love affair has come apart, “I’ll never trust a man again as long as I live”? Intimacy then becomes a dreaded place that prevents you from communicating your true feelings to someone else. But your fear is only a perception, not a reality. The enemy is the fear that comes from the history of your past. In your personal life, hide all the emotional secrets you want to; but in your acting life, never be afraid to reveal your secret self. Be vulnerable. In this scene, Ann, the person, lets a personal trauma affect Ann, the character.

JEREMIAH: (interrupting) Ann, why aren’t you responding to Tom’s touching your hand?

JEREMIAH: That response comes from the pain of your past instead of from what Tom’s giving you. When you do that, we don’t believe you. How can you be creative when you apply a real-life judgment to the character you’re playing? React to Tom, not to some logical generalization about men. Now do it again, and use it as a chance to experience your genuine feelings without the actual inhibitions you have in real life.

JEREMIAH: (to the class) See that? She responded to Tom’s advances within the circumstances of the scene, not from some judgment she made in her personal life. See what also happened? A new subtext came through. She says she wants to hear about his meeting, but the subtext tells us she also wants to hear about him. Ann, that was a great moment.

Intimacy lets you express your emotion to the other person, and at the same time lets you be susceptible to the emotions of the other person. In film acting, you can’t get along without intimacy. Intimacy is shared feelings, but it does not necessarily mean a loving or sentimental situation—the relationship between a prisoner and his torturer can be intimate.

Intimacy builds on itself. It allows your feelings to escalate to a conclusion, or be driven in another direction, as in the following scene from A Bronx Tale. Robert De Niro plays a father who tries to instill honest values in his eight-year-old son (played by Francis Capra), who idolizes Sonny, a gangster played by Chazz Palminteri.

This scene contains both intimacy and empathy. The father gets angry. The son gets angry and yells at his father. This is intimacy and shared feelings. The father hits his son; later, when the son calms down, the father kisses him, showing his love for the boy. Again, intimacy and shared feelings. Then the father picks him up and is overwhelmed with sorrow for hitting his crying son. He shows his empathy by seeing the son’s pain. The father says he’s sorry and carries him home. This scene would be nothing without the empathy and intimacy.

Empathy

Empathy is seeing, recognizing, and sharing the emotion that another person is feeling—sadness, happiness, love, anger, fear. Empathy evokes the same feeling in you, and inspires your response. We are familiar with empathy in everyday life: parents share the happiness and misery of their children; we relate emotionally to a friend; we feel the pain of someone who is sick; we feel happiness at someone’s success. Without empathy, relating emotionally to others becomes virtually impossible.

Great Actors and Empathy

Great film actors subconsciously have empathetic responses. They are capable of instantaneously feeling sadness, happiness, anger, fear, and love without the paralyzing logic of thought. They have conditioned themselves to accept the other actor and the imaginary circumstances (i.e., practicing the Art of Acceptance) and, as a result, are capable of experiencing strong emotions.

Empathy—feeling the other person’s emotion—is the source of a good actor’s experience. In my acting classes, I sometimes ask a beginning actor to sit facing an advanced actor and imitate exactly her partner’s actions and emotions. I ask her to copy exactly in minute detail what the other person is doing—facial expressions, eye movements, words and speech patterns, body movements, even emotion. This exercise requires total and intense attention on the other actor. I use it to introduce students to concentrating on someone other than themselves. I want them to recognize and experience the other actor’s feelings, because, as Alan Alda tells us, when you can recognize emotions and respond to them intuitively, you become creative. Rivet your attention on the other actor, empathize, and respond.

Intimacy and Empathy

Intimacy and empathy complement each other. Empathy means being emotionally involved in the other person’s feelings. Intimacy is receiving those feelings and freely responding with an appropriate emotion, but not necessarily the same emotion. Say the other actor is sad. Your empathetic response will be to immediately experience his sadness. You might become sad, but not necessarily. Depending on the situation and the relationship, your stimulated response could be anger, happiness, love, or fear. To start the acting feedback loop, you first have to experience the other actor’s emotion through empathy, and eventually the situation and circumstances will result in intimacy. Without conscious thought, you will experience emotions that are responses to, but different from, those of the other actor. This is what makes a scene and its characters interesting to an audience.

In the next scene, which is about dealing with anger, each actor responds with empathy to the other but without the same emotion. When you see that another actor is angry, you have to empathize with that anger. You do not necessarily have to become angry yourself, but you do have to be at the same emotional level.

Intimacy is receiving feelings and freely responding with an appropriate emotion, but not necessarily the same emotion. John is angry, Sara is frightened. John sees Sara trembling and responds with empathy by holding Sara’s hand. Sara sees John’s love and starts to cry. John laughs and forgives her. Sara hugs and kisses him. The feelings are appropriate, but the two are not experiencing the same emotions. The energy level is equal.

Scenes “Not Worthy” of an Actor

Occasionally when I make new assignments in class, an actor will refuse to do an assigned scene. “How can you expect me to do a scene like this? It’s a nothing. It’s a waste of my time!” But empathetic and intimate actors, in spite of inane words and improbable situations, can make a scene fascinating by their emotions and by the subtext they create. The scene below is one of those scenes that mediocre actors are contemptuous of as not having any “meat” in it. The writer knew what he was doing, because it becomes fascinating when it is played by good actors who relate and become intimate. The comments in parentheses are not script directions but what the actors actually did.

The words say one thing, but what is going on emotionally between the two (the subtext) says something entirely different. This scene is not about odors or chiropractic maneuvers; it is about the feelings of this man and this woman. Their emotional exchange, not how they say the words, takes what appears to be boring, meaningless dialogue and makes it fascinating.

JEREMIAH: That was brilliant. (to the class) This scene works, but it has nothing to do with the words, which are pretty stupid. It works because of what’s going on between these two people. This is an example of empathy and intimacy. The sadness allows us to see that they still love each other. This is empathy. The laugher lets us see that she loves him, misses him, and forgives him. The hug tells us both have regrets and are sorry. That’s acting, that’s acting on an intuitive level. Judy, did you have any idea this would happen?

JEREMIAH: Thank you. That was exciting.

This all happens in three silly lines, but the class loved it. We identified with and understood her feelings for him. A performance this good and this

interesting cannot be made by logical “choices.” A good prescription for disaster in preparing for a scene like this is to plan how to say each line so that it has meaning; to rationally mark the beats; to logically decide what “choices” you are going to make; and so on. This guarantees that the crew will either fall sleep or bust out laughing. A scene like this works when you relate to the other actor and are open to impulses from your intuition.

Physical Actions

In my class exercises, I ask my students to do certain physical actions that stimulate intimacy and empathy. But be careful. In an actual movie shoot, you should only do these things if they are true impulses, or if the director asks you to.

All of these actions help reduce tension and stimulate empathy and intimacy. It’s okay to touch, kiss, and hug in a rehearsal or on the set as long as your partner is responsive to your impulses. Yelling just before the actual take is an effective way to bring your feelings to the surface, particularly tears; but you might come off as looking pretty silly if you start yelling just before the director calls “action.” Don’t do anything radical without discussing it with the director. Some actors, during a shoot, manage to find an isolated spot for shouting. But the best way to forget logic and get into an empathetic state is by concentrating not on yourself but on the other actor.

When you are in an empathetic state, you can never really be sure how other people are seeing you. But don’t let that bother you. Just respond to what you get from the other actor and let your behavior fall where it may, because that, says Alan Alda, is when acting becomes creative.

Intuition: Your Sixth Sense

Intuition is all your knowledge, dexterity, and skill stored in your unconscious. It is your quick and ready insight, aware of everything you know. If you don’t muck it up with logic, it will tell you the right thing to do and say. Intuition has access to everything you have ever learned and experienced. Through impulses, it tells you what to do in any situation. It uses your subconscious experience and knowledge to give you the correct acting choices you never knew you had. The trick is to be open to impulses, and act on them. Through listening to their impulses, artists get their inspiration, scientists make breakthroughs, musicians hear unheard melodies, mystics acquire vision, and actors give brilliant performances.

The development of the logical left brain has created a loss for all of us. The change from a hunter-gatherer culture way of life to a civilized one has submerged our ability to fully use intuition under a flood of logic and reason. For prehistoric peoples, intuition was necessary just to stay alive. But since we have turned into high-tech-super-computer-hot-shots, our daily survival rarely depends on listening to our intuition. Generally, our modern logic-driven society distrusts intuition. Fortunately, we haven’t completely lost our ability to use it. It has become dormant, and we only need to wake it up.

To revive your intuitive awareness, be alive to the moment. Be open and aware of your five senses—seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. Be open and let your intuition block the logical part of your brain. Years ago I was working on a ranch in Australia with an Aborigine station hand. I was a “jackaroo” (cowboy) herding cattle. We were never out of sight of each other, but every couple of days he would say, “Yank, go ’round that hill and bring back the two yearlings and the calf stuck in the gully.” Or he would send me across the river, or over two hills, or up some canyon. And the cattle were always where he said they would be. All the time I rode with him he always knew where strayed cattle were. I asked him once how he knew. He said he didn’t know, he just knew. I don’t think he had ever heard the word intuition, but that’s what it was. Stored in his subconscious was this vast knowledge of both cattle behavior and the country, and when a problem came up, he didn’t have to think about it—his intuition instantly gave him the answer. Your intuition can do the same for you by giving you the right choices.

Intuition Applied to Acting

Ava, a new student, has never acted before. This is her second class.

JEREMIAH: Your tears were perfect. That blows me away. This is your second class. WOW! … Ava … Trust your talent. Accept it. It is always correct. (to the class) That’s her intuition, that special place inside of her that knows, even though the actress doesn’t logically know. During the scene she thinks, why is this happening? (to Ava) Ava, that thought, “why was I crying?” is your inexperience and your logic trying to make sense out of a creative situation. (to class) Ava’s intuition overrode the thought process and allowed her impulses to let her experience the other actor.

The dialogue in the above scene is difficult to make believable. Ava’s emotional insight made it look easy. Subconsciously, even though she is a model who doesn’t believe she is beautiful, she is touched deeply when he calls her an angel. She responds, out of love and appreciation, with sadness. Before she did the scene, Ava read it only once. She logically did not understand how this material would affect her, but her intuition knew what the material meant. She was open to her intuition, which overpowered her logic, and she cried.

Everyone has intuition and has listened to it at one time or another. A simple glance from a loved one tells you, without your having to think, that something is wrong. This instant awareness comes to you as a gut feeling—intuition again. When you act on your impulses, you are listening to your intuition. Women, because they are more emotionally open and less wedded to logic, are far more intuitive than men, which may explain why there are more great women actors than great men actors.

The Creative Inner Child

In the book I’m Okay, You’re Okay, Eric Berne says that in each of us there is a parent, an adult, and a child. The parent part is the voice of authority—parent, teacher, boss—who lives by rules. “Don’t!” “Shouldn’t!” “Wouldn’t!” “Can’t!” “Should!” “Must!” This is the judgmental part of the personality. The adult is the logical part of the inner self that exercises good judgment and maintains harmony between the child and the parent. The child is the emotional part of you that often behaves like a three-year-old and acts irrationally without thinking about consequences. This child part is going to make you a great actor. To be creative, your child needs freedom from the limitations placed on it by your logical inner parent.

Your intuition, or your “gut feeling,” is sometimes called “the little professor” because it remembers every experience you have had and everything you have ever read. Learn to trust the “little professor” because he will give you the right answers. Everyone has experienced doing something or making a decision that turned out badly, and then later saying, “I knew I shouldn’t have done it. I should have listened to my gut.” That gut feeling is your intuition, the little professor, talking to you; and in acting, it is a hell of a lot smarter than your logical brain. Listen to it!

There is a scene in Roman Holiday in which Audrey Hepburn is lying to Gregory Peck about not being a countess, and he is lying to her about not being a reporter. They are standing by a statue of a creature with a large mouth. Local legend says that if you are telling a lie and put your hand in the statue’s mouth, it will take your hand off. Peck slowly sticks his hand in the mouth and then, as if it is being pulled, shoves the rest of his arm farther into the mouth. Hepburn intuitively screams, grabs his arm, and tries to pull it out. She becomes hysterical. Peck pulls out his arm with a missing hand, which, of course, is covered by his sleeve. Hepburn responds with fear and shock. Peck pops his hand out and they both laugh. Hepburn’s childlike instincts responded appropriately for the situation and made it a delightful and believable scene. She did not know ahead of time that Peck was going to put his hand in the statue’s mouth. It was planned by director Billy Wilder and Peck without Hepburn knowing anything about it.

How to Stimulate Your Inner Child

Your creative child needs approval. How do you give your inner child the approval it wants? By acting as quickly as you can on everything that comes into your head, the kinds of desires and thoughts you may have stifled for years. Acting on them is the approval that your creative child seeks. When you do act, your inner child then knows you’re ready to play. Listen to your inner child’s voice. Listen to the messages sent by every thought, desire, or whim relative to your partner. “His collar is crooked”—so straighten it. “He is frightened”—so hold his hand “She is yelling at me”—so deal with her anger. “He’s talking nonsense”—so laugh at him. These messages may be almost indistinguishable at first, but the more attentive you are, the louder they get. These thoughts and desires will eventually tap into your intuition and turn into impulses. When your inner child knows you are paying attention, the impulses will flow. It is like a rambunctious three-year-old waking up after a nap. Be prepared. Remember, your inner child has probably been ignored for years and will act out by doing things you have been too embarrassed or inhibited to do. Now you must approve them by acting on them. Enjoy this, because not only is it fun, it is one of the sources of great acting.

In Five Easy Pieces, Jack Nicholson feels that his girlfriend, played by Karen Black, is an embarrassment, and he doesn’t want to take her home to meet his dying father. In this scene, Nicholson finds Black lying in bed, depressed and crying.

Jack gets in his car. He is embarrassed to take a woman like Karen, whom he sees as a bimbo, home to meet his folks. In the car, he has the impulse and takes out his anger and frustration on the steering wheel, the ceiling of the car, the window, punching everything that is within reach. Nicholson lets himself go all the way, and we believe him. He trusts his creative impulses and goes absolutely berserk! This is the childlike total abandonment we strive for as actors. The director may or may not have told him he wanted some kind of frustration, but either way, a response like Nicholson’s is intuitive, not logical. If it were to come from a logical decision, it would most likely look fake, and we would not believe him. Wild actions look believable only when they come from real feelings.

Who Says You Can’t Act Like a Child

… and get away with it? Jim Carrey, a bright, talented comic actor, is a present-day Jerry Lewis. Others, like Robin Williams, Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Pauly Shore, all have great appeal because they let themselves act like emotionally uncontrolled children. Watch these actors closely, because everything they do, including their serious moments, comes from impulse, not planning. Their actions are comic. But you don’t necessarily have to be a flamboyant comic to let your inner child work. All impulses—normal, tragic, or comic—are instructions from your intuition and the mainstay of a good actor.

Serious Actors Act on Childish Impulses

In the following scene from Terms of Endearment, Debra Winger has just been told by her doctor that she is dying. She realizes that her children will grow up without a mother. Shirley MacLaine plays Debra’s mother.

This last shift in the action changes the pace and attitude of the scene and gives us a moment of comedic relief. In this scene Shirley MacLaine acts like a spoiled child throwing a temper tantrum. She is a serious actress who has the ability to use childlike impulses to heighten her character’s intensity and to provide comic relief.

Rekindle your relationship with your creative child by cajoling it into participation. To encourage your child’s cooperation, stop judging. You stifle your inner child whenever you think, “I can’t do that,” “It’s improper,” “What will the other actors think of me,” or “That’s too embarrassing,” or “That’s stupid.” The child has to feel important; your adult-parent must no longer discourage it. When was the last time you played with dolls or got on a broom and rode it around a room pretending it was a horse? (I once saw Robin Williams do this on a talk show on national television.) When was the last time you finger-painted? When was the last time you ran under a hose? There is a TV commercial where a businessman sees children sliding on a plastic sheet sprayed with water. He follows his impulse and dives to slide on the wet plastic in his suit and tie. It’s something we would all like to do, but logic opens its big mouth and says, “Don’t do that! You know better. You’ll look ridiculous, and besides, you’ll get your suit wet and people will think you’re unstable.”

Play like a child and become excited by life and its childish aspects. Watch children. Adults have turned learning into work, but children learn by playing. Good actors spend a lot of their time observing people in all sorts of activities from all walks of life, including children. Watch how their impulses guide them in reaction to what is happening at the moment.

Words That Prevent Good Acting

Stop using the words “should,” “shouldn’t,” and “can’t” because they inhibit you. They are words that come from fear. Use positive action words that encourage—I can, I will, I am going to succeed. Remember, the glass is not half-empty, it’s half-full. Be positive. Change your perception. Enjoy your mistakes. Enjoy your successes. This will help you learn to love and respect your inner child.

Why can you cry in a movie theater but not in acting class? In the safety of the dark theater, your emotions flow freely; but when you start to act in front of other people, your adult-parent enters the picture with its impeccable logic. Your child withdraws to its hiding place and relinquishes control to the left brain (adult-parent). Your creative child, if you’ve got the sense to let it, listens to your intuition and ignores your adult-parent.

Act on an impulse immediately. We are so used to squashing impulses that we generally believe the word “impulse” to mean something bad or unwanted; so we tend to ignore not only the impulse but its existence. A hard thing for beginners to grasp is what an impulse is. Bill, an actor who is a handsome mature man in his seventies, has just finished a scene and turns to me:

JEREMIAH: You looked as if something were bothering you on your last line. What was it?

JEREMIAH: Why didn’t you?

JEREMIAH: Bill, remember there is no “right” way to do a scene. You can’t judge your impulses if you expect to become impulsive. It is the child part of you that wants to scratch your ear. If you act on that impulse the next time it happens your response will become more spontaneous. This is what I meant by “getting in touch with your child.” It simply means acting on desires you might consider stupid. (to the class) Can anyone give me an example of impulses? (no one answers) Can’t think of any. Okay, how about a kiss, a hug, a laugh, a wink—are they impulses?

JEREMIAH: Yes, if it’s related to your partner. Any physical desire that you have that’s related to your partner can be an impulse. Act on it immediately and without judgment. Thoughts and impulses are connected and interrelated. If you sit on an impulse it becomes a thought. If you immediately act on a thought, without time to judge, it becomes an impulse. The difference is only the length of time that separates them. The trick is to become so aware of the other actor that you respond in the shortest possible time. If I see my partner wants to kiss me and I decide to wait for a more comfortable moment, it’s a thought. If I act immediately and kiss her, it’s an impulse.

Don’t make any judgments, and don’t do any prolonged thinking—which is any thinking that takes more than a microsecond. Your impulses may not always be right at first, because you may be still holding on to a tiny bit of inhibition or a minute sense of what is “proper.” But impulses will keep coming if you respond to them. Eventually, without thinking about it, you will intuitively make decisions that are correct for the circumstance you are in. Intuition is your natural gift. Sometimes it will tell you to do some pretty crazy things, but pay attention; do what it tells you, as long as that is not destructive or hurtful to your fellow actor. Don’t be afraid to take chances or make mistakes. When your intuition is confident that your judgment has ceased to function, it will respond freely, and your performance will be creative.

Act, Don’t Think

When you respond to the other actor and are in the moment, you cannot separate thought, experience, and intuition. Use everything; do not stop the flow regardless of where it comes from. By the time you think, “Oh, that came from my partner,” “That came from the script,” or “That came from a past experience when I was three years old,” the moment has been lost. When you say, “My character wouldn’t do that,” your logical mind locks out all spontaneity and impulse. Everything we think or feel happens for a reason. Do not judge. Just act.

You can develop a split-second sensibility that allows you to decide immediately whether or not to follow an impulse. It doesn’t make any difference what triggers an impulse—the other actor, a thought, a feeling, an action, or an accident. Quiet the incessant internal rap in your brain and let your impulses move you.

Summary

1. Intimacy is sharing your personal feelings and personal thoughts with another actor without judgment.
2. Empathy is the ability to experience another person’s feelings.
3. Reawaken your creative inner child and learn to trust it.
4. Trust and act on all your impulses. Don’t judge.

Actor Practice

Trust your impulses.

1. Sit facing your acting partner. Don’t plan. Don’t force. Allow yourself to do nothing. Just wait for an impulse. The impulse might be to smile or a desire to touch a your partner’s hand or scratch your nose. The purpose of this exercise is to respond immediately to every legitimate urge. The faster your response, the shorter your judgment time and the more impulsive your actions.

   Remember that a legitimate thought or action does not harm another person, but a slap or touching another in a private area does.

2. When you are with your boyfriend or girlfriend, ask him or her to do the above exercise with you. See what happens. This is a great way to develop a deeper level of trust and intimacy.
3. Light a candle, sit in a comfortable position, and watch the flame. Try to block out all thought. This is an impossibility; thoughts constantly come into your mind. If you are aware of your thoughts it will be easier for you to act on them and turn them into impulses.
4. Listen to your inner voice, “the little professor.” Next time you have a bad feeling about anything, stop and respond appropriately to the impulse. Your gut instinct can be your best friend.
5. In class, don’t be afraid to make an idiot of yourself. Remember Jim Carrey as Fire Marshall Bill. He was hilarious, but if he had ever considered how stupid he looked or acted he never would have created that character. But he pushed himself as far as he could, unconcerned about how anybody would judge him. Nor did he judge himself. He just did it. Do it. Most of all, enjoy it.