There is an inalienable law. Whenever a character on screen pities himself, the audience stops pitying him. They will cry so long as the character doesn't.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
With a film, you just don't have time to build sympathy for the character. But I think we're moving away from that in TV. With TV, you have a little more leeway to allow them to rise and fall and rise again and be much more complicated beings.
To play someone when the character masks their own emotions, doesn't understand their own emotions, has no release for their own emotions, and yet is full of emotion - that is a much harder character to play than someone who has somewhere to put it.
But there's the paradox of fiction - why do you cry when a fake character dies? It's the basis of art. You engage with people who don't exist and care about them as you would your friends and relatives.
I don't cry. Well, you know, I think coming from an acting background that's really helped me because I more than anyone know that an actor creates a character.
I do sometimes wonder if people think, 'Oh we'll have her because she cries well.' The odd thing is I don't really know where it comes from. If the script is good, I find I can usually cry without too much trouble - in fact, the hard thing is trying to get me to stop. But I'm not really a crier in real life. I'm not a dramatic person, you see.
If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.
One thing that bugs me in comedy is when somebody does a fake cry, you know, like they fake cry in a comedy. But in a drama they'll really cry. That bugs me.
If you can't laugh at your own characters, or shed a tear for them, or even get angry at one of them, no one else will either.
There's a great tradition of actors taking on parts of much less obvious sympathy.
It is not whether you really cry. It's whether the audience thinks you are crying.
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