Playing to the Camera: Film Actors Discuss Their Craft

Book Overview

Over the last century, film actors from Charlie Chaplin and Lillian Gish to Meryl Streep and Jeff Daniels have spoken about the art and technique of playing to the camera. This fascinating anthology... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300069839
• ISBN13: 9780300069839
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

An absorbing blend of history, biography & acting insights.

Film actors discuss their experiences in a changing industry, from Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo to Henry Fonda and Meryl Streep, in Bert Cardullo, et.al.'s absorbing blend of history, autobiography and acting insights. Playing To The Camera pairs their experiences with over fifty movie stills and observations on the acting world and makes this particularly accessible to aspiring actors interested in how the medium has changed.

Amazing insight, once you get past the Brit-lit doggerel.

Playing to the Camera only wishes it was as academic as its editors would have you believe. Between long-winded, professorial previews of each subject lies fascinating first-person accounts of an ever-evolving medium. You hear from silent greats like Louise Brooks--her interview alone is worth the price of the book--to modern stars like Streep and the rest. What you see is that the more film technology changes, the more it stays the same. The actors, technicians all, bare their trained souls and share their insights into film acting.