beekay

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Actors as Liars

I have often wondered whether a trained actor would be able to beat a polygraph test. Is the art about deception or perception? Sure we all put up a front in our lives whether its work or relationships, do actors have a leg up in this respect?

I'd like to think actors as more in-tune with human emotion rather than "liars" per-say. And i wonder if the question you raise could be applied to lawyers too, when they defend someone they know to be guilty in their heart. It's hard to say really, but i think at the end of the day and actor isn't any more susceptible to compulsive lying that anyone else really. Heaps of people - whether they are actors and lawyers or not, have the ability and tendency to lie. At least with actors, there ability to pretend is put to good use in the form of cinema. – NoorGillani 8 years ago
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Actors are people paid to act in front of an audience. I think the topic should ask how actors are able to lie so easily. – BMartin43 8 years ago
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beekay, I would actually suggest expanding this idea and talk about how movies themselves are false. Jean-Luc Godard once said that movies are just, "24 lies per second" (in reference to the frames through the projector), which I would say is correct; nothing that happens in a movie is natural because it is all staged, and even if the director tries to be realistic about it and have the actors improvise, there is still a production going on; there's still lighting equipment and editing involved. With that said, I would also address the fact that most people know that what's happening in a movie is fake, so there really isn't any reason to feel like one has been lied to or cheated. – August Merz 8 years ago
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This is an interesting topic to consider and as a actor I wonder whether I could, in character, pass a polygraph test. As to whether the art is about deception or perception, well both aspects come into play. We may well deceive an audience into believing what they are seeing and we certainly do play with an audience's perception, but equally so an audience knows it's being deceived and has willingly suspended disbelief for the duration of the play, film or performance. Yes, I suppose we are more in tune with human emotion, but only so far as we study those aspects of a character in order to create a believable performance, although it has come in quite useful for me when dealing with pompous authority figures in my daily life, knowing how to tune my 'performance' to manipulate his/her perceptions and get what I need from them. How are we able to lie so easily? The short answer is because that's what we've been trained to do. It's a skill like any other and to become proficient it takes a lot of practice. – Amyus 8 years ago
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Not that I'm a big fan by any stretch of the imagination. I heard on a broadcast documentary for the actor Sean Connery, that he snagged his first movie role by telling a mouthful of lies about his acting experience at a rehearsal. Makes you wonder. – lofreire 7 years ago
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lofreire. LOL good comment. You should hear some of the porkies Michael Gambon tells about his early life. The troubling thing is that he sounds so genuine! – Amyus 7 years ago
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There is a underlying current to this topic that just dawned on me. Write about the best deception in a film or by an actor against the worst deception in a film or by an actor. Would that be too far off the mark or more worthwhile? – lofreire 7 years ago
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(on NoorGillani) Heaven only knows, actors pay the price for it--Heath Ledger. – lofreire 7 years ago
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Perhaps an interesting experiment would be to see how an actor out of character vs. the same actor in character would fare in the polygraph test. – L Squared 7 years ago
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I am curious to this. It would be cool to try it. – ivyskiss 7 years ago
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Doesn't Hypocrite start out as... – Antonius865 7 years ago
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