Animated actors

Mattias Hallin Mattias.Hallin at jurenh.lu.se
Wed Dec 22 09:48:53 CET 1993


Don (and Tryg and Harry and Per, who has also discussed this):

                                                              You're quite
right, Don, when you say that using $crooge as a "mere" actor is shallow indeed
as compared to how Barks has and you are using him in comics - as a fullblown
character; as an interesting human being. BUT I also think that this argument
misses a point: an actor is not supposed to be particularly interesting in his
own right, as himself, WHILE ACTING. Because then he is, in a certain sense,
someone else - another character! And THAT character can be more or less
interesting, he/she can be deep or shallow, but whatever he is or isn't it has
relatively little to do with the REAL character of the ACTOR. That is to say:
the actor gives FORM to his part, and by his acting abilities gives SUBSTANCE
to a character that didn't exist before, but this substance mustn't be confused
with whatever substance he/she might have in real life. To me, it makes no
difference whether $crooge McDuck or Michael Caine acts the part of Ebenezer
Scrooge - except that one INTERPRETATION OF THE PART OF EBENEZER might be
better than the other or it might not. What I'm interested in is NOT
primarily what Michael Caine is like in private life, but how the character of
Ebenezer Scrooge is portrayed by him.

Of course this must seem pretty obvious to you - a thousand apologies if I seem
to be lecturing.

All my best!!!

Mattias



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