The actual underlying complaint here is that the British working class actors aren’t actually very good at the actual acting bit. Actually.
Not that it’s put quite that way but it is what is really being said:
His comments support criticism that the British film industry is stuffed with posh, privately educated actors.
Speaking to The Sunday Times Culture section, Kemp said: “A lot of the British films that are successful on that international scale purvey a particular view of the UK, and of England particularly, that tends towards the middle class and upper middle class.
Well, yes. Because what foreigners want to see is English – and it is largely English – toffs slaughtering those of duskier hue in foreign climes. Because that’s their experience of the English over the culturally relevant periods of time. Stereotypes matter, obviously enough. Thus:
In which case, actors who come from that background might be more likely to be employed in those movies and to get the attention those kinds of movies bring.”
Ah, well, no. Because what is it we’re talking about here? Acting, right? Playing dress up? Pretending?
The reason the working class would bes aren’t getting these jobs is because they’re not very good at the pretending bit. The acting.
The only alternative explanation would be that no one does in fact act. They just play themselves upon the screen. Which, given all we get told about the craft and how difficult it is to learn and do etc can’t possibly be true, can it?
Link?
Fish for it and you will see it underlined. Links in this incarnation of ConTel aren’t highlighted (bug).
I’ve known a few actors, and it’s mostly the same as being unemployed for months at a time, with a few weeks of frantic back breaking work here and there, and you have to be lucky to get good money.
Is it possible that more people who come from money enter the profession, as they have more to support them when times are hard?
that’s my thinking, too. The poorer kids that make it probably had an early break. The ones that didn’t got out and got a real job. Acting isn’t a way out of poverty any more than being a rock star or an author. The problem is that people only see the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston and forget all the other poshos who tried out being an actor and never made the big time. We should be grateful for the charitable supply of rich kids who not only mean there are masses of actors to choose from for… Read more »
Hugh Grant can act? Doesn’t he always play the same character (or is that just typecasting)?
So did Michael Caine.
We should all remember that wonderful old Upper Class sneer which an English film critic directed at the now-forgotten movie “Shaft In Africa”:
“Richard Roundtree reminds us that the average Black actor is like the average White actor — average!”