A great article by Cervaise. One thing I always notice with fake smoking is that the actor does not inhale. A real smoker takes a deep drag, pauses momentarily, sucks it all in, and then exhales a long jetstream of smoke, often with some of it coming out his nose as he speaks. The faker, on the other hand, sucks a bit of smoke into his mouth and blows it out immediately in a feeble white cloud that floats around his face for lack of velocity.
I’m a non-smoking actor, and I’ve only once had to portray smoking on stage. I think I did alright, and made a point of actually smoking real cigarettes in rehearsal. I never quite got the mannerisms perfect, but I think I faked it well enough.
Several of the theatre groups I’ve worked with have re-worked scenes to avoid smoking altogether. Unless there are key plot points which involve smoking, they often find it simpler to just cut the smoking right out of the show. Finding actors who smoke, getting the appropriate permissions to smoke in public buildings (prohibited in most theatres in and around Toronto), and worst of all, putting up insipid little signs that say “This performance includes cigarette smoking” to warn patrons that someone will commit this offense… it all becomes too much of a hassle.
And you’ve gotta put the signs up. Twice I’ve been at shows where audience members walked out as soon as someone on stage lit up, both times coughing pointedly. No joke. The second time, this woman started coughing long before the smoke could have possibly reached her. It was definitely a ‘statement’ of some kind.
And once, a friend of mine used the herbal alternative. Some people in the front few rows complained to management. The smell had reached them, and they were convinced my buddy was smoking pot on stage!
It should also be noted, of course, that a nonsmoker is less likely to notice fake smoking than is a nonsmoker. Once, in college, I happened to meet an aquaintance smoking a cigarette. I hadn’t ever seen her smoking before, and commented as much to her. She showed me the cigarette, which turned out to be one of the powder-cloud stage props Cervaise mentioned. Apparently an acting group of which she was a member had some leftover from a performance. While I’m sure I would have noticed the lack of smoke smell eventually, it was still enough to fool me from a few feet away for a few seconds.
I’m sure you meant “than a smoker” at the end there…
…which brings me to my story. I had very recently quit smoking the first time I saw The Jagged Edge. They had an interesting way of having Glenn Close smoke in that movie - every time she brought it up to her lips to light a new one or to take a drag of a lit one, they cut away. I’d never seen a more obvious non-smoking performance, probably b/c I was watching that cigarette like a hawk. She’d bring it up to her lips and start squinting immediately, obviously screaming the word “CUT!!” in her head. In other shots she would be holding a lit one in her hand as far away from her body as possible, then slowly raise it up to her face as they changed cameras and someone off screen would blow smoke, then it would switch back to her and it would once again be as far away from her body as possible.
What really made things obvious was when she would share a smoke in a scene with Robert Loggia, who smokes (and talks) like he’s been smoking one cigarette non-stop his whole life.
It’s said that Burgess Meredith had a problem when he played the Penguin on the old Batman TV series – he had to regularly smoke cigarettes through the Penguin’s trademark cigarette holder.
Meredith didn’t smoke, and he didn’t much like the constant presence of smoke. To deal with it, he developed the Penguin’s trademark “hwahnh, hwahnh, hwahnh,” sort of quacking laugh… not only because it fit the character, but because that way he could satisfy the urge to cough without blowing the scene…
There are also psychological tricks. If you come in with a lit cigarette stub, and immediately light a new cigarette from the tip, most of the audience will swear you were smoking through the entire scene, even if you immediately put both into an ashtray and leave them there.
One smoking scene that has always struck me is Tatum O’Neal’s in Paper Moon. In one long take, she takes a pack, pulls a cigarette out, lights it, takes a drag, holds its, and then blows it out her nose, having obviously inhaled it. Did they really make a ten year old smoke? There were no tricks, and she almost certainly inhaled.
Thanks for the comments, y’all. My first report, and hopefully not my last.
Recommendation for actors who don’t feel comfortable pretending to be a smoker: Light the cigarette, and then forget about it. Tuck it into your chosen grip, and then leave it alone completely. Gesture with your hand as normal, but don’t try to smoke. Just let the cigarette sit there and curl its wisp of smoke, and tap it out occasionally, but don’t drag. It’s a similar psychological trick to what John W. Kennedy mentioned (which is an excellent suggestion): As long as the audience doesn’t see you smoking badly, they won’t think about the fact that you’re not smoking, and after the fact they’ll assume that you were. Of course, you still have to deal with lighting it, which can be a big behavioral giveaway. Plus you have to make actorly choices about how to hold the smoke; there’s a range of distinctive styles across the U.S. to Europe and Asia and beyond. But overall, the less opportunity you give the audience to see you’re not a natural at something, the less likely they are to notice, a truism that applies to much more about acting than smoking correctly. (Would that Kevin Costner could have figured out how to play Robin Hood without talking.)
There’s a specific herbal blend whose smoke smells exactly like that from pot. (Or, rather, I’ve heard that it does. Mmm hmmm, yes.) I would have mentioned it in the article, but I couldn’t remember the variety off the top of my head (we used them in a production at my college almost fifteen years ago), and it wasn’t really germane anyway so I didn’t bother researching it. But it certainly exists, and it’s possible that by sheer luck your actor friend wound up with the right blend to produce the distinctive aroma.
If we’re talking about fake smoking we’ve seen, what a coincidence: I’m watching the 2002 production of The Importance of Being Earnest right now. When Gwendolyn and Cecily meet, Gwendolyn (Frances O’Connor) lights a cigarette in Cecily’s (Reese Witherspoon) mouth. Not only does the cigarette look half-smoked already and currently lit, the match never gets closer than about a centimeter to the tip. Even so, a huge plume of smoke billows out of the sides of Cecily’s mouth almost immediately, without her even drawing.
Also, my friends and I in college knew that the Cigarette Smoking Man wasn’t smoking “real” cigarettes, but for some reason we had the idea it was largely the taste that he found objectionable. As such, we took it as gospel that he was smoking some variety of clove cigarettes, which made us that much cooler in comparison.
Cigarette smoke (especially in black-and-white) is such a wonderful visual effect…the curling, billowing smoke shapes can be carefully controlled for an artistic look. Alas that it’s so murderous.
It can also now be faked digitally (not for live performances, obviously) with very convincing effect; a public information advert about passive smoking in the UK uses footage of children smiling, laughing, talking, while unnoticingly and very convincingly appearing to exhale smoke (with the implication that they previously unnoticingly inhaled it).
My daughter had a similar problem with food. She was a vegetarian at the time, and the scene required her to eat some lobster. She took a bite, they cut, and she spit it out right after.
Cervaise, do you know of how this is handled for other vegetarian actors? It must come up from time to time.
Regarding vegetarian actors, I recall an interview many years ago with Daryll Hannah in which she mentioned being vegetarian and having to eat lobster for a scenr in Splash!.
Food, of course, may be substituted for purely practical reasons. Fried bananas, for example, instead of kippers (bones and brine), or formed and painted cotton candy can be substituted for almost anything that has to be eaten in a hurry.
I my research for my list of Hollywood’s 50 most important films, I learned that the shoe Charlie Chaplin ate in Gold Rush was made of licorice. Eating the shoe spanned 3 days of filming and more than 60 takes. Before he could continue filming, he had to be hospitalized for insulin shock.