# How does a director make an actor suck so bad? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 24, 2009, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-a-director-make-an-actor-suck-so-bad/522460 "2009-12-24T17:33:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2009, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-a-director-make-an-actor-suck-so-bad/522460/21 "2009-12-26T12:52:48Z")
I recently saw Daniel Radcliffe being interviewed and he was asked what makes a good actor’s director. He said someone who will tell you that what you just did is awful. Someone who will say that is a terrible choice you made please don’t do it again. So maybe the opposite attitude is enough to make actors suck. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2009, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-a-director-make-an-actor-suck-so-bad/522460/22 "2009-12-26T13:43:46Z")
I knew what this thread was about before I clicked the link. ---
**Author:** ![Tanbarkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@Tanbarkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tanbarkie)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2009, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-a-director-make-an-actor-suck-so-bad/522460/23 "2009-12-26T14:48:01Z")
> [@don\_t\_ask](#): > > I recently saw Daniel Radcliffe being interviewed and he was asked what makes a good actor’s director. He said someone who will tell you that what you just did is awful. Someone who will say that is a terrible choice you made please don’t do it again. > > So maybe the opposite attitude is enough to make actors suck. Radcliffe strikes me as a smart kid, but I think it’s not quite that simple. Lucas himself is an example of a director who has no qualms about spelling out exactly what he wants and what an actor is doing wrong, but still gets bad performances from his actors. In his case, it isn’t that he doesn’t tell his actors that what they were doing was awful, but rather that his idea of what’s good in the first place is, in fact, awful. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2009, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-a-director-make-an-actor-suck-so-bad/522460/24 "2009-12-26T17:53:08Z")
Defending Hayden C. here again, I’d read that George Lucas did not want his budding Darth Vader to show any personality or endearing traits whatsoever as he was going to end up as an evil soul-less half machine. I think he (GL) was wrong and that’s one of the reasons the newer movies suffer. ---
**Author:** ![2ply](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/b2d939/32.png) [@2ply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2ply)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2009, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-a-director-make-an-actor-suck-so-bad/522460/25 "2009-12-26T20:30:10Z")
> [@sparky\_1](#): > > This thread got me thinking about old movies (such as A Wonderful Life). To me, it seems like a lot of old movie will most likely have a different feel than anything produced today (by old I mean pre 1950?). > > It always seems (again, to me) that a lot of old movies had a very theatrical feel to the acting in them _especially_ scenes involving children. > > Again, in A Wonderful Life, I could imagine a director of today repeatedly telling the actors to go “less emotion! this isn’t the theater!” > > I find this interesting because so many of the actors of those days were considered so great, yet (again, to me) a lot of acting seemed so over the top. That theatrical feel is on purpose. Movies with sound had only been around for a generation or so by the mid 20th century so actors and others involved in producing movies relied on the long tradition of theater to make movies, which involved actors acting very Big in order to be seen by the back rows. It wasn’t until the 1970s that a new generation of directors made up of Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola and even Lucas starting directing movies like they were their own medium and actors learned that they could be more subtle and convey emotion with a facial expression like a simple arch of and eyebrow, something you can’t do on stage. You should view some old silent films to see really melodramatic acting. Since the actors couldn’t even talk they’d often express themselves with lots and lots of flailing arms and body movement. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2009, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-a-director-make-an-actor-suck-so-bad/522460/26 "2009-12-27T06:17:01Z")
> [@slitterst](#): > > I’m sorry? Have you seen his resume? He had at least 25 appearances in the 17 years leading into Star Wars, culminating in _American Graffiti_. > > Ms. Portman (the future ex-Mrs. slitterst) had a five year career leading into Phantom Menace, with only six credits. I think you’re overlooking some stage work in her resume, but yes, it looks like he did more work than I thought. (I’ve seen American Graffiti, but I didn’t know about some of the other stuff.) So nevermind that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-a-director-make-an-actor-suck-so-bad/522460.md?page=1)