Drawn from what is actually said on camera, so you can decide whether to
spend the 2:25 watching it.
No experience is wasted, not even the awful ones
Stewart opens flat out: no experience is wasted, none. Sense memory plays a huge part in what he does, so the worst moments of an ordinary week are still material. His example is a medical appointment for arthritis in his hands.
Stewart needed eight injections into his knuckles, four in each hand. After the third he thought he could not get through it. Then he told himself, Patrick, you are an actor, this is important. He says much of the pain dissipated because it had become work.
He told himself to remember what the pain does to him and the fear when the needle comes back up for another finger. It gets filed in what he calls the sense memory bank. When a role asks him to be fearful or in agony, he drags that one out.
Living in other people's eyes may keep actors rooted
Stewart believes very few actors have breakdowns compared with some other professions, and calls acting a glorious form of therapy. His reasoning is that actors are always putting themselves in someone else's shoes and seeing the world through new eyes. That is his belief, not a statistic he cites.
No experience is wasted, none, you know. You all know what sense memory is and sense memory plays a huge part in what I do. And quite, I have arthritis. And the other day I had to have injections in my knuckles. And if you've never had injections into where bow, there's a lot of bow and it's uncomfortable. And I had to have eight done, four in each hand. And after the third one, all I could think was I'm not gonna get through this. I know now what's coming. And I don't think I can tolerate it. And then the sense memory kicked in and said, Patrick, you're an actor. This is important. Remember what you're feeling. Remember what you're experiencing. Remember what that pain does to you. Remember the fear that you're feeling when you see the needle come back up again to do another finger. And so much of the pain was just dissipated because it was work. I was practicing and then that gets filed away in the sense memory bank. And a moment will come at some point when I have to be fearful or in agony or something. And I will drag that one out. And that's why I think as a profession, on the whole, very few actors have breakdowns actually. Very, very, very, very few. You look at some other professions and it's endemic emotional breakdowns. And I think it's because what we do is a glorious form of therapy in itself. That we are continually having to put ourselves into someone else's shoes, look at the world through someone else's eyes. And I firmly believe that if in this world, particularly in the world of politics, if people could do that more, let's just change places for a moment and see what the situation looks like now. Very, very different. And that's what we do all the time. We are continually seeing the world through new eyes. And I think it helps to keep us relatively rooted. Yeah.
0 comments