Why truth is stranger than fiction for actors

Mary Luckhurst is the co-author of a new book about acting, Playing for Real. Here she writes about the surprising discoveries she made in writing the book.

It isn't every day you get to talk to celebrities like Ian McKellen, Jeremy Irons, Simon Callow, Eileen Atkins, Henry Goodman and David Morrissey about the way they work.

Three years ago, I started Playing for Real, a book of interviews with actors, prompted by the current boom in real-life parts of both living and historically significant figures. When I drew up a preliminary list of actors' names, it became clear to me that our obsession with celebrity and reality TV has generated a lucrative box office industry for portraying real people in theatre, film and television.

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Some would say that the ability to play a real person has become the quintessential acting challenge of the last decade.

Certainly, recent Oscars, Bafta and Olivier awards reflect the demand for depictions of real people, and established actors have noted that there is a definite proliferation of real-life parts on offer.

The current doyen of playing real people is Michael Sheen, who has given us David Frost, a memorably weasely Tony Blair, and a steely but vulnerable Brian Clough in The Damned United.

Equally admirable are Helen Mirren in The Queen, Judi Dench as Queen Victoria, Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash, and Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf, and Elena Roger as Edith Piaf. The list is endless.

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But as someone who trains actors and directors, and as the co-founder of the Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of York, I wanted to know about the specific challenges of playing a real person, as opposed to a fictional character.

How do you capture Hitler, Mugabe, or a serial killer? Is it possible to embody genius or charisma? How important is physical resemblance?

What skills do actors deploy when trying to inhabit a noted person? What are the risks to an actor's career if a portrayal is unconvincing?

All the actors I interviewed said that they experience a much stronger sense of responsibility when playing a real person. The greater a person's fame, the more information there is in the public realm to measure against an actor's performance, particularly if the celebrity is still alive or has only recently died.

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Oliver Ford Davies told me: "The parameters of playing a real person are different from fictional parameters. King Lear can be a tough old bull who should never have abdicated, or a frail man in the early stages of dementia.

"The text will support both readings. But with Napoleon you can't take such extreme positions – the actors and audience know too much about him. With a modern part, the choices are even more limited."

Sian Phillips was more blunt about the anxiety of facing the family and relatives of the person you have played – in her case Marlene Dietrich, Emmeline Pankhurst, Clementine Churchill and Wallace Simpson. "It is a ghastly responsibility," she says. "You can bend a fictional character to yourself much more, but you can't do that with real people."

Physical likeness is important, but actors are often acutely aware of the distance between their own and their subject's looks.

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At the National Theatre, Jeremy Irons wonders whether to recreate Harold Macmillan's rotting teeth by blackening them and comes to the conclusion that "Jeremy Irons doesn't do bad teeth!" Henry Goodman is bemused by audience members who tell him he looks and sounds just like Freud, even though most of them have neither heard nor seen Freud.

Most actors agree that the theatre performer needs to feel accepted as a plausible representation of the person in question from the word go. They all view film and television as mediums which require even greater attention to physical detail because of the unremitting pressure of the close-up shot.

Michael Pennington offered up this theory: "I suspect that more people come out of a film prepared to be openly critical if someone doesn't look like the person he or she is playing. I think for theatre audiences there is a greater sense of playfulness."

The higher the status of the person being played, the more there is at stake, something David Morrissey was well aware of when he played Gordon Brown in The Deal. "Like a journalist, you have to be able to corroborate your decisions with facts, not hearsay. You can't play fast and loose with the public," he said.

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More can be at stake than an actor's credibility, however. Joseph Mydell tells of fearing for his life when he played the dictator, Robert Mugabe, at the RSC. "Mugabe's 'men' did come to the show in their dark suits and made notes, but they gave a thumbs-up so I think they liked it!"

Playing for Real (Palgrave Macmillan) is edited by Tom Cantrell and Mary Luckhurst and is available from bookshops at 9.99. Copies can be ordered from the National Theatre on 0207 452 3456.