In the episode of Mad Men I've just been watching, Megan announces to Peggy and her other colleagues that she has decided to give up her job as a gifted copywriter at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and try her luck in the acting profession, her true passion. Such is the quality and intensity of the acting in Mad Men that it was only much later that the irony of the situation dawned upon me, for of course Megan and all the others are already actors! That is their real job, not writing copy for SCDP!
I know very little about acting and am pretty sure that I couldn't act in the narrow sense to save my life, but at the same time it strikes me that we are all of us to some extent actors, or at least role players. We express polite interest at the fate of our neighbour's cat and bafflement at our grandchild's latest magic trick. Can that be considered acting? I don't know.
On the other hand I often think that virtually anyone who appears on television or radio is, almost by definition, an actor. They know what they are going to be asked and say beforehand and the trick is to appear as spontaneous as possible. This is true of politicians, of course, but particularly of journalists. When the "anchor" in the studio speaks to the BBC correspondent in Beirut, the two of them have already worked out questions and answers before they go on air. Part of their job is then to make their dialogue sound as natural and unrehearsed as possible. Hence the frequent occurrence of such phrases as "Now, that's a very interesting question you raise, Brian".
I know very little about acting and am pretty sure that I couldn't act in the narrow sense to save my life, but at the same time it strikes me that we are all of us to some extent actors, or at least role players. We express polite interest at the fate of our neighbour's cat and bafflement at our grandchild's latest magic trick. Can that be considered acting? I don't know.
On the other hand I often think that virtually anyone who appears on television or radio is, almost by definition, an actor. They know what they are going to be asked and say beforehand and the trick is to appear as spontaneous as possible. This is true of politicians, of course, but particularly of journalists. When the "anchor" in the studio speaks to the BBC correspondent in Beirut, the two of them have already worked out questions and answers before they go on air. Part of their job is then to make their dialogue sound as natural and unrehearsed as possible. Hence the frequent occurrence of such phrases as "Now, that's a very interesting question you raise, Brian".
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