F murray abraham amadeus movie#

NEA: You've played such diverse characters over the course of your career in theater, film, TV. As long as you're open to it, when it happens it changes the temperature.

It just doesn't happen that often, unfortunately. You sense it you know it when you see it. And you see that kind of thing and you know that what he did three months ago would have been perfectly understandable and thrilling when it was first written 110 years ago. It was The Cherry Orchard, and he did a dance when he played it. John Turturro did a performance in a Chekhov play not too long ago. You can be sitting there listening to a concert, and suddenly something will just affect you deeply. NEA: Do you have one in mind, in particular?ДЄBRAHAM: Well, yeah. Sometimes you can just see an average actor, an average performance, and suddenly they'll be a moment of lightning, and it's just inspiring. Have you ever seen her on stage? She's extraordinary-a real, genuine force of nature. We did a reading we played husband and wife. There are many, many.and women as well as men. There were some great actors in the silent movies-a wonderful actor in Nosferatu. I mean, James Dean had a couple of wonderful performances that affected meвЂ¦. I think Sean Penn's performances generally are inspired. He was probably the only authentic genius actor I ever knew, I ever saw. NEA: I know people generally ask which actors are influences, but I'm interested in knowing if there are certain performances that have influenced your work?ДЄBRAHAM: Brando was a great influence. That doesn't tell you exactly how, it's a tricky thing.

You have to trust, you have to have faith. It doesn't always happen, but it's always worth looking for. I don't want to make this too ethereal, but it really is a magical thing. So, if you go for the passion and what this piece that you're doing means to you, then you don't really think about things like a word-to-word memory. Rather than focusing on finding the meaning of the language, and not thinking about the words. If you learn a piece, generally speaking, if people learn a line or two, a poem or something, what they focus on is each word and remembering the language. You have to trust that the thing-the reason that you're an artist-is enough to rely onвЂ¦. If you develop it enough, when you do, you don't think about it, you trust that it will be there so you can focus on achieving something other than the work from moment to moment. Can you please talk about what each of those things mean and how they inform each other?ДЄBRAHAM: That's a tough trick, because the technique has got to underlie everything you do.

NEA: In an interview you did when you were playing Shylock in Merchant of Venice last year, you said that as an actor you are both highly technical when you are preparing, but you are also instinctual. All you have to do is dedicate yourself and do it. I kept listening to them and imitating them. The old vinyl recordings of Olivier and some early stuff by John Barrymore. NEA: How did you work on getting rid of the accent?ДЄBRAHAM: I listened to recordings of great actors. My friends were Chicanos and I worked on getting rid of the accent so I could be a real actor.

F murray abraham amadeus movie#

I don't know if you saw me in the movie Scarface, but I grew up with an accent like that. And I began to study voice, and I began to change my accent. I began to read-read for the first time really. I had been a gang member, a hoodlum, and I just changed everything. NEA: What happened from there that lead you to act professionally?ДЄBRAHAM: I just knew as soon as I stepped on the stage. I don't know how she saw in me this talent which I didn't know I had. I had never had any connection with it at all. NEA: What do you remember as your earliest experience or engagement with the arts?ДЇ. Here are Abraham's thoughts on his favorite roles, the artist's role in the community, and what it was like to win that iconic gold statuette. We spoke with the Oscar-winner by phone when he was in Washington, DC, to receive the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Will Award, which honors an actor for his or her contributions to classical theater. Here's what you don't know about Abraham: he's really, really funny, he occasionally gets star-struck, and he used to have a heck of a Texas accent. His depth of talent is such that he's equally comfortable as the aggrieved merchant Shylock in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, or the hapless short-order cook in Terrence McNally's Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, or guesting on The Good Wife or Louie. If you've seen Amadeus or Scarface, or even Star Trek: Insurrection, then you know that F. I was a gang member, and art saved my life.' - F. Murray Abraham accepts the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre at the Harman Center for the Arts Annual Gala.