Instinct, Unscripted

When I was little, my mother had a host of rules of “gentlemanly” behavior that you had to follow on a movie set if you wanted to be labeled a “professional.” Gentlemen don’t sue their friends; they work it out behind closed doors. Gentlemen support the film publicly, whether or not they think it stinks. In general, I came to understand that being a gentleman meant being stoic, hiding your feelings, never letting the slightest humiliation affect your dignity. The best compliment was to be called a “trouper,” the highest form of crew endearment. No complaining. No back-talk. Just do it.

Although they may sound a little Dickensian, I think these rules set me up to find real stability in an otherwise unstable business. I needed the discipline of a code to feel safe.

Of course, Mom was wrong about a lot of things. As I have grown older, I’ve learned to keep the good rules and punt the others. For example, “You must always hang up your costume after you’re wrapped” and “You must never be late.” Good rules.

But here’s her big mistake: “You must always serve the director. It’s his movie and his vision that you are honoring. So always, always try to accommodate any note that he or she gives you, even if you think it’s wrong.”

That one’s tricky. I’ve learned there is a gray area between truly collaborating with a director and following his every edict. I’m happy to say I have learned a few lessons from the young performers with whom I’ve worked during the course of my 43 years in the entertainment business. One of my best teachers was Abigail Breslin, the heartbreaking young actress from “Little Miss Sunshine.” This month we costar in “Nim’s Island,” an adventure tale about a little girl living on an otherwise uninhabited island with her father and e-mailing a neurotic adventure writer in San Francisco. That would be me.

When we were filming last summer in the Australian rain forest, Abbie, who turns 12 this month, taught me that although it’s a good exercise to try to execute a director’s vision, it’s an actor’s job to bring a full character to the table. And that means defying arbitrary designs dictated by technical exigencies or a director’s preconceived notion of the character. Some things about a character just can’t be decided while a director orders room service in his hotel.

The greatest gift an actor has is instinct. Sometimes that instinct has no grand intellectual vocabulary. Sometimes you just have to say “no.” Abbie knows exactly how to say “no” if it doesn’t feel right. That was a lesson I wished I’d learned when I was her age. Somehow she’s learned to do it so sweetly and with such goodwill that directors don’t even notice. When she doesn’t feel that the character should shout in a scene, she’ll simply say, “Listen to it quiet. Isn’t that better?”

My new rule for those of us actors still plagued with people-pleasing: Go with your instinct, even if it means saying “no.”