Living Between Two Worlds

There’s a scene in John Turturro’s new movie, “Illuminata,” in which Susan Sarandon, playing an aging diva, informs his character, a struggling playwright, that she acts every minute of her life. It’s a naked expression of what many people already think: Actors are always acting.

“I was at a dinner recently,” says Beverly D’Angelo, who plays a theater owner in the movie.

“There were four actors and four nonactors. The four nonactors left. One of the actors said, ‘Oh, God, now all the actors are left. We’re all acting.’ Another one said, ‘I don’t act in real life.’ And another guy said, ‘Well, of course we’ve been acting all night.’ I said, ‘Acting like what?’ The first actress said, ‘We’ve been acting like idiots.’ And another actor said, ‘No, we’ve been acting like adults in a fancy restaurant.’ ”

“Actors!” Sarandon says. “I think it happens with everybody, especially these days with so many jobs having to do with the triumph of style over content. Most people live their lives away from who and what they’re thinking and doing, and they go through life as a performance. In a lot of ways, actors are just more honest about it.”

Hollywood has a long history of movies on this subject, from Ronald Colman taking his role as Othello too much to heart in “A Double Life” (1947) to Dustin Hoffman getting in touch with his feminine side as Dorothy Michaels in “Tootsie” (1982). And, of course, “Shakespeare in Love” featured a whole troupe of larger-than-life theatrical personalities, some of whom found their way into Shakespeare’s work (which, incidentally, is rife with role playing).

“Illuminata,” which takes place in New York around the turn of the century, might seem similar to “Shakespeare” because it involves a playwright, his muse (Katherine Borowitz, who is also Turturro’s wife) and the large-scale actors around them (Sarandon, Ben Gazzara, Bill Irwin, Rufus Sewell, Aida Turturro, Georgina Cates, Leo Bassi, Matthew Sussman, David Thorton). The difference is that it’s more about the various aspects of love than about how love inspires art. And, in a departure from “Shakespeare,” the artifice in the actor-characters’ behavior is a real issue. As it is in life.

“I think my friends who are maybe more straight say, ‘Oh, you’re such an actress,’ ” says Aida Turturro, John’s sister. “I’m not trying to be an actor. I have a bigger personality, I may be more theatrical but I’m not putting on a performance. But sometimes you get more theatrical and showy and you’re on. I hope that I don’t do that most of the time. I don’t think I do. But maybe once in a while you put that little extra--people are watching you, and you can’t help but be onstage a little because obviously there’s something that you’re attracted to about being watched.”

“Some people succeed in this business because they have out-sized personalities in life,” says Borowitz, who doesn’t count herself among them. “It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re acting. It’s just how they deal with the world.”

Many times the exact opposite is true. Gazzara says that often actors, himself included, are shy or inarticulate and take on roles that express things they wouldn’t otherwise be able to say. At the end of “Illuminata,” there’s a scene in which two characters, played by Borowitz and Sewell, standing in for the playwright, do just that.

Aida Turturro makes the point that some actors don’t know who they are--or, as Borowitz puts it, they’re afraid to commit to a point of view.

There’s a scene in the film in which a critic (Christopher Walken) tries to seduce one of the actors (Irwin), who doesn’t even know himself well enough to know whether he’s attracted or repulsed by the idea. He’s in a panic. Sarandon mentions as a real-life example a highly regarded but similarly insecure actress who almost exclusively takes extreme roles. She also talks about another actor, a well-known leading man, who comes alive--on-screen, at least--only when he’s playing comic parts.

It’s not just that some actors want to explore being somebody else, she says, but that without being somebody else, they would be nobody.

“Yeah, I have worked with people like that, but those are really rare,” says John Turturro. “I’ve heard that Peter Sellers, who is one of my heroes, didn’t have a personality. But other people said he was stark, raving mad.”

Gazzara says his wife often accuses him of bringing his characters home with him, which “takes its toll on your home life. After working so hard getting under the skin of the character, it’s very difficult to drop it. You find that the rhythm of your speech, your attitudes, your reaction to things, whether you know it or not, seem to be affected by the role you’re playing.” (In “Illuminata,” he plays a slightly out-of-it senior member of the troupe.)

According to Sarandon, role playing is a particular hazard for stars, whose livelihood depends on maintaining a certain persona, as opposed to character actors, who are paid to be different from film to film. She puts herself in the character-actor camp, although the truth is she might have a foot in each.

“She can play a character, but the way she goes through life, puts her clout behind political causes, she’s very definitely out there and comfortable in public,” Borowitz says. “That takes a certain size. It’s a whole different way to go through life and to deal with walking down the street.”

Sarandon’s character in “Illuminata” is modeled after Sarah Bernhardt, celebrated 19th and 20th century actress and theatrical entrepreneur. Sarandon argues that her character--like Bernhardt--had to act every minute of her life because she was always hustling. There were no personal publicists at her disposal, no agents.

The irony is that now, despite all of these professionals lobbying on their behalf, actresses still have to sell themselves. Think of that explicit magazine cover or photo spread or that suspiciously convenient show biz relationship.

“When you look at the music industry and the theater industry and film today,” Sarandon says, “it probably makes much more sense if you’re going to sleep with somebody not to choose your leading man but to choose a producer or a record mogul or the guy who’s been running the series for two years that you’re attracted to.”

In other words, to achieve a certain level of success, acting can be literally a full-time job. Of course, it doesn’t have to be, but then the “part time” actor or actress doesn’t make as much money, doesn’t get as much work and ends up doing a lot of auditioning (which, as Borowitz points out, is even less fun than doing publicity).

Obviously Borowitz didn’t have to audition for “Illuminata.” John Turturro freely admits that it was conceived around his wife. She didn’t play a role--on-screen or off--to get the part. It’s who she is that inspired Turturro, “someone who can be strong but also really delicate,” he says.

“Certainly Katherine’s part has elements of her in it, put into a more powerful position than she is in life,” Turturro continues. “I thought if I had Kathy as the soul of the piece--I kept thinking about her face and her sensibility--then I could have extreme characters around her. She’s the core of the eddy.”

This interplay between life and art takes a turn at the very beginning of the movie, when Borowitz and Turturro work through some awkward dialogue between lovers in the piece that he’s trying to write.

“To me it’s a little inside joke that it is Tuccio and Rachel but it’s also definitely John and Kathy working out some little kink in the screenplay or something,” Borowitz says.

“That movie was especially confusing,” says Irwin. “Because the man who had written the script and wrestled it as a labor of love into production was also directing it, was also playing the role of a playwright who was trying to wrestle a production on, who was a love interest of a woman who headed the company who was played by his wife.”

In the hall of mirrors that is acting, Borowitz didn’t have to reach very far to play that opening scene. But there’s another one in the film in which she humiliates an actress during rehearsals in order to get her to act “truthfully.” The actress, played by Cates, practically has a breakdown.

There is a fine line, however, between being truthful and being self-indulgent, both on-screen and off. Sarandon says she has no patience for performers who cross this line and cites as an example an actor she worked with onstage who was throwing around the props her character needed to protect herself. One night, Sarandon just walked off.

From this perspective, acting--or at least acting well--is realizing where you are and what’s expected of you, whether you’re terrorizing Sarandon within the confines of a play or behaving like an adult in a fancy restaurant. There’s only one--very important--difference.

“Very early on I realized that acting is one thing and life is another thing,” D’Angelo says. “The thing about real life is that somebody can come to you crying and you can say, ‘If I were crying, it would be because I was sad.’ But maybe that person is crying because they’re happy. You can’t know. You can’t superimpose the same kind of control and knowledge on real life that you can when you’re working with a script. Actors have one thing in their lives that nobody else has. Actors have a script.”

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“Very early on I realized that acting is one thing and life is another thing. . . . You can’t superimpose the same kind of control and knowledge on real life that you can when you’re working with a script.”

ACTRESS BEVERLY D’ANGELO

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“Some people succeed in this business because they have out-sized personalities in life. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re acting. It’s just how they deal with the world.”

ACTRESS KATHERINE BOROWITZ