My acting experience is negligible, but it does exist (Cough, cough, high school, cough). I also know a few actual actors who have, y'know, talent and skill and careers. It is from conversations with them about their processes, as much as from my own limited knowledge, that I now ask this question of myself:
If I had a career and all the stuff that you need to get one, namely lots of training and practice (this is a hypothetical me, so let's ignore the luck/endurance/connections that getting a career in anything actually takes) and I needed to cry for a role, and I being a totally rad actor could cry for said role, how the hell would I force just one tear out of just one eye?
Is it skill? Luck? Faked by make up? I don't know. When I get weepy, my nose runs in a very undignified way. Can you... control that with acting? I heard a lot of hand-waving about Gary Oldman and Benedict Cumberbatch in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and it was well-deserved. But Mark Strong cries a single, perfect tear of ultimate heartbreak and nuance, and the intensity of his performance has me almost embarrassed. (More on this next time)
It bears mentioning that describing the scene I'm referring to in prose sounds maudlin and trite. I mean, c'mon, "a single tear"? Snort. But on film it works. It's breathtaking. And if I see my man Mark getting type-cast with any more BS occult villain roles (Sherlock Holmes is a silly-ish movie with a serious-ish role, but, jeez, Stardust? He spends half the movie making the wtf-I-can't-believe-I'm-from-the-same-magical-realm-as-these-dopes face, and what else could he do?) I'ma make some casting directors cry.
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