An Actor's Energy

For Bogarde, a potent force in holding an audience’s attention was the magic that derived from the focused use of an actor’s ‘energy’, which was ‘both mental and physical’ and sprang ‘directly from the gut’. If an actor can tap it to transform himself ‘not through tricks of make-up or lighting’ but through a sudden release of that energy in a scene, it becomes ‘the life force behind a performance; without it a performance can be adequate, acceptable: but lacking in lustre.’ When an actor creates that magic on screen, ‘an audience will react instantly: the experience disturbs, excites, and involves them completely.’ (Backcloth, 209-210) No longer mere observers, the audience shares the experience. Bogarde had the rare ability to do this and to take his audiences to what he called a ‘higher plane of experience.’ It was, for him, ‘exactly what acting is about, and always has been.’ And when it works in a scene, as it did between such highly skilled actors like Bogarde and Glenda Jackson, ‘joined together seamlessly’, it becomes an ‘exhilarating’ experience for players and audience alike. (208-210)

Intense concentration was vital to channel that energy: ‘Concentration... that is the main key to cinema playing; without it you are lost, and the retaining of it, through thick and through thin, is essential, exhausting and sometimes so hard to contain that one is brought to the edge of madness.