K, I admit it: I watch the award shows, ranging from the amusing (Golden Globes) to the epically annoying (Oscars). This year, among the many awards I agreed with, there was one that struck me as unusually wrong—the best supporting actress trophy to Cate Blanchett for her portrayal of Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator.
I have enjoyed and admired Miss Blanchett's work in the past, but when it came to this ... movie-of-the-week-style impersonation ... well, it wasn't a question of whether it was better than the other nominees—it was whether it was any good at all.
That was my first reaction, however. I soon grew charitable, remembering that every performance depends on so many variables—script, lighting, editing—each beyond an actor's control.
I recalled that one of the biggest fears humans face is that of public speaking. So, by definition, actors are the bravest people around. ... Imagine it, if you haven't already: You go in front of a camera, or out on the stage, and pretend to be somebody else.
So I grew expansive, reflecting on the special challenges of acting in sci-fi movies and television, asking myself these questions:
What are the great performances?
Or, rather ... are there any?
Cops have it easy
Because, when I think of acting in sci-fi films, I can't help remembering an obscure sci-fi film from 1964 called The Time Traveler, directed by Ib Melchior. In one scene, a futuristic factory worker (played in a cameo by none other than Mr. Sci-Fi himself, Forrest J. Ackerman) picks up a circular object and spins it into a square, then sets it aside, reaching for the next one.
It's a perfect image for the situation most actors find in most sci-fi scripts: squaring circles.
You have nothing to do. Nothing to grab hold of. No set of gestures or facial expressions or postures that allow you to fully inhabit a scene.
It's like this. When you play a cop in a contemporary drama, you're wearing a sport coat, slacks, shoes. You've got a wallet and a badge, and a weapon, and a cell phone.
You're in a squad room, with ringing phones all around you, and a collection of uniformed officers and small-time crooks ... the smells of sweat and perfume (and, since this is a movie set, sawdust and mold) ... coffee cups and doughnuts ... you take out a cigarette—
You know where you are. You have a context. You have the challenge of being your character, but you don't have to invent a world.
Jump to three centuries in the future. You're on the bridge of a starship. You're wearing skintight clothing with no pockets. All around you there are other actors in the same situation, all of them trying to look busy—touching fingers to headsets, randomly pushing sliders on control boards.
(In the justly unacclaimed sci-fi movie Stranded [2002], you find an astronaut who has recently crash-landed on Mars talking to astronauts on the surface. As he talks, he is randomly pushing buttons on the instrument panel. He might as well be driving from Blythe to Palm Springs and trying to find an FM station on his car radio. ...)
(And this actor could have seen video of real shuttle or space station astronauts. That's not an option for a story set on an alien planet in the year 3200.)
Ideally a lot of the context is in the script—or in a book or story that is source material. Failing that, you'd think context could come from the set ... but what if you're acting on a green screen, as in The Polar Express or Sky Captain?
Even the words—the vocabulary—can be murderous. Actors in sci-fi have to get their mouths around words like parsec and magnetohydrodynamics, not to mention phrases in Klingon.
Yes, actors in contemporary medical series face similar challenges—check out Fox's House or ABC's new Grey's Anatomy for some bravura examples of thespian verbal dexterity. But a curious actor can look these words up, or might even hear them used in real life and real situations.
When she gets to the set of a sci-fi project, the actor is more or less on her own.
As Harrison Ford reportedly told George Lucas on the set of Star Wars ... "You can write this crap, but it doesn't mean anyone can say it."
He was speaking for every actor in the history of sci-fi movies.
Intergalactic great performances
What actors do in cases like this is fall back on what they know. The pilot of a TIE fighter acts as though he's flying a Grumman Hellcat off a straight-deck carrier in World War II. ...
Harrison Ford in Blade Runner—is he truly a science-fictional character, or is he a world-weary cop from a 1940s noir film transplanted whole to a futuristic production design?
The same thing applies to Wil Smith in I, Robot—or Tom Cruise in Minority Report. (Action heroes are action heroes, I suppose, no matter what the era ... which is a whole different column.)
Which isn't to say that there haven't been good, even great performances by actors in sci-fi.
Think of Cliff Robertson as Charly. OK, the setting is contemporary, so Robertson was able to concentrate on the challenges of being Charly Gordon. The same note applies to Duchovny and Anderson in The X-Files, and to Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, who were outstanding in my favorite movie of many years, Eternal Sunshine.
OK, let's move into the future—Kirk, Spock and McCoy in the original Trek. As the series moved into its second season, as the stories deepened and the actors began to inhabit their roles, they became completely convincing as headstrong starship captain ... cool alien intellect ... folksy doctor. Patrick Stewart was outstanding as one of the captains of later Trek generations.
The cast of Babylon 5, notably Claudia Christian's Susan Ivanova, gave great performances. (Is it that being in a series helps an actor develop that context?) Ben Browder and Claudia Black stood out in Farscape.
In feature films, I'm forced to cite Arnold Schwarzenegger in T2—he convinced me he was a killing machine with a conscience. I was also impressed by Jonathan Pryce in Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985), and Bruce Willis in the same director's 12 Monkeys (1995).
You probably have your own list of favorites.
With the growing use of green screens—or the looming threat of CGI "actors"—performing in a sci-fi project is the greatest challenge an actor can face.
Michael Cassutt has written novels, short stories, non-fiction and several dozen television scripts for series from The Twilight Zone to, most recently, The Dead Zone. He is currently working on a project for the SCI FI Channel.
