Are Actors Good Liars?
Posted on 16. Nov, 2009 by Gary Ploski in Acting, Blog
The question “Are good actors good liars?” bothers me a great deal.
Stepping beyond the fact that I am an actor, the implication that a profession exists entirely in falsehood is baffling. Are we as a culture willing to believe actors live to pretend, and accept that is all they do?
Before I begin let’s look at the definition of the word liar.
Main Entry: li·ar
Pronunciation: \ˈlī(-ə)r\
Function: noun
: a person who tells lies
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liar
Now, let’s look at another piece of the pie.
Are you ready? A eureka moment awaits just ahead…
Where do actors use to guide them to do or say anything? …A script. Without it a play would be pretty boring – I’m not touching on improvisation in this post. But, wait, who wrote the script? … A writer. BAM!
Wait-a-minute, wait-a-minute, wait-a-minute. Did I just imply that actors are not lying but it is actually the writers who are lying?!
Step back from the ledge. Easy now. Okay, now to answer the question: No.
Writers channel life into text. That text says something that they want heard and/or experienced by an audience. The actor’s job is not to lie to the audience. What good would that be to the writer’s work? Eek.
The actor’s responsibility to represent life physically &/or audibly, just as the writer did. The joy, pain, glee, nervousness, etc. It’s all in there.
In a speech I gave at the 2008 Sarah Lawrence College Commencement I spoke about this topic. I said…
Hamlet tells a group of players, about the act of playing (aka acting), that the “…purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”
View my commencement speech:
What does this highfalutin Shakespeare guy mean? Don’t worry, it’s not binary code and it’s not rocket science. All he is saying, more or less, is that an actor’s goal, then and now, was and is, to reveal the world as it is, the good, the bad, and how it has all come to be.
So, in short, no. Actors are not good liars. Actors reveal truth.
Now, how much they believe, of the text, is up to them. If you don’t believe something but play a character believes that does believe… Well, that’s where the craft comes in. Everyone has their own way of “getting there.”
Recently I held “the mirror up to nature” in a short comedy called “Time’s Up.” Watch it here:
Now, the important question: Do you think I was lying?
Someone might ask me “Gary, did you really lose a wife and child on the way home from the hospital?” because that’s what you said happened to you in “Time’s Up.” The fortunate answer to that is “No! No! No!”
My question to them would be “Did you believe I lost my wife and child?” If so, I did my job. If not, I did my best.
To reiterate, actors are not lying but are in fact revealing the truth. Except for when they’re lying. 
Not all characters tell the truth. 
Consider Iago in Othello. Now that is one amazing liar!
–
Sadly the misperception continues on the web. Here are some answers I found to similarly phrased questions:
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/310388
Q – Do you think actors make great liars?
A – Yes. After all, they get paid to pretend to be who they’re not.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090818174151AAtMZFx
Q – …would me being a good liar be good with acting?
A – …But I think I am such a good liar because I rehearse what I am going to say and know excactly what say or how to react to a certain question/statement.
Happily one person stood up and shouted from the rooftop. Thank you!
http://www.blurtit.com/q407483.html
Q – Are Actors Just Great Liars?
A – No, the popular misconception of actors is that they are lying, they are pretending. However, the greatest actors do not lie, instead, they tell the truth, they reveal the truth to the audience through their performances. Acting isn’t about concealing or impersonating, instead, it is an art of revelation. Lying is mainly deliberately not telling the truth.
Visit My Acting Page to see my resume, photos, and videos of shows and films I’ve done.
Gary Ploski is an actor, blogger, and instructional technologist living and working in the CT and NY area.
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2009 November 17 | Gary Ploski
Nov 17th, 2009
[...] Check it out here: http://garyploski.com/are-actors-good-liars [...]
d
Nov 22nd, 2009
Okay, you could’ve made this up. It’s just a lot too similar and the title as well.
Slimy, if you did. Will be watching for any other copyright theft, and will prosecute if see another.
Always do.
Gary Ploski
Nov 22nd, 2009
Thanks for the comment “d.”
This is all mine, my own, my precious, er… Where was I? Oh, right! Content. It’s all my own except for the content I link back to other sites.
Kate
Nov 23rd, 2009
Really liked this post. It’s true, I am an actress and also a terrible liar.
Gary Ploski
Nov 23rd, 2009
@Kate It’s great to know there are other people like me out there.
Rayne
Jan 8th, 2010
Hi, I’m glad that I was able to find a refutation of the “actors are liars” meme, at least because it is so immensely widespread and so frequently used to automatically discredit (in a Parker/Stone “Team America: World Police”-like fashion) the opinions and reputations of politically-active or opinionated actors/actresses, particularly those who are most representative and expressive of so-called “Big Hollywood”.
I’m not saying that social conservatives are incorrect in their assumptions about such professions (after all, I don’t think that Hollywood or the film industry has yet completely forgotten or moved on from the McCarthy-era blacklisting of various artisans, and it seems that alot of social conservatives are stuck in similar ruts), but it seems rather easy and cheap to target and attack, if not scapegoat, actors, writers and other artisans (let alone their works) by way of their livelihoods as shapers and presenters of alternate realities or conceptions of reality whenever they dare to make commentary on this reality in which we and they live and breathe.
So I think that such a meme about actors has become as politically potent over the years as it has become a useful tool of the U.S. culture wars, but at least someone on the Web dissents with this meme at its core and most basic assumptions about an entire professional field. I hope that the emotional and intellectual gulf between the acting profession and the rest of the U.S., which allows this meme to be perpetuated, is at least somewhat reduced in the future.
Gary Ploski
Jan 8th, 2010
@Rayne I’m so happy you found my counter position to this idea that is floating around in our culture. It frustrates me a great deal, as you saw. When I read Shia LaBeouf’s quote from 2007, all I could do was sigh and drop my head. He said: “Acting is a con. At the end of the day, you lie for a living. You’re deceitful. That’s my goal. To be the best possible liar.”
)Sigh(
Garth Soulek
Mar 12th, 2010
Hi – It’s good to find such topical stuff on the Web as I have been able to discover here. I agree with most of what is written here and I’ll be coming back to this website again. Thanks again for posting such great reading material!!