Leonard by William Shatner Read Free Book Online Page B

later in his life, “I’m shocked that there was so much of that going on around Hollywood and I was so totally out of touch with it.” He remembers having to get an FBI clearance to play a bit part on the show West Point . I’m not sure I ever did, maybe because I wasn’t an American citizen.
    When the blacklist was finally lifted, Corey began working again, eventually costarring in many movies like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, True Grit, and Little Big Man . Leonard had been studying with Corey for more than two years when Corey finally was able to resume his career; when Corey went back to work, Leonard began teaching some of his classes. After doing that for a couple of years, Leonard opened his own acting studio. Among his students were pop singers Fabian and Bobby Vee, as well as Alex Rocco, who played the role of casino owner Moe Greene in The Godfather . Originally, the Italian Rocco auditioned for the part of a gangster, but Leonard apparently was such a fine teacher that director Francis Ford Coppola auditioned the Italian Rocco and decided, “I got my Jew!”
    Leonard was a highly trained actor; I was not. Our acting techniques were quite different. In his studio, Leonard taught his version of the then very popular technique known as Method acting. Until that time, acting styles were very broad, often verging on melodramatic. It was very formulaic acting, sort of like acting off a menu of choices. Method acting, which Lee Strasberg had made famous at the Actors Studio in New York and Leonard was teaching in his studio, taught students to “become” the character and express that character’s real emotions. It meant studying the character’s social, physical, and psychological condition. It meant learning as much as possible about the character, even if the actor had to create that backstory himself to understand the character’s—here it comes—motivation. It meant deciding what clothes the character would wear that accurately reflected his or her personality. It meant utilizing body language years before anybody even used that term. It was revolutionary; rather than showing the character’s emotion, the actor actually had to feel it.
    An actor’s knowledge of his character started with the script. Leonard always was in awe of the written word, and when he himself wrote, he brought the same diligence and respect to the page as he did to his performance. The script should provide clues to the actor about who his or her character is, what process this person is going through, and how he or she responds. An actor also had to understand the purpose of each scene, “the spine of the scene” he called it, what knowledge is supposed to be conveyed to audience through the action and dialogue in each scene. And then the subtext—what is the intention of each line? What is the character really trying to say? Once an actor understands that, he or she can layer the performance in terms of bringing both voice and mannerisms to that moment. “There are numerous ways of saying, ‘I love you,’” he would explain. How it might be said depends on the situation and the actor’s overall objective. If, for example, a man is telling a woman for the very first time that he loves her, it requires complete devotion; if, on the other hand, it’s a way of ending an argument, it would be said a very different way.
    An actor trained in that technique, Leonard believed, would always bring honesty to the role. “A character is like a plant,” he said. “The richer the soil, the better it grows. One of an actor’s jobs is to nourish his plants.” In 1977, for example, he was hired to follow Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins, and Tony Perkins as child psychiatrist Martin Dysart in the Broadway hit Equus . It’s a difficult role in the complex story of the psychiatrist hired to treat a young boy who blinded six horses for