The best actor, the actor that creates for me a transcendent experience, draws me in to his character, puts me in the story being told, will also often remind me of who I am and bring me home inside of myself.
A great movie can be, for me, such a healing experience, regardless of the storyline but depending on a fantastic job of acting. A journey through the complexity of a fascinating character who is, after all, me.
It's impossible for me not to ponder the real person, the actor, that is behind the character.
And I'd guess that it's impossible for an actor to completely hide themselves behind a character. I think we humans are too perceptive. When we see enough of an actor, we get a good feeling for their depth as a human being, for their emotional intelligence in the art of living, for the boundaries of their compassion and limits upon their interest in the world.
When we can see within another person so deeply the nameless atoms and molecules of energy that make them like us, inseparable from us, that is true beauty. Original beauty. Beauty that runs so much deeper than the physical characteristics that Hollywood pushes at us as though boobs and biceps were the currency of love. Physical beauty is not the currency of love. Sharing the crazy experience of life is the currency of love.
Women obsess on physical beauty, can be ruthlessly competitive, and would like to convince men that their obsession and vanity is not of their own making. They miss the boat.
Men can be captured and imprisoned, duped by physical beauty. They miss out. The real experience of life escapes, and this skin-deep beauty brings no reward, nothing.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman looked like just some guy from anywhere that you might meet on a bus or plane.
But he gave his audience, through his genius of passion and compassion, such soaringly beautiful experiences. Such fearless and unflinching portrayals of ourselves in a mirror. Such a strong feeling that his own heart was laid absolutely bare to his audience in the honesty of acting. And that we, the audience, could be trusted to actually see, feel, live the experience.
How subversive, this rare beauty, in an industry like Hollywood.
And how inspirational for an average guy like me, passionately in love with life.
