Okay, I’ve gotten a lot of messages asking about my views on “making yourself cry” so, I thought I’d write a post about it.
I know lots of people have “ways” to make themselves cry on command, but honestly, I don’t think most of them include real acting. Thinking about something sad that happened to you and crying about it is not a good way to make yourself cry. Does it WORK? For some, yes. But it detaches you from your character, from the scene, from the show, and therefore makes the audience detach from YOU. And you don’t want that. You want the audience to care about your character, so you have to BE your character, not just act like them. If you’re crying for a scene, it should be because you actually feel the need to cry because you are so in tune with your character’s emotions. Not because you’re thinking about dead puppies, or have kept your eyes open for the last 5 minutes, or anything else. Those things work for some people, but I think they create forced, unrealistic, and unmoving characters. You cannot force yourself to tears while being a good actor. That just doesn’t happen. NOTHING about acting should be forced. All of your emotions, tears, laughter, screams, etc. should be coming from your character organically and naturally, because that’s who your character is.
