How Gary Oldman Coaxed a Realistic Performance from Winona Ryder

Some horror film directors want realistic performances from their actors.

Not every film requires realism. Children Should Play with Dead Things and Blood Feast benefit from their actors' hammy performances. (This not true even of many horror "comedies" -- many "so bad it's good" films are actually "so bad it's unwatchable".) Hal Hartley often requires deadpan performances from his actors.

But say a director wants realism. How to coax a realistic performance from an actor?

Jonathan Emrys, an extra on Bram Stoker's Dracula, relates how director Francis Ford Coppola sought a realistic reaction from Winona Ryder (a look of stunned shock), and how Gary Oldman figured out a way to coax this reaction from Ryder.

(I think Bram Stoker's Dracula's overall acting style is a bit more theatrical and styled than the more mundane realism of many films. But nevertheless, Emrys offers an instructive account of how Oldman drew a realistic reaction from Ryder.)

As Emrys's relates it:

[W]e all were set up on the streets again, and Mina (Winona Ryder) was supposed to walk down the street to the Apothecary shop and look across the street to see Dracula (Gary Oldman) staring back at her.

Directly behind the camera was Coppola, and the ever professional Gary took his place beside the camera, in the mud, to give Winona a point to look at.
Winona repeatedly walked down the street, stopped, stared, then continued into the shop. However, she apparently was not giving the shocked or startled look Coppola was looking for, so he kept sending her back up the street to start again, over and over.

During one of the longer spaces between takes, Gary starts looking around and spies a vegetable cart beside me. He asks a P.A. "Are those real vegetables?"
The P.A. replied that they were and Gary asked "Are those real zucchinis over there?"

The P.A. nodded and Gary asked "Can I have one? Could you get me a zucchini?"

The P.A. was confused by the question, he didn't know if he should, so he asked an A.D. who, I think asked another A.D., and finally was given the reply "Yeah, sure."

They grabbed one of the zucchinis and gave it to Gary who immediately took his place again beside the camera.

I'm standing directly behind Gary, so all I can see is him facing the street with the zucchini held firmly behind his back. Winona finally comes into view and waits at the top of the street, and Coppola yells "Action!" and Winona starts down the street.

As she approaches her mark, Gary shifts the zucchini to his front, at about groin level.

Winona reaches her mark, stops and turns to Dracula and has an utterly surprised, shocked and startled look on her face. She kept it professional and continued into the Apothecary's Shop.

The moment Coppola yelled "Cut!", Winona stormed out of the shop and proceeded to harangue Gary, who took it in his stride, laughing. This seemed to upset her even more, so Coppola finally got out of his seat and took each of them by the arm and walked them back up the street and out of view, all the time Gary was laughing and smiling, and Winona was not.

A few moments later, they all came back into view, and Winona was still not real happy, but there was no longer any smile on Gary's face as he dragged his feet, head down, like a punished schoolboy.

Yes, that was a funny thing Gary did, and sure Winona probably didn't think so, but at least Gary helped Coppola to get that look he needed from her.

You can see the above scene here:



You can read more about Emrys's experiences as an extra on Bram Stoker's Dracula at his Blood Thirsty website.

I met Emrys on Bram Stoker's Dracula, because I too worked as an extra on that film. You can read about my experiences on the Hollywood Investigator.

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For more about acting styles in horror films, see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.

The Broken: A Character's Facial Shift as Horror

Horror may be defined as the realization that "the world isn't the same as our minds believe" (to cite the bounty hunter, Rogan, in Fox TV's Werewolf). Likewise, horror can be the realization that an intimate loved one is not who you believed them to be. Or that you yourself are not who you believed yourself to be.

This revelation of someone being other than they appear to be can be done through special effects, but I am especially impressed when it's conveyed through story and acting alone (e.g., a shift in facial expression).

In The Broken (2008), Gina (Lena Heady) suffers a car crash. Physically okay, she is now plagued with amnesia -- and a growing suspicion that she has a double (i.e., a doppelganger, though that term is not used) who is somewhere out there, following her. Why?

Gina then grows suspicious that her boyfriend, Stefan (Melvil Poupaud), is not her boyfriend. That he's been replaced by his doppleganger.

If it sounds like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, that's no accident. The Broken pays direct homage to the 1978 remake when a frightened Asian man tells Gina's brother, Daniel (Asier Newman), "That's not my wife."

The Broken's conceit is supported by a creepy atmosphere that's achieved through 1. long stretches of silence (occasionally supported by some unsettling ambient noise), and 2. extreme closeups of mundane objects.

(David Lynch has used these same techniques to great effect, and The Broken continues borrowing from Lynch through to its penultimate scene, with a musical score that's reminiscent of the one at the end of Mulholland Drive.)

The Broken packs its greatest emotional punch at films end. Actually, two punches.

The First Punch is in the penultimate scene, in the form of a Big Revelation. Gina's long hunt for her doppelganger ends when she discovers her own dead body in her apartment, whereupon Gina's amnesia lifts and she remembers that She is the doppelganger!

Naturally, she is distraught by this revelation, in an emotional scene that is supported by The Broken's Lynchian music score.

I saw this revelation coming about 15 minutes before it did. It's not too original a plot twist. Many films have protagonists who discover at the end that they're really the villain (Total Recall, Thr3e, Number 23), or really the good guy (Murder by Night), or a ghost (The Sixth Sense, The Others) or dead (Jacob's Ladder). Ideally, the audience is likewise surprised. Having empathized with the protagonist, they emotionally share the protagonist's shock and distraught.

But it's The Broken's final scene that makes it a truly great horror film. Its Second Punch is a Personality Shift that is one of the scariest horror scenes of the past decade. It's a scare that's achieved without special effects, but through story and acting alone.

In this final scene, Gina is at work, knowing that she is a doppleganger. She exits the room to see her brother, Daniel, in the hallway. She'd earlier warned Daniel about the doppelgangers. Daniel has by now seen the personality transformation in his fiancée.

We'd last seen Gina as a sympathetic character. A woman distraught at learning that, before her amnesia, she had been a murderous doppelganger.

She approaches Daniel, a blank look on her face. Is she still the sympathetic doppelganger with a conscience? We can't tell from her expression.

Daniel stares at her. Saying nothing. Wondering if she's now also one of them. (She always was, though she -- and he -- didn't know it.)

An expression of hate clouds Gina's face. The same cold hate we'd seen on the other doppelgangers. The camera moves in closer to emphasize Gina's expression. She remains silent. No warm words of greeting to her brother.

Whereupon Daniel runs away in fear.

This is the Second Punch. It's the scariest scene in the film because we have grown to empathize with Gina. She had been warm and loving. The First Punch was shocking, but it didn't mean we couldn't continue sympathizing with her as a doppelganger. Bruce Willis remained sympathetic in The Sixth Sense, though he turned out to be a ghost. Arnold Schwarzenegger remained a hero in Total Recall, though he learned that he had been an evil government agent before his memories were removed.

Gina's emotional acceptance of her villainy is the real terror of The Broken. Not the initial terror of her being stalked by doppelgangers. Not the second terror of discovering that she's one of them. But the final/third terror of her embracing her dark side -- of her personality transforming into entirely new person.

Some monsters resist their dark side. Gina didn't. She became evil before our eyes. A transformation achieved largely through Headey's performance.

Daniel's discovery of Gina's personality shift evokes Invasion of the Body Snatchers's scene where Nancy discovers that Matthew has become a pod person. In both films, a frightened mortal approaches a trusted friend, only to have that friend's face reveal that they are no longer the same. But Donald Sutherland's monster -- although suggested by his performance -- also benefited from the sound effects emanating from his mouth. Not so with Lena Heady.

Lost Souls has a character shift that's similar to Gina's -- a scary transformation implied largely through acting. At the film's end, Peter (Ben Chaplin) is about to transform into the Antichrist at a specific time. (The date and time of his birth, 33 years ago.) He urges Maya (Winona Ryder) to shoot him after the transformation.

The time arrives and Peter insists that the transformation didn't occur. He begs Maya to put down the gun. Maya is confused. Should she put down the gun? Then the car's clock blinks 666 -- indicating that now the transformation has happened.

Ben Chaplin's expression changes, indicating that now Peter is the Antichrist.

Shifts in facial expression, especially when a trusted person is suddenly revealed to be evil, are an effective way of scaring audiences. Many examples exist. To cite just one more, consider Ray Wise's changes of facial expression to suggest Bob's possession of Leland in Twin Peaks.

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For more about acting techniques in horror films, see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.