February 20: Natalie Portman and Paul Mescal
On Actors on Actors
Paul: I’m going to ask you. Is there a director that has changed the course of your life, either creatively or personally?
Natalie: Mike Nichols was a really important person in my life. Both as a director and as a human. In so many ways. As an actor, he was the first one to send me to a vocal coach, he was the first one to talk to me about how I prepared. He would say, you can tell the difference between the older generation and the younger generation because the younger generation shows up and expects magic to happen and the older generation comes so prepared and knows that you do all this work, and then you let it go. He also told me, to do what you do you have to have an hour of your day where you sit and just stare at the wall. Just allow yourself to be bored and not have your brain working. [...]
What about you, who has changed you?
Paul: The director of the drama school that I went to, the head of acting, her name was Hillary Wood. She’s this larger-than-life wonderful woman who taught me that it’s okay to be bad when you’re acting. I know it sounds obvious, but I didn’t know if I could do it or not. She took the concept of getting it right totally out of my head and gave me the space to really fall in love with acting.