Acting Tips on Character Appearance

Video Transcript

"The first thing we want to look at, is appearance and personality traits, and again, remember that we've already pulled some of this information from the script. Maybe it was there, maybe it wasn't. If it's in the script, you go with what is there. If it's not, you make it up. It can be anything you want it to be, and when I talk about physical appearance, you want to cover all the bases. Is she short? Is she tall? Is she thin? Is she fat? Is she pretty? Is she ugly? Does she have blond hair, brown hair, red hair? Is it short or is it long? Does she have blue eyes, green eyes, brown eyes? Does she have a long nose, small lips, big lips, white teeth, brown teeth, ugly teeth, perfect teeth? What do their hands look like? What do their fingernails look like? What do their feet look like? All of those things are going to be really important. Even how they dress, do they dress formally? Do they dress informally? What kind of shoes does this character wear? How do they wear their hair? All of those things that make up the appearance of the character are going to be very important. One for costuming, and those kinds of things, but also what you look like, is going to help determine how you move as the character. Tall people move differently than short people. Heavyset people move differently than skinny people, so first take a look at that. Next, we're going to talk about personality traits."