How to Fake Cry in Acting

Video Transcript

"This is Athena Reich, and I'm a musician and an actor here in New York City, and I also coach both music and acting. In this clip, I'm going to talk about how to fake cry. Well, there's two different ways you can do it, and you can actually do a combination of both as well. There's an internal way, and there's an external way, and you can use a mix of both to really help you get on your way to doing that. But you should definitely try the internal way because -- always -- because that will help it be real to you. So you need to, very simply, think of something that makes you cry. So you know, what moves you, what makes you cry. Think about it. Put yourself in the environment. I am there right now, and it's happening to me right now. You know, what does it smell like when this particular event happened that made me cry? What were the sounds that I heard? Go through all your senses to give you sense memory to make it very real to you. What...you know, what did it feel like? What was the temperature like? What...who was in the room? What was the person wearing? What...you know, what were... Everything. And it'll get you to a place where you want to cry. And even if tears don't come, I mean, you can just, like, kind of fake it 'til you make it, and just, like, feel it. And, you know, and, you know, just feel really sad. And the other thing is, if you really need tears and you can't get them, just...this is the external way. Don't blink. Don't blink for, like, about a minute coming up, and then, eventually, the air will make it so that your eyes start watering. And then you can kind of use it and mix it in with your internal method acting crying. This has been Athena Reich in New York City."