Acting

Acting

• The late 18th and early 19th century actress Dora Jordan once appeared as Roxalana in "The Sultan" before an audience that contained enemies of hers who loudly criticized her. She stopped acting, walked to the footlights, and spoke directly to the audience: "Ladies and gentlemen, I should consider myself utterly unworthy your favor if the slightest mark of public disapproval did not sensibly affect me. Ever since I have had the honor to strive here to please you, it has been my constant endeavor to merit your approbation. I assure you upon my honor that I have never absented myself one moment from my duties but from real indisposition. Ladies and gentlemen, I place myself under your protection." This speech won over the audience to her side, and her enemies quickly left the theater.

• While studying theater at UCLA, Carol Burnett took Acting 2A, where she prepared to recite a speech by a waitress in front of her class. Unfortunately, she didn't recite it very well. For one thing, she didn't bother to read the rest of the play to find out the context of the speech. In addition, she spoke the speech in a low monotone while pantomiming a waitress wiping a table. Her classmates didn't understand the speech and thought that she was pantomiming ironing a shirt. Carol's grade? D minus. Fortunately, a short time afterward, she was given some funny words to say. Her classmates laughed, Carol stuck to funny roles, and she earned an A minus in the course.

• On the TV series "Goosebumps," a dedicated young actress named Kathryn Long played a role that required her to eat a sandwich in which a worm had been placed. Not knowing about the worm, the character takes a bite of the sandwich, chews it, and swallows it. Of course, the people behind the series wanted to use a fake worm for the scene, but being dedicated, Ms. Long said, "We need a real worm. I can't really play the scene right unless we use a real worm." So they used a real worm, and for the 12 takes it took to shoot the scene right, Ms. Long bit into a real worm, chewed it up, and swallowed it.

• The great actress Sarah Bernhardt played the character L'Aiglon so convincingly that a young woman fell in love with her and refused to see young men. After Ms. Bernhardt learned of the infatuation, she asked that the admirer be sent to her, and she received the young woman in her dressing room while she was wearing an old bathroom and no makeup. She told her admirer, "This is what I am really like. There is no such person as L'Aiglon except on the stage." The young woman married someone else and had a baby — Ms. Bernhardt was the child's godmother.

• Panamanian actor Rubén Blades avoids jobs that involve his playing stereotypical Hispanic roles. Once, the people behind "Miami Vice" offered him the role of a Hispanic drug dealer. He turned them down. In one six-month period, he was offered 15 roles. Approximately half of the roles were of Columbian drug dealers; the remaining roles were of Cuban drug dealers. Mr. Blades, who has a degree in International Law from Harvard, asks, "Doesn't anybody want me to play a lawyer?"

• Not everyone wants to act. During the 1970s and 1980s, a wild and crazy comedian named Ron Sweed, aka the Ghoul, hosted several mostly bad movies on a television program airing in Cleveland, Ohio. Frequently, he did short episodes of "Spencer and Mongolia," a parody of a sitcom. Several women played Mongolia over the years — one woman quit because she regarded filming the episodes as a waste of her lunch hour.

• Ermines are weasels with white fur that live in the Arctic. Their valuable fur is much sought after by hunters, who supposedly trap them by placing salt on the ice. The ermine's tongue freezes to the ice when it licks the salt. Actor Laurence Olivier read about this in a magazine, and while playing the lead in a 1945 London production of "Oedipus the King" he used the effect it had on him to help him produce a bloodcurdling scream.

• In 1940 at the Old Vic, Harley Granville-Barker unofficially directed "King Lear," meaning he did the preparatory work but would not allow his name to be announced as director. John Gielgud played King Lear, and he read through the entire play for Mr. Granville-Barker. After hearing the reading, Mr. Granville-Barker told Mr. Gielgud, "You got two lines right. Now we will begin to work."

• Lots of mothers watched the children's show "Captain Kangaroo" with their children. One day, Bob Keeshan, who played Captain Kangaroo, was having a drink with a friend in Hollywood. No one recognized him because he wasn't wearing the Captain's grey wig, but a woman in the bar complained, "My kids are in college, and I still keep hearing Captain Kangaroo's voice!"

• Comedian Flip Wilson started acting at age nine in a school play about Clara Barton. The girl who was supposed to play Clara Barton got sick, and since Flip was the only child who knew Clara Barton's lines, he played her. He said that it was a thrill to have that many lines because originally he was going to play a wounded soldier who did nothing but groan.

• The 19th-century actor Edwin Forrest identified himself with King Lear. Once, a man congratulated him on the way he had played Lear. Mr. Forrest thundered, "Play Lear! what do you mean, sir? I do not play Lear! I play Hamlet, Richard, Shylock, Virginius, if you please; but, by God, sir! I am Lear."

• While watching a rehearsal of "Captain Brassbound's Conversion," featuring actress Ellen Terry, a friend asked George Bernard Shaw if Ms. Terry were saying the lines as he had written them. Mr. Shaw replied, "No — but she is saying them as I ought to have written them."

• Oprah Winfrey took seriously her role as Mattie in the television movie "The Women of Brewster Place." To prepare for the role, she pretended to be Mattie and wrote a 200-page journal using the character's voice and point of view.