How to Act for Film vs Theatre: A Complete Guide for Actors
Many words have been set down in ink (and online) about the difference between theatre acting and film acting. It’s an age old debate, and in those conversations and supposedly helpful tips, there have been countless lies and half truths spread. You may have heard that for screen acting you should “make everything smaller!” Or that screen acting is more like real life. Or perhaps you’ve even listened to actors insist that they don’t change anything about their performances when switching between screen and stage. But let’s be clear: these are myths.
We’ll debunk the most common myths and give you some clear headed insights into the real differences between acting for theatre vs. film! After you finish this article, you’ll be one step closer to mastering the art telling a story effectively for both stage and screen.
Key Differences Between Theatre and Film Acting
Great acting, whether it’s for theatre or screen, isn’t just emotional; it’s also technical. To understand those technical differences, first we need to look at the unique characteristics of each medium. We’ll break this down by addressing the three major myths mentioned earlier.
Stage Vs. Screen Myth #1 : Screen acting is more like ‘real life’ than theatre is.
Let’s start with the idea that screen acting is closer to everyday real life. This is simply not true.
In theatre, performance is continuous, just as life is. Once the play begins, it doesn’t stop! On the contrary, in screen, an actor’s flow is constantly interrupted. Scenes are often shot out of chronological order, in wildly disjointed segments.
“Doing a great play is like hanging on to a run away train, and movies can never create that kind of momentum. To me it’s like being a musician who grew up playing the piano and said, here’s the saxophone — they’re both music but being able to do one doesn’t mean you can do the other.” — John Malkovich
When people claim screen acting feels more like real life, what they usually mean is that performances can have a similar quality of behaviour to everyday life — naturalistic subtlety rather than constant projection. (We’ll explore this further below.)
Myth #2: “For screen acting, make everything smaller!”
Another key difference that makes screen less like ‘real life’ than theatre is that in screen work, the director and editors direct the audience’s attention of where to look and how much detail to show. On stage or in real life, the audience chooses where to look and when! But when it comes to screen production a carefully selected crew painstakingly determine what an audience will see at any one moment. They do this by working with the language of film, changing the shot size, type, and duration to better tell the story.
A common (and often misguided) note from amateur directors is to shout, “Make it smaller!” They think this will fix an underlying issue. But this direction is, at best, confusing and, at worst, completely detrimental. It can very easily drain the life out of a powerful scene that just needs a minor adjustment to pop on screen!
The thing to understand is that the frame of performance is different when we speak about screen and stage. The goal isn’t to ‘pull it back’, but to give an option that is going to be effective on camera.
It’s a matter of knowing for the actor when to adjust the energy, pace, and size to match the lens they’re working with. It’s not smaller or bigger, it’s calibrated.
Tom Cruise has spoken insightfully about this technical awareness in various interviews on acting craft
Myth #3: Actors who insist they don’t change a thing about their performance on stage vs. screen
Some wonderful actors insist that their process for each medium is the same. his well-intentioned view is often misinformed and stems from a lack of self-awareness about the subtle adjustments they’re making moment to moment.
As actors become more experienced in screen work, these calibrations become second nature. They are so instinctive that the actor themselves may not even notice them!
For many great actors of both stage and screen, they have been able to practice enough that each performance feels innate, and so it does not seem any different to them while they are performing. There is absolutely difference in technique in screen acting performance. We dive into the detail of that in the next section!
How Actors Adjust Performance for Screen Acting
In theatre, there’s only one frame: the stage. In film, there are countless frames: wide cinematic shots, close-ups, handheld angles, and more. Film isn’t one size fits all the way that theatre is, and each frame requires the actor to calibrate their performance accordingly.
As an actor, you need to be precise with your choice based on the context.
“The medium always dictates the temperature of the performance” – Cate Blanchett
Theatre acting requires you to fill an enormous room with your acting. Performances that are pitched larger and projected into the audience often drive connection in theatre, as the performance must reach every single participant. Whereas in film, an actor only has to fill a frame.
The camera replaces the paying public. It becomes the screen actor’s audience of one. On set, the lens and microphone are your audience, not the crew. A screen actor performs for the camera.
“But wait!” I hear you cry, “Aren’t you saying you should make it smaller?!” Not in the slightest, young padawan. If the frame of a shot is as wide as say, the view an audience would have of a theatre stage in a 1,500 seat auditorium, your performance must fill that frame! Think about an ELS (extreme long shot) or a LS (long shot), where the actors must convey through their body language and vocal power the intensity of a moment. Tell me that’s playing it small!
Screen acting requires an actor tailor their performance to the medium, just as theatre actors do. The difference lies in the variety of frames. For more detail on this, check out our excellent article: Acting for Camera: How To Use The Frame.
To illustrate this, let’s look at a simple but clear example from the opening scene of Bridget Jones’s Diary. Gemma Jones (playing Bridget’s mother) is vocally loud in the longer two-shot (around 0:31), where both actors are visible from a distance. When the editor cuts to the medium close-up (around 0:35), her voice naturally softens to a much gentler level.
In this way you can see a very practical, simple illustration of adjusting your performance for the frame! This practical adjustment shows how actors modulate vocal performance (and the same principle applies to emotion and physicality) to suit the shot size. There’s incredible scope for variety across different frames.
Final Thoughts on Theatre Vs. Screen
So there you have it. Ultimately, the core differences between acting for stage and acting for screen come down to this: calibration to the frame.
While there are many other technical things to consider and develop your skills around film acting, any actor looking to elevate their on-camera work should get serious about understanding how to adjust their performance for the lens.
If this article inspired you to dive deeper into your camera craft, be sure to check out our StageMilk Scene Club. We help actors worldwide master their screen performances and grow their skills in both theatre and film.
