How do actresses cry

This is a much more difficult proposition, and professional actors spend years training and practicing to have such direct access to their emotions in this way. Here are a few techniques to help you do it.

Any of these techniques can be used in any combination. But remember that acting grieved, pained, or devastated is not limited to the moisture level in the eyes. Overall body language can profoundly communicate despair, as can the act of fighting the tears from coming out. Also keep in mind that there are many different kinds of tears, some of which originate from joy, physical pain, emotional devastation, frustrating defeat… the variety of human emotion is endless.

So there you have it — a collection of some of the best tried-and-true tactics that actors use to cry on cue. Our online casting call platform has helped countless people find acting jobs in New York City, Los Angeles, and all over the country. What are you waiting for? Updated January 09, Featured Video. Theater and Improv Games for the Classroom and Beyond. Your Privacy Rights.

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Toelke: Which totally irritates your eyes. And the benefit to using the menthol versions is that because it's literally irritating the eye, the eye will get red. So if you've ever seen yourself after you've cried, your eyes are puffy and red. It's because you're sort of like irritating and rubbing your eye and so that menthol application does that to your actor.

You always want to blow into your hand first and make sure that the cotton is there, and that it didn't move. That would just be, you know, you've completely ruined the scene for everybody. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more. A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation. Empathy is all well and good, but if an actor has his or her own harrowing life experience to help bring the sad sobs to the set, it's even better.

The role required him to shed a lot of tears, and it wasn't a part of the trade that came easily to him. Instead of trying to feign those feelings, then he revisited a helpful pointer his old on-screen godfather Gary Oldman told him: "Don't be afraid to use all your own stuff because they're only going to see it happening to the character.

The first time that happens to you on a set full of people Dare we say it sounds like a magical moment? Without a built-in trick or handy dandy device to help bring on the waterworks, some actors just have to jump into an emotional scene feet first and hope their eyes catch up somewhere along the way. Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence, for example, revealed that for her big crying scene in The Hunger Games when, gulp, she had to say goodbye to poor Rue , she went through the bodily motions of mourning and things just so happened to progress from there.

It's mostly just the standard, hold your eyes open, fake your way through it. Considering how stacked her trophy shelf is right about now, whatever she's doing is obviously working just fine. Will Smith might have no trouble serving up serious drama now that he's such a seasoned film star, but back in his earliest days as a wee TV actor, he was still learning how to emote on camera.

His starring role in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air almost always leaned on his skill for being suave and self-assured, but there was one important moment in the show's fourth season that really required the actor to dig deep.

In the episode , Will's father returns to his life and gives the teen hope that he might finally forge a bond with the man who's been M. Alas, he takes off again, and Will delivers a heartbreaking monologue that vacillates between contempt, determination, and a lot of hurt. Without a strong delivery by Smith, the scene might've been hokey, but he sold his sadness thanks to the help of his on-screen uncle, James Avery. Smith would later recall , "James Avery was relentlessly on me to elevate. Like, James Avery wouldn't give me a damn inch.

Everything I said, everything I did for James Avery was like nope, not good enough. He was like, 'You have this position, look where you are, look what you are blessed with. It's not always the actors themselves who are mustering up all the mopes. Hollywood history is filled with stories of filmmakers using near-torturous techniques to elicit an emotional response from their stars, like when Alfred Hitchcock tormented Tippi Hedren on the set of The Birds to capture real fear or when Stanley Kubrick made Shelley Duvall unwell with his harsh demands on the set of The Shining , and her condition conveniently aligned with her character's.

Similarly, there have been several noteworthy cases of cast members being coerced into crying on-set by some of their co-workers, whether they liked it or not. For example, when he was still a child star, Jackie Cooper was bullied into bringing it with his tears in Skippy a role that would earn the then-nine-year-old an Oscar nomination, no less by director Norman Taurog, who threatened to kill his dog if he didn't cry right then.

There are some actors who just don't need to turn to methods or manufacturing to pretend to be emotionally affected in a scene.