Friday, March 9, 2012

Acting on moral convictions


There aren’t many careers where you may be asked to simulate sexual intercourse, portray a rapist (murderer, Nazi, Klansman, pedophile, you name the character), or appear nude on stage before a thousand people, night after night.  Working as an actor can test your values, and each of us has to decide for ourselves where to draw the line between art and paycheck.

Last week the issue came up in an online acting forum and it set off a spirited debate between those who think that actors starting out can’t afford to turn down work (and that to do so would spell the end to their career) and those who think you should refuse any role (or scene) that makes you feel uncomfortable, because you have to live with yourself.

I’m in the latter camp. We turn down roles for all sorts of reasons – moral, religious, political, "doesn’t do anything for my career." I've turned down roles where my character was simply intended to ridicule people of a certain religion, or to play straight to another character's off-color jokes. There may be consequences to turning down a role (or balking at a director’s bright idea); there are with most decisions. But on the flip side, nobody gets a pass because they were “only following orders” from the director, or reasoning that “if I didn’t do it, someone else would.”  Do something over the line and it may come back to bite you.

It all comes down to integrity, weighing the opportunity to appear in a film, play, commercial, etc. against your personal beliefs, however they manifest themselves. Sometimes you can have the objectionable scene changed. In the end, your real choice is that you have to be you.

Actor, writer and producer Paul A. Rose, Jr. (13/30 Productions and Starlight Productions) has collected anecdotes over the years that make that point.  Here are some of those he shared in the forum:

Patrick McGoohan, a Catholic, turned down a chance to play James Bond (before it was offered to Sean Connery) because he didn't want to play a womanizer.  He went on to play a similarly spy-themed character, John Drake (who was never seen to even kiss a woman), in three different series, at one point being the highest paid actor in the UK.

Jackson Rathbone, who's just getting started in his career (Jasper Hale in the Twilight films) has played characters who are morally questionable, but turned down roles that he found, "morally reprehensible."

Jim Caviezel, a Christian, asked the director of Angel Eyes, one of his first big roles, if they could change the sex scene in the movie to simply him kissing Jennifer Lopez, because he felt uncomfortable with it and thought the scene was unnecessary.  The director agreed.

Doug Jones, a Christian, has portrayed several popular characters, usually under heavy makeup, including Abe Sapien in the Hellboy films and the Faun in Pan's Labyrinth.  His most memorable role, though is as zombie Billy Butcherson in Hocus Pocus.  In his most famous scene, confronting the witches and defending the children, he had one line - calling Bette Midler a "Bitch." He did that take, then asked the director if he could try something different.  If you've seen the film, you know his improved diatribe, with no profanity, was the take that survived.  (An illustration of the business adage: Don’t bring me a problem, bring me a solution.)

Last year, Neal McDonough (Band of Brothers, Desperate Housewives) was fired from the ABC drama Scoundrels, because he refused to do sex scenes with Virginia Madsen.  A Catholic and family man, he's turned down many roles or requested parts be rewritten to accommodate his refusal to do scenes that even hint of sexual intercourse.  And Scoundrels? It lasted just 8 episodes.

Paul Rose adds: Hollywood - despite some complaints from folks in “the flyover states” - is really, for the most part, conviction neutral.  Your faith (or lack thereof) or moral convictions (or lack thereof), can gain you some jobs and lose you some others, but 85-90 percent of the decisions made to cast you or not cast you are due to concerns, valid or not, that have nothing to do with your faith, your moral convictions, or even your politics.

Well put.

9 comments:

  1. I stumbled upon your blog from Jay Paoloni's blog and this post intrigued me. It's so refreshing to see that there are actors with integrity. Acting is like any other job and compromising one's moral values is still compromising. Thanks for highlighting this!

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  2. I found it reassuring as well, and these are just the stories that have become public. I'm sure there are many more private examples of actors refusing to compromise their values for a paycheck. Perhaps, given the many deplorable films being made, we wrongly assume the opposite. Kay

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  3. thank you so much for posting this! I am a young actress myself- just getting started in the business, and it's encouraging to hear about successful actors and actresses who turned down roles due to moral reasons.
    I was just recently offered a role in a play that portrays women as sexual objects who only use their sexuality (and not their brains!) to get what they want. What's worse is that there is no retributition shown in the play to the characters who are sexist and objectify the women. After reading this and a few other posts online, I decided to turn down the role. I know I am giving up opportunities/connections, but hopefully I will find something better if I do what I believe in.

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    1. Good for you! Not only does this play sound objectionable, but it's not creative, it's not clever, it's not ORIGINAL. You can have nudity, etc. and still be clever, creative and original, and even have a moral punchline - "Body Heat" did. But too often it's just thrown in to shock the audience, and they don't even do that anymore. In fact, I've saw a theater review out of New York recently where the reviewer objected to gratuitous breast baring (in "Seminar") Hold out for the roles that make a point. Kay

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  4. Although this is an old post I think it's worth more people reading again, especially in 2015 where it really does seem that doing explicit sex and nudity scenes has become almost obligatory. Some recent shows like Girls, Power, and Sense8 have started a game of one-upmanship that is great for fans of sex scenes (I'm no prude; I enjoy them as much as the next guy) but I fear will lead to the point where actors are going to be forced - for their careers, for their paychecks - to do hardcore. There have already been a number of films where budding actors have had to cross the line (9 Songs, this year's Cannes festival entry Love). The problem with Rose's list is they were all established actors, and all male to boot. But do a Google search and you'll find that since 2012 there has been one actress allegedly fired from Game of Thrones for refusing to do any more sex scenes, and another was sued by a Cinemax show (and lost) because she got cold feet about the sex acts she was going to have to perform. And I'll be honest - while some shows can justify their sexual content (Masters of Sex would be pointless without it) it's hard to rationalize some of the extreme sexual explicitness as always being necessary to a story. And I often interpret actors' comments about why they did a sexually explicit role, especially after the fact, as being overly defensive.

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    1. Everyone seems to be ok with the sex and the paychecks and the accolades that come with. If you look closely you find that it is almost like a rights of passage. If you don't do it someone else will. The way things work is actresss are rewards for screen debauchery with awards and better options. No one gets anything for free. Everyone pays one way or the other. You can continue to do vanilla work, but look at this way and I am being brutally honest the society is a sembiotic pathos. Men and women provide service that's the way it works the more you are willing to give the more to will get.

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    2. Well I hear what you're saying, but I disagree that participating in these kinds of scenes is some necessary rite of passage for actors. Diane Keaton was, I believe, the only member of the original Broadway cast of "Hair" to refuse to appear nude in the scene at the end of Act 1. I don't think Keaton has ever appeared nude in anything. Nor has Cher. I think there's enough variety in film that legit actors don't have to take those roles if they find them objectionable, and in fact some have been filled by porn actors, as in Scorcese's "Wolf of Wall Street" apparently (looking at the actors' credits on Imdb.)

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  5. As human being way have both sides and depending on the cultural trends of society we sometime are swayed by what's normalized. Years ago you could not show people of the same sex kissing now you have full gay sex scenes. If the character is not right for you don't take it. The truth people take parts for different reasons. Sometime they are desperate or they are in need of validation or they might have a similar lifestyle to the character. The world is not really moral we would like it to be.sooner or later we give in to a desire, we just hate dealing with the consequences of that desire. If you could see how the rich and famous play you would be shocked at what happens at their personsal parties. Remember this business is not for the religious it is for the rebellious so don't expect vanilla projects because the world is not all vanilla there is some rocky road in there in there two.

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  6. The rich and powerful have been engaging in debauchery since before Roman times, but in filmmaking do you really need to show it all for the audience to "get" what is happening? In the new film "Atomic Blonde," which I thought was good overall, did the audience really need to see the Charleze Theron/Sofia Boutella lesbian sex scene? Couldn't the director have just cut from the initial kiss to the cuddle after with no loss of story? Interestingly, I've been reading a book on censorship during Hollywood's Golden Age and there seems to be an opinion in some circles that the limitations forced screenwriters to get more creative and actually produced better films. It is certainly true that even today G and PG films (which includes all the super hero action films) tend to make more money than those that are R-rated for sex. Ultimately I think an actor has to weigh a role's impact on his/her career long term (and how they're going to feel when their kids see that film!) All the best.

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I will get back to you shortly!