"You're Adam, a five-year-old boy sneaking your pet rat into your seven-year-old sister's underwear drawer."

February 23, 2011 6:23 PM

In Character: Actors Acting is a series of photos featuring Jeff Goldblum, Jane Lynch, Laurence Fishburne, Geoffrey Rush and 26 other actors reacting to short character prompts from photographer Howard Schatz.
posted by Captain Cardanthian! (35 comments total)

Volume Two features Oskar Werner and Buster Keaton.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:30 PM on February 23, 2011

"Actors Grotesquely Overacting" seems like a more accurate subtitle. It's a cute series, but it really says something about the direction and the choice of actors when Leguizamo is the one making the subtle faces.
posted by RogerB at 6:33 PM on February 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Asking Brooke Shields to act seems cruel somehow.
posted by Joe Beese at 6:36 PM on February 23, 2011

I liked Brooke Shields, it seemed to be the first (or one of the first) where they weren't just making a big outrageous face.
posted by amethysts at 6:38 PM on February 23, 2011

"Actors Grotesquely Overacting" seems like a more accurate subtitle.

I think that's why I like it. Some of the actors do really realistic, convincing portrayals (Mariska Hargitay nailed it, IMO), and some of them are just really goofy. It's great seeing who took which approach.
posted by Captain Cardanthian! at 6:38 PM on February 23, 2011

The middle photo of John Goodman actually made me tear up a bit.
posted by lalex at 6:40 PM on February 23, 2011 [5 favorites]

I really liked Laurence Fishburne's and Jane Lynch's contributions.
posted by bwg at 6:41 PM on February 23, 2011

I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. Who knew that Laurence Fishburne had facial expressions beyond "glower"? And I like to imagine Ian McShane's instructions for the middle pose were "You're Mel Gibson."
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:41 PM on February 23, 2011

Oh, and ... Malkovich!
posted by bwg at 6:43 PM on February 23, 2011

Laurence Fishburne will haunt your dreams.
posted by djb at 6:43 PM on February 23, 2011

> The middle photo of John Goodman actually made me tear up a bit.

A friend of mine who is a film maker have a contest of "saddest scene ever" that crops up whenever we end up riffing about characters (we must have created and forgotten a few hundred at this point). The following sentence has trumped almost all the ones I can remember recently:

"You’re departing the nursing home where your wife resides; it is your first visit in which she didn’t recognize you."
posted by mrzarquon at 6:45 PM on February 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

More like Actors...ACTING!
posted by DU at 6:46 PM on February 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Mariska Hargitay is clearly someone who actually notices what real people look like at moments like these. So many of the others seem to be, "This is what you'd think someone in X situation should look like." Jeff Goldblum is great as ever, and the Leguizamo head-licked four-year-old expression is perfect.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:52 PM on February 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

"

More like Actors...ACTING!"
posted by amethysts at 6:52 PM on February 23, 2011

More like Actors...ACTING!

Needs more Jon Lovitz.

(Everything needs more Jon Lovitz.)
posted by The World Famous at 6:58 PM on February 23, 2011 [4 favorites]

Huh, I thought sure this was a double of this, but apparently not.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:00 PM on February 23, 2011

Cannot Open Page
Safari cannot open the page
because too many redirects
Occurred

The above is my William Carlos Williams-inspired poem to websites that still haven't figured out how to make their forced "mobile version" redirects work with an actual mobile device.

I'll bet the OP is fantastic too, but I'll never know while using such a primitive, backwards method of browsing the web as an iPhone 3GS.
posted by hincandenza at 7:35 PM on February 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Just going on record as saying that I love Ian McShane and will watch any piece of shit he appears in, and that includes frincing (frowning/wincing) my way through the godawful Pillars Of The Earth miniseries, essentially a ye olde Mills & Boon novel writ large.
posted by tumid dahlia at 7:47 PM on February 23, 2011

How come Elisabeth Moss got to change?!
posted by quiet coyote at 7:59 PM on February 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Laurence Fishburne's are just great, but I gotta admit, my strongest reaction was OH GOOD GOD I LOVE HUGH LAURIE.
posted by you're a kitty! at 8:06 PM on February 23, 2011

The way these were composed reminded me of the Three-Headed Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This effect was particularly pronounced in the Ricky Gervais shot.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:07 PM on February 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

I'm so out of touch; I only recognized about half of those actors.
posted by rmmcclay at 8:14 PM on February 23, 2011

Needs more Jon Lovitz.

Needs more Calculon.
posted by wandering steve at 8:16 PM on February 23, 2011

Ken Jeong for the win.
posted by Dr. Zira at 8:20 PM on February 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

"Laurence Fishburne! Show me your WAR FACE!!!!"
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 8:55 PM on February 23, 2011

Hope Davis' jealous thirteen-year-old is excellent.
posted by Songdog at 9:35 PM on February 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

My late father would have looked at a few of these, gone beet red, and yelled "mugging is not acting, goddammit!" However, just adding Robin Williams to the selection would have thrown off the bell curve considerably, making the worst offenders look better by comparison. Heck, we could add Jack Nicholson at the other end of the spectrum and titled it Left: Jack Nicholson being Jack Nicholson, Center: Jack Nicholson being Jack Nicholson, and Right: Jack Nicholson being Jack Nicholson and neatly balanced out the whole thing.

Neat trick, though.
posted by sonascope at 4:11 AM on February 24, 2011

That series works better if you imagine that every one of them is doing different stages of their O-face.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:53 AM on February 24, 2011 [4 favorites]

David Strathairn ftw. Especially the first one, a perfect combination of shock, horror, nausea and a touch of titillation.
posted by biscotti at 6:18 AM on February 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

How come Elisabeth Moss got to change?!

I bet she's sleeping with Don Draper.
posted by Dr-Baa at 10:43 AM on February 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hugh Laurie's last prompt is awesome (even without the image).
posted by LMGM at 12:08 PM on February 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

Speaking of Laurence Fishburne: Thurgood
posted by homunculus at 9:42 PM on February 24, 2011

Going through these again, I just realized that Michael Douglas' last shot is part of the same scenario as Chloe Sevigny's. I swear I would pay cash money to watch Michael Douglas as some guy who thinks that he's Chloe Sevigny's kid sister.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:31 AM on February 25, 2011

These are great. I think the best are all of Leguizamo's, Schwartzman's, and Davis's. I also love Hugh Laurie's smug expression and Whoopi's Barbara Walters impression.

You can see all of them on one page here.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 8:06 AM on February 25, 2011

Plenty of overacting here. At first glance, I thought the first of Hope Davis's was particularly over-the-top. But then I read the instructions for it.
posted by klausness at 4:37 AM on February 26, 2011