Mahershala Ali, Hugh Jackman, Timothée Chalamet & More Talk The "Blue-Collar" Aspects of Acting

With Oscar nominations finally announced, The Hollywood Reporter continues their great run of award roundtable conversations, having just released their full actors roundtable. The talk includes actors Hugh Jackman (“The Front Runner”), Timothée Chalamet (“Beautiful Boy”), Richard E. Grant (“Can You Ever Forgive Me?“), Viggo Mortensen (“Green Book”), Chadwick Boseman (“Black Panther”), and Mahershala Ali (“Green Book”).

The discussion quickly hones in on why the participants chose acting as their profession and how actual acting is such a small part of the overall process. As Ali says, “We don’t talk about the workmanlike qualities within [the business] and how you only actually act between ‘Action!’ and “Cut!’ – like 10 percent of the time. The rest of it is looking for material, prepping for it – the wardrobe, the costume elements, building the psychology and getting ready for the piece itself.”

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Boseman agrees, saying, “It’s really a blue-collar job. And you work overtime, You sweat. You get hurt, You are an athlete. You are everything necessary and you are pulling from things that most people don’t usually deal with.”

When given the chance to act, though, Chalamet views the job as “remarkable dedication to being present in the moment. You watch actors go in the ‘control’ room sometimes and you are like, ‘Well, that’s not interesting to me as an audience member.’ But when you’re like, ‘Whoa, that guy doesn’t know what he is doing right now, he is just living it,’ that’s exciting.”  

For Jackman, he “went into acting because I was interested in trying to work out: What’s the meaning of life? What the hell am I doing here? You may not get the answer while you are filming. Sometimes you get the answer 10 years later when the film resonates in a way that it didn’t when it opened. Storytelling is about simply trying to understand the world we live in.”

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The conversation inevitably turns to choosing roles and what roles are off-limits. Mortensen, discussing how he chooses roles in the context of playing Othello, notes, “I think [the answer to] your questions about Othello is: Yes, I could try, but why should I? No matter how well I played Othello, the overriding concern and interest and criticism would be, ‘Why is he playing Othello?’ So why waste my energy? Aren’t there other characters I could play?”

One of the biggest takeaways from the talk is the disappointment that Chadwick Boseman is not getting the award traction that he deserves for his role in “Black Panther.” When discussing how performances can change in editing, Boseman notes, “You know what the journey is. So if you don’t see it, you have to say something, I think. At the same time, the beauty of it is that hopefully you have chosen the right script, the right director, right producers, and they are going to make it work better. [Then] you just have to go to the next thing once it’s over.”

Richard E. Grant concurs, saying, “My confidence is so index-linked to whether I am working or what I am working on. What you have done before doesn’t count.” Be sure to check out the entire roundtable discussion below: