During emotional acting scenes, Eddie Albert cried ''real tears''
"I know that the actor who's supposed to be dead isn't really dead. But I'm crying, anyway. Real tears."
When actors hear the word "action" while on set, they usually get into character mode because they're about to film. There are some scenes, like emotional ones, that require the talent to cry. For viewers, the waterworks are a crucial part of making the setting feel real, but what if there was an actual reason for the tears?
To an audience, it's make-believe, but to Eddie Albert, it's deeper than that. During an interview with The Press Democrat in 1966, the Green Acres star revealed how actors stay young, and it's all within the emotions viewers see in scenes.
"Actors tend to stay younger than other people," Albert began. "If this is true, and it might be, one reason is that actors have a release for their tensions. In front of the camera, I can get angry and yell and carry on in a way that would get a bank clerk booted out of his job."
He continued, saying, "Man gets rid of a lot of hostilities being an actor. And he gets paid for it. I am not at all hostile to money."
Getting rid of bottled-up hostilities wasn't the only benefit of acting for Albert. He also "cried real tears" even though the situations were unreal.
"Synthetic the emotions may be, but they seem to work. I can express sorrow, and the glands work for me," the actor revealed. "When I laugh, it comes from my toes. In a crying scene, you can bet that I'm really weeping. Not being an idiot, I know that the actor who's supposed to be dead isn't really dead. But I'm crying, anyway. Real tears."
When the interviewer, Donald Freeman, chimed in and said, "But it's make-believe," Albert said that was irrelevant.
"My own motor machinery doesn't know it. I'm expressing legitimate emotions that the rest of society must usually suppress," he said. "So they end up grinding their teeth at night..."
Albert believed that actors have many problems, but suppressing their emotions has never been one of them.
26 Comments
Again TV shows, whatever the show, from past to present have no need to explain every change whether it's character(s),storyline, etc....Your wishing for something that didn't and likely will never occur. It's fictional television, for entertainment purposes, The shows were not documentaries presenting factual information. Your fruitlessly wishing or looking for explanations that are not necessary to begin with.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A few items Moriyah has shared.