Concerning increase in reported cases of 'actor brain'

The actors are at it again

Over the past week, there were two cases of actors finding themselves on the back foot when faced with criticism of upcoming projects.

First of all was John Lithgow, fresh out of a genuinely scary performance in James Ashcroft’s The Rule of Jenny Penn. Lithgow has decided he wants to “wind down” his over-half century career by enriching one of England’s most enthusiastic fascists. The veteran actor was genuinely taken aback when people criticised him for taking the role of “Elvis Grumbledore”1 in HBO’s spite-fuelled Harry Potter show.

Second, was the announcement that Natasha Lyonne would ‘direct’ a ‘film’ using ‘ethical’ ‘AI’. The idea of ethical AI in this context is, of course, nonsense. The large language models (LLMs) that are being branded as ‘AI’ exist only as slop factories, pumping out images that look horrible but that are convincing enough to tasteless people that they are being used to threaten the livelihoods of artists. Her statement was so profoundly meaningless it may as well have been written by a LLM:

The scope of what’s possible with these new technologies when used ethically and creatively is astounding… Bringing something so bold to life feels radically expansive and exciting. I’m immensely grateful for this opportunity from Asteria and to witness this emerging era from the front lines

People were surprised because they assumed that figures like Lithgow and Lyonne would have had a degree of moral intelligence that would have prevented them from taking the respective roles. Lithgow has a friend with a trans child! Lyonne was on the picket-line for the actors strike! Why would they throw vulnerable communities under the bus? Unfortunately, they are both suffering from a condition called ‘actor brain’

What is ‘actor brain’?

I was introduced to the concept of ‘actor brain’ as a teenager while watching the behind the scenes DVD featurettes for Lee Tamahori’s Die Another Day. I haven’t been able to find the specific interviews so I may be misremembering but the pattern of responses burned itself into my brain. First came Halle Berry who described her ‘Bond Girl’ character Jinx as “like a female Bond.” Next was Dame Judi Dench calling her character ‘M’ “an older version of James Bond.” Finally, villain actor Toby Stephens described his character Gustav Graves as “like a dark, twisted version of Bond.”

Why were all these professionals talking about their characters like they were real people? Does an actor need to adopt this air of self-importance even when they’re playing a North Korean colonel who has plastic surgery to become Swedish?2 To me, it seemed like these actors were emptying their heads in order to make space for the characters.

When I talk about ‘actor brain’, I’m not necessarily talking about ‘the method’ which is all about how actors relate to their characters as an acting technique specifically. Instead, I am fascinated by how air-brained actors can sound when they talk about their characters outside of an acting environment. This is less about becoming a character than relating to a project to such a degree that you give yourself brain damage. It’s almost as if relating to their characters has become the North Star of their morality.3

I’m also not talking about all actors. A lot of actors, including Hollywood movie stars, are smart and thoughtful and grounded and maintain a healthy remove from their characters. I think a lot about modern comedians like Tim Heidecker and Conor O’Malley who play characters inspired by the worst excesses of white reactionary masculinity but never seem to have anything but disdain for their characters.

But sometimes, actors come out and say things that suggest that they believe their craft exists in a vaccuum separate from absolutely everything else. Think of Rose Byrne, who was cast as Jacinda Ardern in an incredibly ill-conceived film about the 15 March attacks against the Muslim community. When interviewed from the set of Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, Byrne demonstrated one of the most egregious instances of ‘actor brain’ on record:

"It [the role] focuses on the horrific terrorist attack, in New Zealand," she explained. She called Ardern a "fascinating character"."I'm really excited about that," she adds.

Like Lithgow and Lyonne, Byrne seemed physically incapable of conceiving of the project in any way that was separate from the role itself.4

Fake empathy

In all these cases, the actors have chosen ‘empathy’ with a character who doesn’t exists to avoid empathising with real people. It reminds me of the long history of science fiction where robots have stood in for marginalised people. Sure, it’s a fine metaphor5 but if it is applied to the real world, it results in situation where people can displace their empathy. A fictional setting involving an android civil rights struggle doesn’t hit the same in a world where AI is being promoted at the expense of humans. A Tesla or a Boston Dynamics Dog doesn’t have a soul and we don’t have to feel bad when they get vandalised, especially not when they exist at the expense of actual humans who we should be fighting for.

If John Lithgow would rather relate to Albert Humbledore than trans people that’s on him but we should have no compunctions in identifying that decision as a form of brain damage.

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