--- title: Great Performances 2012 | TIME description: George Clooney, Viola Davis, Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Octavia Spencer, Jean Dujardin, Uggie the Dog, Adepero Oduye, Michelle Williams, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Michael Fassbender canonical: https://time.com/video/Yd9YjpSX/ og:title: Great Performances 2012 og:description: George Clooney, Viola Davis, Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Octavia Spencer, Jean Dujardin, Uggie the Dog, Adepero Oduye, Michelle Williams, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Michael Fassbender og:url: https://time.com/video/Yd9YjpSX/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Yd9YjpSX/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Great Performances 2012 twitter:description: George Clooney, Viola Davis, Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Octavia Spencer, Jean Dujardin, Uggie the Dog, Adepero Oduye, Michelle Williams, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Michael Fassbender twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Yd9YjpSX/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Great Performances 2012 > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Great Performances 2012 [Watch (HLS stream): Great Performances 2012](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Yd9YjpSX.m3u8) (6:49)  _Published 2012-02-09. George Clooney, Viola Davis, Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Octavia Spencer, Jean Dujardin, Uggie the Dog, Adepero Oduye, Michelle Williams, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Michael Fassbender_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:21 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Great Performances 2012: Michael Fassbender](/video/iJvZQuw4/) ### Great Performances 2012: Michael Fassbender [Great Performances 2012: Uggie the Dog](/video/qk7IMqyy/) ### Great Performances 2012: Uggie the Dog [Great Performances 2012: Adepero Oduye](/video/woYVo3EW/) ### Great Performances 2012: Adepero Oduye --- ## Transcript [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ SOUND ] [ INAUDIBLE ] You stay there, and I'll pan. Ready? [ LAUGH ] Oh, that is impressive. Are we good? Yes. Alright. I was a person who was just ready to soak up any great performance, and even when I was younger I could distinguish from being entertained to being absolutely, to having a human experience. The most influential performance for me as an actor was Robert Duvall in The Apostle. I forgot that I was watching a film. I was completely drawn in by the characters, by the story, by the setting, and by the end I was crying. I knew I want to act before then, but, I saw, I saw first hand. What kind of acting I wanted to do. I think the best performance I've ever seen by an actor on film was Paul Newman in The Verdict. It was full acceptance of a character actor along the way. I just loved everything about him in that movie. I, I made a conscious decision not to see how other people have portrayed Marilyn Monroe. And once in the middle of the night when I was feeling a little dangerous, I went on and I [ UNKNOWN ] and wanted to see who else played Marilyn Monroe and I saw this drag queen do Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend and I just thought, Wow [ LAUGH ] but he'd also had a lot of plastic surgery. So he could more closely resemble her, and, you know ultimately, I know that what I was going for was something, well hopefully very different than that. Physicality and performance, is always something that's very important to me. It's something that I will be sort of thinking about immediately. How the character moves, is the character weighty, or is the character light on his, on his feet, and how you can sort of really. Tell, you know, tell an inner- life story of the character through the physicality it's very helpful, so sometimes you can express so much more through your sort of body language and movement than, you know, a page of dialogue. [ LAUGH ] What's the trick to acting like a disaffected teenager? I don't know that there's a trick. Maybe I was familiar with it from being, a disaffected teenager myself. [ LAUGH ]. You have to figure out what makes a character tick, and you have to, really have no judgement of the character, and that was my problem that first week, with my role. I had a, I was, really judging Minny. Because to the outside world, she was a strong woman but she didn't leave her abusive spouse. I just had to relinquish all judgment and, and really understand that it wasn't about me, or what I would do. It was about what the character would do. I felt an automatic kinship with the Billy Beane Michael Lewis wrote in the book. I didn't concentrate a whole lot on, mimicking him, it was more about, you know, getting the essence of, of this guy, and, and what they were up against. It's shameful how little I know about baseball. Baseball is the back drop for this, this, this book. In fact, they wouldn't even let me in the Coliseum had they known. I think Billy only just found out how little I know. Again, it was these guys going up against conventional wisdom, these guys asking the question of why do we do the things we do just because we've been doing it for a hundred years, does that make it right for today? You know, like why do we have Daylight Savings Time? I don't... Somebody tell me. It's a pain in the ass. I was very pleased with Beginners, simply because I had a more relaxed time than I've ever had in my life in front of a camera. Usually, I'm playing British parts or German parts or so. And it was nice, loose American part. Michael Mills had written such a wonderfully warm, and sympathetic, and affectionate character, in the role of his father that he trusted me with. I was a little bit nervous. Yeah, I thought this is, this is gonna be miserable because he's gonna be at me all the time [ LAUGH ] and he said, you're an idiot. Just be yourself and shut up and do it. And I'm sorry, I said, alright I'm with you. I am I am always in my character. Because it's more, it's more fun. I, I am, always on set. I'm never in my trailer. Because I am like kid on set. I, I prefer to stay, with the team, the crew. I think that in movies that have the subject of race a studio, wants to walk the fine line of putting butts in a seat, and having some kind of artistic merit. And how do you put butts in a seat in a movie that could possibly be an indictment on the very people that you're trying to get into the theater? And so therefore, it's gonna influence the narrative. You're gonna start dicing and cutting. And what's left, could be an absolute stereotype. Something that's palpable to those people that you wanna put in the seats. And so, I was, didn't know if I wanted to do that. But, Evalyne goes on a journey. I think she's a beautiful character. And at the end of the day, I felt like, as an actor, it would, I didn't wanna sit in the audience and watch this movie and think, I'm not a part of it. I was really, really, really happy to be on the set for The Help because it's the first film I've done, where it was an ensemble of women, and I found it to be the nicest set I've ever worked on. We were so supportive of each other. And, when you work with people that are your cheerleaders, it brings out the best in you, and you bring out the best in them, and my scenes with Octavia were some of the most fun, maybe I'll ever have in my life. We're all very, very similar, and, and how we approach the work. The entire cast and crew, is just the best collaboration, I, I am gonna be really sad when all this is over, because I'm gonna miss these people. Done? Yes. Thank God. You're as smooth as I thought you'd be. [ LAUGH ] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Of course. Cool, thank you. Seriously thanks a lot. 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