Acting in The Elephant Man

The actor's contribution is extremely important in a film because their work commands most of our attention, overshadowing the considerable contributions of the writer, director, cinematographer, editor, and composer of the score.  The ultimate goal of any actor should be to make us believe completely in the reality of the character.  In order to achieve this goal actors must be able to project sincerity, truthfulness, and naturalness in a way that we are never aware that they are acting a part but as if they are this person in real life.  In the Elephant Man John Hurt, who is the actor that plays John Merrick, plays the role of the elephant man fantastically.  The producers of the film were nervous that it would be difficult to find a great actor to play this role, since the actor would be buried under many layers of prosthetic make-up.  Also many actors would not like this since they live and work based on their recognizability.  But John Hurt accepted the role immediately, he believed in the importance of the role so much that he even told them he would have played the part for free if necessary.  This is also a very important aspect to acting because there is a huge difference between actors who have a passion for what they do and those who do not care as much.  Another factor that made John Hurt so believable in playing the role of John Merrick is the prosthetic make-up which looked super convincing as if this were actually his body.  Also one of the biggest factors was how Hurt walked, moved, and talked all of these were just phenomenal and I kept forgetting that he was just playing a role of a character.  I would rate this movie an 8.5/10.

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