Many actors I know are shy. It may be what’s attractive about the profession for some of us: it’s a way out of ourselves. But sometimes, in order to find a character’s guts, we have to use some of our own. A few of my favorite roles were created by pushing through my shyness to ask a question.
Once, I was freelancing as a stylist for a photographer in Chicago and was between jobs. I thought it’d be fun to volunteer at a community summer theater in Indiana. Thinking I could usher or help backstage, I went to a meeting. But the discussion focused on the season’s plays and what parts needed to be cast. A young man, Lee Mastrodonato, was to direct “Count Dracula” and mentioned a character named Renfield, a minion who eats flies.
To this day, I don’t know where I got the guts to approach him and ask if he’d ever thought of casting a woman in that role. I’d never acted before, never even thought of it, and never wanted to eat flies. But I asked. The director suggested I audition, and I did. It was the beginning of my career.
Some time later, I was cast in a film shooting in Baltimore. I had auditioned on tape for the role and was meeting everyone for the first time at a table read. My character was a secretary. Most of her dialogue was functional, just part of her job—until her employer was kidnapped. Then she had a few very personal, heartfelt words to say. I’d created a backstory for her on my own to help give her life, but I asked the director what he thought he might need from the character. He said, “She’s excruciatingly shy.” With some trepidation, I asked if it might be OK if I only spoke when I was compelled to after the kidnapping.
He conferred with the writers and they removed all of my character’s lines except those few words that she just had to say. It might not be the norm to ask for fewer lines, but it helped me create an eccentricity and depth for the character. My advice is certainly not to ask that your lines be cut. My advice is instead to not be afraid to ask a question, because the answer can be a gift. Of course, asking questions is the basic job of an actor.
As a character actor who often does small, supporting roles, sometimes there’s just not enough information available to breathe in a whole life, so we ask questions to fill in the spaces. I’m certainly not shy about asking questions of myself, and it’s great when I’m surprised by the answers. And there are times when the questions that don’t have answers are even more intriguing than the ones that do.
I’ve just finished a fourth season on “The Blacklist,” playing Mr. Kaplan, a mysterious woman whom I often had to play without knowing all the answers. But Mr. Kaplan has lots of guts and is anything but shy.
Blommaert has worked across TV, film, and theater, and has recurred on four seasons of NBC’s “The Blacklist.”
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