Playing for Real: Actors on Playing Real People

This is the first book to explore how actors play real people. How do you capture Hitler, Mugabe, or a serial killer? How do you portray living monarchs or political leaders? Is it possible to embody a genius like Mozart, Woolf or Darwin? What are the pressures of performing an icon like Marlene Dietrich?

Bringing together original conversations with award-winning actors, the line-up includes Jeremy Irons, Dame Eileen Atkins, David Morrissey, Henry Goodman, and Sir Ian McKellen.

MARY LUCKHURST is Professor of Modern Drama and a founder of the new Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of York. She is an award-winning playwright and director and an authority on dramaturgy, acting, directing and political theatres. She has published Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre for Cambridge University Press, edited two substantial volumes for Blackwells A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama and the Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Drama, and two volumes of interview material for Faber& Faber On Acting and On Directing. She is the co-author of The Drama Handbook (with John Lennard) for Oxford University Press, and the editor of The Creative Writing Handbook for Palgrave. In 2006 she was declared to be one of the 50 best teachers and researchers in British Higher Education and made a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

TOM CANTRELL is a researcher at the University of York and is investigating performance process in contemporary documentary theatre. He is also a playwright and an actor, and teaches in the Department of Theatre, Film& Television.