Talking with Master Acting Teacher and Human Behavior Expert CANDACE SILVERS

By Terry Keefe

[As the Interview grows, we’re expanding our talks with actors, directors, and writers to include discussions with prominent figures in other parts of the business. One of our first is here with Candace Silvers, who teaches a highly influential series of acting workshops.]

Growing up the daughter of the comedy acting legend Phil Silvers, Candace Silvers was likely able to learn a tremendous amount about the craft simply by osmosis. Silvers did become an actress herself and studied under the famed Roy London, but in the past two decades, she has also become one of the most sought-after acting teachers in the business. Her classes focus on learning and identifying the causes and effects of human behavior, and have proven popular as life instruction, as well. Silvers’ client include not only the Producers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild, but also the Remax Group. She has received endorsements from acting luminaries such as Richard Dreyfuss, and her clients include writer Eileen Myers (“Big Love”), actor Josh Radnor (“How I Met Your Mother”), and musical artist Jessica Sutta (The Pussycat Dolls).

The Hollywood Interview: Let’s start off by talking about how you segued into teaching, and when that happened.

Candace Silvers: I started teaching about 20 years ago. Friends used to beg me to teach them, and I would say no, because I wasn’t a teacher and I had four kids…it just wasn’t my thing. Finally, at one point, they came to me and said, “If you had a class and students and material and all that, would you teach?” [I was] thinking they would go away and shut up, but no, they showed up a week later with all of that. That was 20 years ago.

How quickly did you find your stride as a teacher of acting?

I think from the very beginning. At first, we had one paying student and one free student [laughs]. That’s because the free student brought the paying student, and so he got to be free. But, within a week, I had 13 students, and now I’ve had thousands. I think it was something that I did my best not to do...but that happened. I was a mom. I didn’t think of doing this.

Has your class changed significantly since you started teaching it?

It’s exactly the same. I trained under Roy London for ten years. And I think mostly watching my father…I was born in 1961 and my father was one of the biggest stars in the world. I would watch him on television, and I would see him standing next to me at the same time, and I didn’t see a difference. I didn’t see that my father “acted,” as in fake acting. Stakes were really high, and he took the action in front of him, directly related to what the writer had intended, and they filmed that. And that didn’t make him different, it just made the situation that he was in different. That’s what I teach people, and that has never altered, because it is what creates truth. It’s what creates human behavior. It’s how a human being goes from nothing to something, or a one-dimensional piece of paper into a three-dimensional heart, and a body that is born, and will live a finite time and die, and has a fear of loss of itself, or the boyfriend, or the girlfriend, or the job, or the money, or what it is that brings it into the activity or the action that it is in. That has never changed. But now I work with Emmy Award-winning writers, and actors, and directors, and Oscar winners…so, I think perhaps the work has changed because of the level of people I work with.

I wanted to talk about how your classes are structured. How much time is spent on doing actual scenes, and how much on overall philosophy?

It’s a scene study workshop, the acting classes. Whether you’re a writer, director, producer, cinematographer, or editor, it’s a scene study class that I teach. In order to be in the Master Class, you have to be in a life class, which I call a “Human Behavioral Workshop.” But people refer to it as a “life class,” because you can’t deepen in your craft as an actor if your life keeps you small. You have to see where you are stuck, to see where your characters are stuck. The two classes are two halves of the same whole. Whether it’s a character’s human behavior, or your human behavior, what’s the difference?

I wanted to talk about your involvement in Galaxy Quest. It’s a favorite film of mine.

Well, thank you. It’s a big deal to me. I remember the day it opened, and I was sitting in the theater with one of my children that I had taken to the opening, and I kind of whispered, “You’re about to watch a film that mommy made.” [In response] “Well, why isn’t your name on it?” And I said, “Well, one day people will know.” It’s kind of fun to talk about it.

How did you come to work on the project?

Dean Parisot, who was the director, said that he listened to one of my CDs, and called me off of the CD that he listened to. He hired me to help him analyze it and get ready for filming. They hired him, I think, six weeks into preproduction. The original director had walked off the set, and he had to get it up and rolling fast. He called me a savant, which I thought was really fun, as long as it isn't an idiot savant [laughs]. It was amazing working with him. It was my job to find where the truth of the human behavior in these aliens existed.

It’s interesting because what makes Galaxy Quest work is that the aliens all do feel quite real, although the film is a comedy. The characters are grounded, nonetheless.

Thank you. I’m really proud of the work. Dean was an amazing student, and he did beautifully. Another one of my favorite clients for the last five or six years is Eileen Myers, who is one of the main writers for “Big Love.” It was her script that was up for the Emmy this year. When she writes, she writes from the highest stakes obstacle possible, so that everything that falls sort of underneath that rain cloud…it really matters. It’s not just another day. It’s life or death. What is in front of you is impossible to get through, and the director gets to film that impossible activity.

Is it the writing process you’re speaking about there, or the journey the characters on the page go through, or both?

I think it’s one and the same. A writer would come to me and say, “The creators want me to write these characters this week, and these are the notes I was given, and I don’t see the correlation.” And I will just help [that writer] to see the correlation. I can take two pages of any script and tell you what the entire script is about. Anybody can, that knows how to do this.

How is your upcoming class structured?

This particular class is 15 hours, it’s three days. On the 18th, 19th, and 20th of this month. It’s only 15 hours, so it’s clearly not everything, but I teach them the tools of how to get inside of the beginning of the seed of a newborn baby and take an action to get out and follow it, so my writers can write it, my actors can act it, my producers can produce it, my cinematographers can see where it exists, to manifest it into form, and editors can know where to keep that extra impulse, before they edit it out. So, we’re looking for all levels of causation of that human behavior.

Another of your clients is Brian Goodman, who recently wrote and directed the feature What Doesn't Kill You, that starred Mark Ruffalo, Ethan Hawke, and Amanda Peet.

One of my favorite people in the world. When he first came to me, directly out of prison, he used to drive my son to school to pay for his classes. He studied with me for like five days a week, for seven or eight years. I think the magic in his film is that when you see What Doesn’t Kill You, you’re actually watching true human behavior in form, which is a little startling in the first five or six minutes of the movie, because you’re not used to seeing a movie that is actually filmed and edited in its true life form, instead of a pretty polished version of "What if this were real?"

Did your dad give you any specific advice about acting that has really stood out?

I think one hundred million things. He spoke to us in terms of “Don’t do this unless it’s a 9-to-5 job. This is hard work.” And “Your passion is your life.” I would go with him to sets. He did “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum,” and I would sit and watch all the women put on their falsies and everything [laughs]. And then, sit in the audience. And every time he worked, he spoke directly to me. He would do “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum,” and the audience was watching and no one knew that the entire play he was speaking to me. But he understood the subtext and the characters so finitely that he could move it around and no one noticed, because he never left the truth of the character. And this is something that just being in his presence, and having the unbelievable gift of training under Roy London for ten years…they both were saying the same thing from two opposite ends. I somehow was in the right place at the right time - and I only say this because I have a huge following now and people around me with Oscars, that this must be working - somehow, I was just able to receive the information and cognized it so that people could hear.

The next event hosted by Candace Silvers is the "Trailblazing Retreat," this coming weekend,
April 30, 2010 – May 2, 2010. Location: White Lotus in Santa Barbara, CA. For further information or reservations, please contact her office at - Email: office@candacesilvers.com
Phone: (818) 781-8345

More information on Candace Silvers can be found at http://www.candacesilvers.com/.