The mentor to some of Britain’s top performers believes the best acting comes from a childhood sense of playfulness – and is fraught with danger
There’s a famous yarn about Laurence Olivier leaving the stage in anguish after a barnstorming performance. Don’t you know you were brilliant, asked a colleague. Of course, said Olivier – “but I don’t know why”.
Defining the core of outstanding performance and learning how to pass it on – it’s a slippery quest to which New Zealand-born acting teacher Kenneth Rea has devoted more than 40 years. “In the 1980s some people began to become exceptionally successful,” says Rea, speaking from the studio in his London garden, “and what fascinated me was, what were those people doing that the rest were not? What is this secret quality, and can I find the crucial exercises that will produce that?” He learned from revelatory teachers in Japan and China, and gradually distilled it down to seven key qualities. “There’s no easy recipe for how to become an outstanding actor – but this is the nearest they can get.”
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