艾玛·汤普森 | 论表演

Did you always want to become an actress?

你一直以来都想做一名演员吗？

My parents were they were both actors, and when I was born was a mistake, cause they didn’t have the money. It really hard for them when I was little, so they had to work and do everything, and they just took whatever they could. Dad was in thing like *** and did a couple of episodes of the original Doctor Who with William Hartnell and stuff like that.

我父母他们都是演员。我的出生是一个失误，因为他们没有钱养育我。在我小时候他们的负担真的很重，所以他们需要工作，什么都做，他们做了一切他们能做的。像父亲他参演了几集由威廉·哈特奈尔主演的最初版本的《神秘博士》。

I thought that I would be perhaps a writer well I suppose I am a writer but I didn’t think this I was going to be an actor. From quite early on I thought I would try to be a comedian, I want to be somebody like Lily Tomlin who wrote with Jane Wagner her own material and did shows that were character based, that was the area I was interested in.

我原本想我可能会成为一个作家，我确实也是作家但是我们想到我会成为一名演员。从很早以前我想我要尝试去做喜剧演员，我想成为像莉莉·汤姆林这样和简·瓦格纳一起写她自己的素材，表演基于人物性格的演出。这是我感兴趣的领域。

Was it a natural progression from comedy into acting?

从喜剧到影视剧是一个自然连续的过渡吗？

I went to university I studied English, I met Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Robbie Coltrane, Ben Elton, we all did comedy together sketch comedy for two years after I left university at the very least, I did my own sketch show, I did musical theatre, I did mime, I did all sorts of stuff. I didn’t act until I was 27 years old, and then even then it was by accident.

我在大学学英语的时候遇到了史蒂芬·弗莱，休·劳瑞，罗比·考特拉尼，本·埃尔顿，我们一起做喜剧小品，至少在我离开大学之后的两年还在做。我做我自己的小品表演，我做音乐剧，做哑剧，我做过所有的这些类别，直到27岁我才开始演戏，甚至那时候也是纯属意外。

Robbie was doing a thing called Tutti Frutti. John Byrne written it’s a Scottish character. They said we need someone who can do the accent, my mum is Scottish I happen to know. Robbie said you want to come and meet them and it happened by accident and I didn’t know how to do it. I had not been trained and I was quite nervous and I thought well I supposed it’s just like doing a sketch only for longer, which is exactly what it turned out to be.

罗比那时候在做一个叫《图提芙蒂》的剧，约翰·拜恩写的。那是一个苏格兰角色，他们说得需要一个可以说这种口音的人。我妈妈是苏格兰人，我恰好知道怎么说。罗比说你想不想来见见他们，那就是纯属巧合，而且我不知道怎么演。我没有接受过训练，相当紧张，我就想估计这个就像是演小品只不过时间稍微长一点吧，结果发现确实就是这样。

Which is your most challenging role?

你最具挑战性的角色是什么？

Probably the one I’ve just done, P.L Travers, probably the most challenging, because she’s so complicated, and in two hours you’ve got to indicate how complex she is and why. And she’s very inconsistent, and you know how people sometimes, you just don’t know what you’re going to get from them. And this happens with a lot of people who are addicted to things like drugs or alcohol or all their own anxieties. She was someone who was so badly damaged when she was a child. She spent a whole life trying to metabolise that damage, I think a lot of us do.

大概就是我刚刚演完的那个P.L. Travers，可能是最具挑战性的，因为她特别复杂。在两小时的时间里你需要表现出她有多么复杂以及为什么复杂。而且她非常矛盾，你知道人有时候，你就是不知道你到底要从一些东西上得到什么。这种事在很多沉溺于像是毒品或者酒精或者所有他们自己的焦虑的人身上发生。她是一个在童年的时候被严重伤害过的人，她用一辈子想去代谢掉那个伤害，我想我们很多人都会这样做。

How do you prepare for a role?

你是怎样准备一个角色的？

Preparation it depends on the part. There was so much information about this woman, so I ingested as much information as I could over a period of six months, listen to everything watched everything read everything, then the trick is to let go of all of that information, because you’ve got to trick your psyche into pretending that it’s someone else. And you can’t do that by being conscious of being that person, so it’s a very odd magic trick, you know, it’s more like a magician’s trick than anything else I think.

准备工作要看这个角色，关于这个女人的信息有很多，所以我尽可能多地区摄取信息。在六个月的周期里，听有关的所有事看所有的东西读所有的资料，之后的技巧就是让所有的这些信息都随风而逝。因为你需要哄骗你的灵魂，去假装那是另外一个人，而在你清醒的知道你正在演这个人的时候是做不到这一点的。所以这是个很古怪的戏法，我觉得比起别的这更像是一个魔术师的戏法。

What advice would you give to aspiring actors?

你会给有抱负的演员什么建议呢？

Never let yourself be defined by how you look. Never do that. Because it’ll be over soon and you won’t develop , so it’s just over. So if people go on and on about how you look, you have to challenge it, you can’t just take it in. You have to challenge it, you have to put up a barrier against that, and you have to exist as a person and a character and a brain.

永远不要让你自己被你的外表所定义，永远不要这么做。因为美貌很快就会流失而你不会进步，所以一切就会结束。所以如果人们一遍又一遍地讲关于你外貌上的事，你要去挑战他们，你不能只是接受，你必须挑战他们，你需要放上一道屏障来对抗它。你需要让自己作为一个人，一种个性，一种头脑来生存。

And that counts for boys as well, but it’s particularly bad for girls at the moment. Because they seem to be required to be models as well as someone asks you or says to you that you have to be thinner, then you have to challenge them by saying why is my character a thin person. It’s my character thin because they are suffering from some sort of eating disorder, give me a reason. Because if this is a cosmetic reason, then what you want is a model and not an actress. So be firm and know you are and what you are. Because you are not a model, that is other people do that, and they do it very well, and it’s a difficult job.

这对于男孩来说也是一样的，但是现今对于女孩儿尤甚，因为她们像是被要求同时得是模特。如果有人告诉你你需要再瘦一点儿，你需要挑战他们问他们为什么，我的角色是一个人很瘦的人吗？我的角色瘦是因为她正在经历某种饮食失调吗？给我一个理由。因为如果这是一个人外貌上的原因，那么你们需要的是一个模特而不是一个演员。所以坚定一点，知道你是谁，你是什么，因为你不是一个模特，那件事有别人去做，而且她们做的很好，而且那是个很不容易的工作。

So don’t be put upon and do not feel as though that’s how you have to be. Because it’s not true, and the more of us who can interact that, the more it will go. As for the rest, don’t ever desire to be a star, fame is a byproduct of what you do. It’s just an accident. What you do you must do, because you love it, because you enjoy it, because you’re good at it, because people enjoy watching you. Anything else is by-the-by really.

所以不要被欺骗，不要感觉仿佛那是你需要成为的样子，因为这不对。我们互相影响的人越多，这种情况减少的就越多。另外，永远不要去渴望成名，名气只是你工作的一个副产品，这都是偶然的。你做这份事业一定要是因为你热爱它，因为你享受它，因为你很拿手，因为人们喜欢看你表演，其他事都是顺带的，真的！

And we’re all very lucky if we get work, and good work, so make you choices carefully. And don’t do things just because they might pay well, do the things that really interest you, do mad wild things, go off do strange things develop yourself, challenge yourself.

我们能得到工作都是非常幸运的，而且一份很棒的工作，多以做你的选择时要谨慎。不要因为可能会有很好的报酬就去做，做哪些真正让你感兴趣的，做点疯狂的，狂野的事，去做陌生的事提高自己，挑战自己！