INTERVIEW WITH FOREST WHITAKER
BY: BETTINA CIRONE
Forest Whitaker at the Walter Reade Theatre preceding a screening of The Last King of Scotland.
“Playing Idi Amin changed me tremendously as an actor. I went to places I had never been before – externally and internally. The vibrations I encountered in my psyche to play that role brought through me were truly life changing when you go to a space with the character and believe in the space of the character.
“As an actor, you get to live a new life, and there is a piece of it that sticks with you. It is a tough process letting go of your characters. You get away from the big part of the character, but hopefully you won’t let it get into your essential self. I do have a process where I take a shower and try to get rid of the character like he is washing away from me.
“I gave myself over to that character completely. I committed myself entirely. I gave everything I had. You do bear a big responsibility when you do characters like that. I worked really, really hard. I knew I had done everything I could. I felt I did the work as it should have been done. I had to bear the responsibility to bring out the honest and true spirit of that character. You never know how people are going to receive what you have done. But it gives you a good feeling when you see how much people appreciate what you have done.
“I went through two schools of acting but I learned more about acting from meditating and from my marshall arts teacher.”
When did you start meditating?
“Decades. I don’t know too many other ways you can walk into a room and be that character.
“I have worked with a lot of first time directors and some of those filmmakers have made the best films I have ever done. The most recent one I worked with has a unique vision of the world.
“I love to direct, because you can create a whole universe. There is so much private work in acting, but as a director you work with so many people. The next movie I direct is going to be a little more personal. I am doing this from scratch. It will be a smaller film. There is so much I want to say, and its hard to find the perfect director. It is so important that you do it with harmony and in an investigative way…(It is biographical.) It will be about children soldiers in Uganda. It is about their leader. Most of his troops are children who have to kill their families. Right now, he has stopped. He is waiting for amnesty. The people want him to stay. He has been invited to eat with the families he has killed. The topic is how do you resolve rhe conflicts you are in. I won’t do this film for a lot of money. It will be short.
“I have never played a cameo in a movie, but I think I want to try this. I am working on it now.”
About his role in Clint Eastwood’s movie:
“I was brought up in R&B. I didn’t know jazz musicians except for a few of the famous ones. I started with the instrument and studied how he held himself in still photos. I worked on his gravelly voice. There really is not a lot of footage of Charlie Parker”.
To an actor asking advice about auditioning:
“When I would go on auditions it was not like I didn’t want the job, but it was more important for me to play the character well. Getting the job was secondary and often a surprise. The reality is I got one job even though I changed the words at the audition and I was reproaching myself afterwards. But the writers changed the words to those that I used at the audition. But then as I was playing the role it was a struggle for me to convince them to change the words back again to the original words because as I got to know and feel the character, I realized that character would not use those words that I used in the audition.”
“Playing Idi Amin changed me tremendously as an actor. I went to places I had never been before – externally and internally. The vibrations I encountered in my psyche to play that role brought through me were truly life changing when you go to a space with the character and believe in the space of the character.
“As an actor, you get to live a new life, and there is a piece of it that sticks with you. It is a tough process letting go of your characters. You get away from the big part of the character, but hopefully you won’t let it get into your essential self. I do have a process where I take a shower and try to get rid of the character like he is washing away from me.
“I gave myself over to that character completely. I committed myself entirely. I gave everything I had. You do bear a big responsibility when you do characters like that. I worked really, really hard. I knew I had done everything I could. I felt I did the work as it should have been done. I had to bear the responsibility to bring out the honest and true spirit of that character. You never know how people are going to receive what you have done. But it gives you a good feeling when you see how much people appreciate what you have done.
“I went through two schools of acting but I learned more about acting from meditating and from my marshall arts teacher.”
When did you start meditating?
“Decades. I don’t know too many other ways you can walk into a room and be that character.
“I have worked with a lot of first time directors and some of those filmmakers have made the best films I have ever done. The most recent one I worked with has a unique vision of the world.
“I love to direct, because you can create a whole universe. There is so much private work in acting, but as a director you work with so many people. The next movie I direct is going to be a little more personal. I am doing this from scratch. It will be a smaller film. There is so much I want to say, and its hard to find the perfect director. It is so important that you do it with harmony and in an investigative way…(It is biographical.) It will be about children soldiers in Uganda. It is about their leader. Most of his troops are children who have to kill their families. Right now, he has stopped. He is waiting for amnesty. The people want him to stay. He has been invited to eat with the families he has killed. The topic is how do you resolve rhe conflicts you are in. I won’t do this film for a lot of money. It will be short.
“I have never played a cameo in a movie, but I think I want to try this. I am working on it now.”
About his role in Clint Eastwood’s movie:
“I was brought up in R&B. I didn’t know jazz musicians except for a few of the famous ones. I started with the instrument and studied how he held himself in still photos. I worked on his gravelly voice. There really is not a lot of footage of Charlie Parker”.
To an actor asking advice about auditioning:
“When I would go on auditions it was not like I didn’t want the job, but it was more important for me to play the character well. Getting the job was secondary and often a surprise. The reality is I got one job even though I changed the words at the audition and I was reproaching myself afterwards. But the writers changed the words to those that I used at the audition. But then as I was playing the role it was a struggle for me to convince them to change the words back again to the original words because as I got to know and feel the character, I realized that character would not use those words that I used in the audition.”
Forest Whitaker
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