From THE TIMES (of
London)
SATURDAY
MARCH 10 2001
Fit
to Play
Acting
the part of a thinner person changes your
life
BY
VICTORIA MCKEE
Roy
Scheider is promoting a fitness regime based on the
Stanislavski Method
WHAT
if you could wake up one morning and no longer have
a desire for a cigarette, or a chocolate bar, or
any of the other vices that you know are destroying
your health, figure or joie de vivre? Sound
too good to be true? Well, the American actor Roy
Scheider believes that you can, simply by following
a method which actors use to prepare for their
roles. It's a question of Acting Well, the name of
the new programme Scheider believes could be a
breakthrough in the field of health and
fitness.
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Think of the willpower it must have taken for Tom Hanks to
slim down for his recent role in Cast Away, or for
Demi Moore to pile on the muscle and resculpt her body to
become GI Jane, so physically different from the
stripper she had just played in Striptease. Well,
Scheider claims that we all can accomplish such phenomenal
feats with our bodies if we mentally prepare for them in the
way that actors do.
The
key lies in starting to think like an actor preparing for a
part using what has come to be known as the Stanislavski
Method, after Konstantin Stanislavski, co-founder of the
Moscow Art Theatre, who brought it to the West.
Scheider
claims to have used the actor's technique to dramatically
improve his fitness since his teenage years. "I was a fat
child," he admits. "I weighed 196 pounds when I was 14. I
had to do a lot of work recreating myself. I exercised every
day in order to become an actor. To motivate myself to do
this, I created a thin character in my mind, a Roy Scheider
who was a slim, athletic person who could move well, and I
therefore did what that person would do. I became thin and
fit, not because it was my goal, but because it happened in
the process."
Ten
years ago, shortly before the birth of his son, Christopher,
Scheider, now a fit 68, realised he had been smoking for too
long.
"I'd
been smoking heavily all my life, but I decided it was time
to redefine my character for myself into what I guess you
would call a father figure," he says. "I had just been told
by Brenda (Siemer, his wife) that we were going to have a
baby and I realised that I would be a father for the rest of
my life.
"I
felt that a father should set a better example for his child
than the kind of character I played in All That Jazz,
who smoked non-stop and died of a heart attack. So I created
a new character for myself who didn't smoke and literally
gave up smoking overnight. I thought, 'What if today I say
that Roy Scheider is not a smoker' and convinced myself that
the character Roy Scheider was too smart to be a smoker. I
told myself, 'He wouldn't be that dumb' and it
worked."
Scheider,
who will be at the Cannes Film Festival in May, promoting
his latest film, The Good War, jokes about being the
"poster boy" for the programme he has put into practice in
his own personal life with such dramatic effect. He is happy
to act as a motivator and hopes to involve interested
friends, such as Helen Hunt and Gwyneth Paltrow, he says, in
promoting it too.
He
is working with teachers at the Stella Adler School, in New
York, which has long taught the technique to actors,
including Scheider himself, to bring this method to the
masses. Yet the work in this area is being pioneered with
cardiologists in St Petersburg, Russia. Scheider himself
went to Russia and saw at first hand how bad the problems of
heart disease are there, with the average life expectancy of
men only 59.
"Doctors
say they just can't get across messages about eating
healthily and exercising," he says. "Changing bad habits
would go a long way towards preventing the huge problem
there."
An
American cardiologist, Dr Ronald Masden, is working on a
clinical trial of the Acting Well programme for Russia,
where the intention is to provide it free through television
and the Internet, while his colleague Dr Alexander
Shaknovich is overseeing a clinical trial of the programme
in New York.
"The
major problem for doctors in this field is how to get people
to exercise, eat right, and take necessary medications
consistently," Dr Shaknovich says. "Acting Well could be the
magic bullet that doctors can prescribe for effective
behaviour modification."
Since
Acting Well will be marketed as a scientific programme, it
is being put through trials to prove its efficacy, although
as with any mind-over-matter programme, it is always
difficult to prove such things conclusively. A documentary
is being recorded for American television chronicling the
experiences of candidates using a variety of weight-loss
programmes - and to compare the success of Acting Well with
the success rates achieved by other methods, such as
WeightWatchers.
"To
date, all candidates who have used the programme for weight
loss and maintenance have reported 100 per cent efficacy,"
Scheider says. "However, there may be a several-month
'rehearsal' period before a candidate can 'perform' in life
as a thin person."
Other
benefits envisaged for the Acting Well programme are that it
could be effective in stopping all kinds of substance abuse.
"People can use it not just to conquer addictions but
phobias and personality problems, such as shyness and
uneasiness in crowds - or just to build self-esteem,"
Scheider says. "You can start to act the part of someone who
deserves a raise, who is confident and outgoing."
The
Acting Well programme - which should be available in book
and video form later this year, as well as through various
acting schools and fitness centres and by telephone and
Internet coaching sessions - involves about 30 minutes of
morning preparation, using motivating psychological
exercises such as those actors use.
"You
keep a journal of your feelings and progress and when you
start to really feel the role and actually begin to like the
part because it is giving you benefits. There are different
ways of getting there, and I always feel it doesn't matter
if you work from the outside in or the inside out," Scheider
says.
"But
you have to keep it up. I know that even today, at my age,
sometimes when I'm undressed and alone I can look in the
mirror and see the fat 14-year-old boy I once was. That's
one of the things that keeps me in my daily regimen of
exercises. I don't want to be that character any
more."
Copyright 2001 by Victoria
McKee
LINKS: See the videotape! www.theneopress.net/aw/
Original
Article
Acting
Well