True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

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True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

3.87 of 5 stars 3.87 · rating details · 880 ratings · 90 reviews

Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school. With these words, one of our most brilliantly iconoclastic playwrights takes on the art of profession of acting, in a book that is as shocking as it is practical, as witty as it is instructive, and as irreverent as it is inspiring.
Acting schools, “interpretation,” “sense memory,” “The Method”—David Mame...more

Paperback, 144 pages

Published February 22nd 1999 by Vintage (first published 1997)

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Oct 16, 2007 Leta rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: theater people

Spencer Tracy used to say that the actor's job was to "know your lines and don't bump into the furniture" which David Mamet has managed to turn into a (slim) book-length rant against Method acting and drama schools. On the up side, Mamet rants very well (consider what he does for a living) but on the down side his belief that the playwright did all the work (this is repeated several times) and his "my way and only my way" absolutism are somewhat off-putting.

I am enjoying it though.

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Mar 20, 2009 Hunter rated it 4 of 5 stars

A stark, uncompromising, incendiary book on the noble legacy of acting.

Some reviews here have interpreted Mamet's bluntness as a disgust or disrespect for acting. Read a little closer... It is the layers of window-dressing, institutionalism, hierarchy, pretension, and disingenuous devotion to the Method that Mamet takes issue with... anything and everything that suffocates the true joy, bravery, and life-affirming challenges of the acting itself.

I can't say with certainty I'd recommend this as t...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars

A bracing slap, this book on acting strips away extraneous concerns like feelings and memories and puts you in mind of the basic point of acting, which is to accomplish concrete goals in scenes with other actors for the pleasure of the audience. That said, Mamet spends a lot of time here ranting against academia and various methods of acting (including Method Acting) without much more practical advice than "trust that the playwright has done a sufficiently good job of writing your role and figur...more

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Jul 12, 2011 Taylewd rated it 2 of 5 stars

Imagine an Enlightenment thinker, sitting on his drawing room chair sometime in the 18th century, wets his pants so hard at the idea of the mind-body dichotomy he enters a time loop directly into post-Stanislavski America, somehow becoming a playwright in the process.

He would be David Mamet, and this would be his book on acting.

I think this is a good book to read for actors as a cautionary tale on the poorer attempts at Method Acting. Specifically the part about "Playing for Time" is so useful....more Imagine an Enlightenment thinker, sitting on his drawing room chair sometime in the 18th century, wets his pants so hard at the idea of the mind-body dichotomy he enters a time loop directly into post-Stanislavski America, somehow becoming a playwright in the process.

He would be David Mamet, and this would be his book on acting.

I think this is a good book to read for actors as a cautionary tale on the poorer attempts at Method Acting. Specifically the part about "Playing for Time" is so useful. In "Playing for Time" Mamet skewers the process of "I receive the other actor's line, and rather than responding to it I check in with my internal emotional life because dammit it's all about me, and then I deliver my line, having showed the audience the kind of human interaction that only ever occurs in shitty theatre productions" (paraphrased). Mamet also points out that the actress (now that I think of it this was sexist, why can't men do this too) who summons tears onstage for the sake of summoning tears is removing herself from the narrative of the play and from the almighty Text for which Mamet seems to think actors are mere vessels, going to his own extreme in the process.

Playing for Time and emoting for the sake of emoting are the issues in this book I really responded to. The problem is Mamet doesn't *replace* his "don't do's" with anything. Yes there is a level of trust in the moment that needs to happen so actors don't spend so much time being internal, but the trust in the Text that Mamet is espousing is Absolute, and leaves no room for the actor to, well, act, and that's why the acting in Mamet's productions is so wooden. William H. Macy can pull it off because he is always riding a wave of in-the-moment thought that is so real and unselfish, but whenever I've watched a film of Mamet's I can't help but think the thought process of his actors is "Ok I can't do this, I can't feel this, just delivering the line, trusting the line, Ok here's my line" which is, in effect, exactly the overinternalizing claptrap Mamet warns against. A hyper-literal interpretation of Stanislavski is just as hard to watch as a hyper-literal interpretation of Mamet.

Dear actors, have you ever had a director who you know is judging you and looking for incontrovertible evidence that you're being too cerebral so he or she can point it out to you with a grin that bespeaks Triumph? Did this director say you were being too Internal without qualifying how so and giving you another option, thus only making you more internal? Does this director still infuriate you when you think about him or her? I have a solution: Imagine said director as a third year student, reading this book unsupervised. Feel better?

Ultimately I like the bubbles about acting Mamet bursts, but I think the way he bursts them are more a reflection of his own cynicism than they are something revolutionary and freeing for actors. Do read it, but exercise caution. It's a book with very good thoughts about acting by a person who does not understand actors.(less)

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Feb 14, 2010 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, acting

A provocative, no-holds-barred, slap in the face to the traditional methods of acting, noted playwright, director and screenwriter David Mamet minces no words when it comes to the art of acting. Mamet's fierce opinions regarding various schools of acting are a breath of fresh air, and True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor is likely to polarize the current sentiments on how actors should prepare.

Terse and short, Mamet gets right to the point, but tends to repeat himself ... well,...more

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Jan 21, 2010 Nick rated it 3 of 5 stars

This has some really good thoughts on acting and being an artist. If only Mamet weren't so narrow-minded! He believes that his ideas are right--and that everyone else is wrong. And while I do believe that, for the most part, less is more for acting, especially on film, at the same time, there have so many wonderful, completely believable performances with actors acting "big." If you look at Mamet's films, you also have to be very skeptical of his advice considering most of the acting in his own...more

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Jun 05, 2009 Chad rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: theater-studies

I recently directed a show in which I was influenced by the writings of Meisner and Stanislavsky to coax very personal performances from my actors. The actors in question were very young (13 and 14 year olds), so I didn't really walk them through the details of The Method, but I did encourage them to dig inside of themselves and find connections to their characters that would allow them to more convincingly play some rather dark moments that would never be accomplished by the typical brand of 'a...more I recently directed a show in which I was influenced by the writings of Meisner and Stanislavsky to coax very personal performances from my actors. The actors in question were very young (13 and 14 year olds), so I didn't really walk them through the details of The Method, but I did encourage them to dig inside of themselves and find connections to their characters that would allow them to more convincingly play some rather dark moments that would never be accomplished by the typical brand of 'acting' that middle schoolers usually bring to the table.

The success of that show and the bravery and maturity shown by those actors single handedly obliterated most of what David Mamet says in this rather odd little book, a volume in which the author derides and openly mocks Method Acting, and from what I could glean, Acting in general.

Normally, if such an industry giant as David Mamet said something so counter to my experiences, I would immediately question my beliefs. Since, however, one of Mamet's opening chapters warns against Ancestor Worship, while reading this book, I felt very comfortable rolling my eyes and laughing out loud and coming to the pretty strong determination that Mr. Mamet 1) hates actors, and 2) had no clue what he's talking about. As a man who primarily writes (and directs), Mr. Mamet may be under the impression that the text is the only thing worth looking at and thinking about, but he shows himself to be quite an ass to suggest that actors (and directors) need bring nothing to the table aside from the ability to memorize and recite lines.

On a sidenote: much of Mamet's mockery of the 'art' of acting sounds a whole lot like the 'bad acting' that Stanislavsky also mocks in his volume, "An Actor Prepares". Stanislavsky, however, goes on to explain the difference between 'bad acting' and effective acting. Mamet just gives a few examples of 'bad acting', and expects this to represent the entire profession, then deficates on the entire endeavor. Wierd.

All that being said, I really couldn't put it any better than one of the previous reviewers here on GoodReads who said it like this:

"As an actor, i'm bothered - as a theatre historian - i'm amused."

This is a very amusing read, thus the three stars, but it really is amusing for all the wrong reasons.(less)

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Aug 20, 2007 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: theatre

as an actor, i'm bothered - as a theatre historian - i'm amused

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May 21, 2009 Neal Tucker rated it 5 of 5 stars

This incendiary book by Mamet will incite some to passionate displays of polemic and others to equally passionate displays of praise. At least he's equitable. The actor has a very difficult job to do. Mamet simplifies and cuts to the quick. The thesis is that the actor, armed with imagination and action, can do what he was always meant to do: the play. "The plays the thing." I will not attempt to distill this book here, but I will say that, having now read it nearly ten times (not exaggerating),...more

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Feb 04, 2010 K.M. Soehnlein rated it 3 of 5 stars

Mamet is nothing if not a provocateur, and you'll probably read this having an ongoing argument in your head with him. He attacks just about every sacred tenet of the way plays are produced -- the Method, actors who research their characters, actors who attempt to interpret their lines, most acting schools, auditions, rehearsals, etc. There are times when you read this and think, He's absolutely right! And other times when you'll wonder, Does he even like the theater? He does. He just doesn't li...more

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Jun 24, 2007 Ryan rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: disaffected college students

here, mamet offers his view and interpretation of what really good acting is, and it can be most effectively distilled as a quotation: "Invent nothing. Deny nothing." meaning that, if it's there in the text, don't hide it in any way, and don't go looking for any greater explanation or supposed-character-based topography than what is presented in the words you are given.

on first reading the book, i dismissed it with the thought: "well, of course he'd say that about acting: he's a playwright!"

it t...more here, mamet offers his view and interpretation of what really good acting is, and it can be most effectively distilled as a quotation: "Invent nothing. Deny nothing." meaning that, if it's there in the text, don't hide it in any way, and don't go looking for any greater explanation or supposed-character-based topography than what is presented in the words you are given.

on first reading the book, i dismissed it with the thought: "well, of course he'd say that about acting: he's a playwright!"

it took me a decade of continuous work in theatre to realize just how right mamet is about everything in here.

if you need proof, simply look at the names we know from theatre history: Shakespeare, Sophocles, Moliere, Lope de Vega, etc. they were all PLAYWRIGHTS. though they were all actors and directors and whatnot in some respect, they were, and still are, playwrights first and foremost, and what we remember and what we have of them are their words.

and what will live on, long after we, as actors, are dead and buried face down at a crossroads with stakes through our hearts, are their words.

and if we do not, as actors, put those words first and above all other considerations of character and emotion and whatever-insane-bullshit the liberal-arts-institution-tenured-faculty acting instructors have invented to justify their next publish-or-perish tome, we are fools and deserve to be denied sanctified interment.

because (lest we forget) the root cause of the whole actor-as-heretic treatment is the idea that actors take on other souls like possessed people.

well, if you stand between your audience and the text they came to hear and decide that you are behooven to conjure some new shit up from some combination of aether and your own paltry imagination (seriously, anyone who thinks of themselves as more creative than Shakespeare, raise your hand... [didn't think so.]) then you deserve to be burned at the stake.

theatre is / should be a holy endeavor. imagine if a rabbi, imam, or priest decided to load up god's word with a bunch of made-up-on-the-spot backstory crap about how Abraham (last figure on whom all three can agree) stayed his hand from laying waste to Isaac, not because of any familial bond or intrinsic sense of right and wrong, but because he had never learned the proper means of ceremonial slaughter because, as a child, he... blah blah blah... or he was not fit to perform the sacrifice, because at that moment he smelled feces because that morning, he... yadda yadda yadda...

that ain't what the congregation came to hear.

and if you don't think of your audience, in some way, as a congregation, you don't deserve them.

this goes to a large part of mamet's message in this book, that often gets buried in academic theatre: you, as an actor, are out there for them. not vice versa.(less)

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Aug 31, 2007 Sammy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: c-the-okay

So, I wasn't too impressed with David Mamet here. I think he should just stick to (screen)plays and fiction and leave the acting lessons to others. Though he does reinstate the phrase: Those who cannot do, teach. He does humbly acknowledge this, though, in the very first chapter.

As an actress I found that most of the book was either reiterating things I already knew, or badmouthing things I have done (i.e. going to school to study). I didn't really take anything away from reading this and found...more

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May 04, 2012 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: in-theory

This book gets five stars because I hate the book so much that I love it. I think everybody interested in acting or theater/film as a perfession or even as hobby should read this book. I understand that the above statement is nothing short of confusing so in hopes to clarify I will put here a review on the book by Alec Baldwin to which I agree with every word, "I agree with almost nothing Mr. Mamet says in this book and encourage you to devour every word. Mamet is a genius."

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Jan 27, 2011 Anthony rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: my-chosen-craft

It's funny because he writes about what I always believed in...you don't need a degree to be an actor. That was one of the biggest reasons why I felt OK walking away from Utah State without one. I just try to portray the character as honestly as that character needs to be to make the show work. He talks a lot about that in this book. It also opened my eyes to some of the things that I already did naturally, but didn't know that it was an actual technique or whatever.

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Oct 08, 2007 Kristen Walker rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: theatre folk

I have read tons of books on acting, and this is my favorite. Basically Mamet cuts through the bullshit. He sweeps aside all the pretension and crap and says, "Just say your freakin lines." There are a few famous actors who came up in Chicago working with Mamet and who ascribe to his methods -- William H. Macy is my favorite -- but most actors tend to pooh-pooh his ideas. Alec Baldwin said something like, "I disagree with everything Mamet says in this book, but I absolutely think all actors shou...more

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Oct 02, 2011 Isabella Tugman rated it 5 of 5 stars

MUST READ FOR ACTORS! Holy cow, what an incredible book. After studying acting my entire life, this is the first time I've read Mamet's philosophy on the subject. Cutting through all the bs of acting training and methods, he eloquently states the purpose of the actor.

I collect quotes, and in almost every paragraph of this book, I found myself wanting to write down his words. Finally I gave up on writing, and just decided that this will just have to be a book that I read over and over again.

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Sep 05, 2008 Adela rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book by David Mamet (the well published American playwright) is observations and ultimately a critique of the state of modern acting (in America). Mamet is scathing not because he's overly mean but because his pen is so sharp! He criticizes the educational institution (how unnecessary it is); the ridiculous bureaucracy of casting agents (ha! how revolutionary) and brings to light how things "used to be" in the theatre profession. He even criticizes different theories of acting, such as meth...more

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May 15, 2013 Luca rated it 3 of 5 stars

Mamet sweeps you up in his ideas on performance and life in general in this compelling, to-the-point quasi-handbook to stage acting. While captivatingly written, his ideas at times seem to be based on the fact that you'd rather not contradict The Great Mamet as it's easy to poke holes in at least a few on a first readthrough.

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Jan 24, 2011 Alexandra rated it 4 of 5 stars

There's a quote from alec baldwin at the front saying that he vehemently disagrees with everything in this book, yet everyone should devour every word. That's exactly how I feel about it. It's smart and no bullshit, and while I don't agree with his ideas they are still a weird kind of wake up call.

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Apr 08, 2013 Lukas rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: acting

After finishing this book, I still have no idea where Mamet stands with me.. I found myself, Like Alec Baldwin (according to his blurb), devourig every word and idea and nodding my head excitedly, but at the same time consciously disagreeing with many, many, many, of his thoughts and ideas... what gives?
Certainly a great read, I'd highly recommend it to any actor looking for his way.

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Sep 28, 2011 Mark rated it 2 of 5 stars

Nuggets of truth buried amidst mountains of crap. The worst is that Mamet imagines himself some kind of revolutionary truth-teller, but his big revelations aren't anything surprising to those of us working in the trenches. I suspect this is the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that will continually engage college theatre freshmen who think it's some kind of secret manifesto ... but it's just somebody getting his panties in a twist over the obvious.

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Aug 25, 2011 Cheri rated it 5 of 5 stars

Many may have issue with Mr. Mamet (myself included) but as far as writing about the craft (acting)-very honest, clear and simple. I've worked with a number of his random one acts and acting exercises-simply fascinating the myriad of interpretations.

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Nov 27, 2011 Dan rated it 2 of 5 stars

Mamet rails against some acting method I've never heard of. He could have condensed his book into a single page. Some of the things on that page would be: don't think getting emotional will help, just read the lines; don't go to acting school.

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Apr 23, 2010 Kirk Kittell marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Recommended by Seth Godin in Linchpin .

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Aug 22, 2009 Chaz rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dispelling LOTS of myths, straight-up advice for young actors, a reminder to older actors who are too full of themselves, who begin to believe what their reviews say about them.

Wanna be an actor? Read this book, save yourself a lot of work.

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May 28, 2011 Des rated it 5 of 5 stars

I think that this may be the best book that I have ever read. Although it is about Acting,Mamet is a superb writer and observer of life. The words simply flow off the page. I think that anyone who likes words would like this book.

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Jan 12, 2013 Xanna Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Amazingly written and daring concepts, I loved his tone and his ideals. Puts acting in a slightly different light and can help highlight ways to get over certain boundaries and insecurities as an actor.

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Jul 10, 2012 Glenn rated it 1 of 5 stars

Take a look if you like being condescended to. Otherwise don't bother. The entirety of his "acting advice" can be summed up as "just read the lines" and "the playwright is god, and you are not." Insufferable.

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May 06, 2009 Isabel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Nothing has quite shaken my foundations quite like this book has. I'm not in complete agreement with it though, but there are bits and pieces that are valuable for any actor, so it's worth a read.

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Feb 29, 2012 Dusty Bayers rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: career

A lot of the advice in the book is great for actors. Although there are some things in this book that I read with a grain of salt or completely disagreed with him on. Like most acting theorists he is hypocritical in this theory.

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About David Mamet

David Alan Mamet is an American author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and film director. His works are known for their clever, terse, sometimes vulgar dialogue and arcane stylized phrasing, as well as for his exploration of masculinity.

As a playwright, he received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for Th...more

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“Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.” — 10 people liked it

“Art is an expression of joy and awe. It is not an attempt to share one's virtues and accomplishments with the audience, but an act of selfless spirit.
” — 8 people liked it

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