Flikipedia A branching dictionary of the moving image

acting

noun

The craft of portraying a character in a motion picture: screen performance shaped for the camera, differing from stage acting in scale, in continuity across non-sequential takes, and in the intimacy of the lens.

Origin From the verb act, ultimately from the Latin agere ("to do, drive, perform"); the sense of impersonating a character on stage or screen developed from the general meaning of doing or performing a deed.

  1. Craft The performer's craft of portraying a character before the camera, encompassing voice, movement, and expression as recorded and later assembled into a finished film.

  2. Profession The corresponding profession and its practitioners — the actors, or cast, engaged to embody the roles a film requires. A performer may shoot a film's closing scene weeks before its opening one, sustaining a consistent characterization across takes filmed out of order.

What screen acting is

Acting for the screen is the craft of portraying a character in a motion picture. It is one of the contributing crafts of filmmaking, distinct from the direction that shapes a performance and from the editing that assembles it. The performer supplies voice, movement, and expression, which the camera records and later joins into a continuous character on screen. Because the finished performance is built from recorded material rather than delivered whole before an audience, the actor’s work is bound up with the technical conditions under which it is captured.

How it differs from the stage

Screen acting is commonly contrasted with stage acting on several grounds. The lens can hold a face at close range, so small changes in the eyes or mouth register at a scale a theater audience could not see; performances are therefore often described as more contained than those projected to the back of a hall. Filming also proceeds out of sequence and in short takes, requiring the performer to enter and sustain a character’s state repeatedly and to maintain continuity of emotion and physical detail across shots recorded at different times. The presence of the camera, rather than a live audience, further shapes where a performance is directed and how it is calibrated.

Casting and approaches

Casting is the process of selecting performers for a film’s roles, matching actors to characters and assembling the cast a production requires; it is frequently coordinated with the directing of the film. Among the approaches actors bring to the work, the Method — associated with teachers and studios that developed Constantin Stanislavski’s system for English-language practice — is often cited: it is generally described as an emphasis on drawing a character’s emotions and behavior from the performer’s own experience and imagination. Other traditions place greater weight on external technique, rehearsed gesture, and vocal craft. These approaches are described here as recognized tendencies rather than as ranked or prescribed methods.

See also

  • filmmaking— The collaborative process of creating a motion picture, spanning development, pre-production, production, and post-production, and involving specialized creative and technical roles.
  • directing— The practice of the film director: guiding the creative realization of a screenplay by shaping performance, staging, and camera into finished scenes, and coordinating the work of a production's departments toward a unified film.

Sources

  1. Oxford English Dictionary, "act, v." and "acting, n."
  2. Constantin Stanislavski, "An Actor Prepares"
  3. Michael Caine, "Acting in Film"

Last revised: September 18, 2026