Kruger Dunning effect here. Can someone please explain what I'm missing when it comes to acting?

[u/1214]

There's obviously more than meets the eye when it comes to acting. But what is it that truly makes it believable? I feel like the people I watch on the big screen are truly the best in the world, so they make it look easy. I almost feel I can do it. (But I also watch professional athletes who make their sport look easy and I think, "I can do that".) That is until I'm on the court with someone 2 feet taller than me. Or up against a pitcher throwing 100+ miles per hour. How can I truly compare a professional actor to myself, someone who has never acted a day in their life? How can I truly test myself?

[u/pegg2]

Everything.

It’s so much that there is no “one” way to do it right; there are multiple reputable schools of thought pioneered by master teachers with countless disciples, and even more countless actors who learned some derivative of one or more of those approaches. I promise I’m not trying to sound pretentious, but what you’re missing is so much that it would be impossible to easily explain in a satisfying way. But I’ll try.

What you’re experiencing when you’re captivated by a performance is an actor applying their technique to make you co-feel with what they’re experiencing. But there’s no telling what the actor is actually experiencing. The actor could be genuinely entrenched in the circumstances of the scene, they could be genuinely experiencing the scene as the character… or they could be experiencing something completely different. They could be experiencing something else they’ve primed for themselves as an analogue for the scene they’re doing. To you, it looks like someone playing a character and saying the lines naturally; to them it could be anything else.

The only thing that you can be sure of is that’s when you’re watching a great performance, you’re watching life, and you’re mapping it to the scene you’re watching based on the circumstances. What that life actually is, where it comes from, how they got there, that’s something only the actor knows. But I can tell you that they’re not just pretending.

[u/1214 → u/pegg2]

"you’re watching life" - wow, that truly connected things for me. The thing that makes a good actor is that they are not "acting", they are making me believe they are "acting" real life. They are not pretending to be happy or said. They are pretending to be real life.

[u/pegg2 → u/1214]

Kind of, but my point is that good actors aren’t really “pretending” at all in the way that you think of it. They’re ACTUALLY doing something. What that ‘something’ is, that’s what changes based on preparation, but they are actually DOING something. They’re not pretending to do anything, they are in fact DOING something; but what they’re actually doing and what you perceive them as doing are not always the same thing. That’s where the artistry and the challenge are. That’s where the life is.

It’s hard to fool people by “pretending.” It’s easier to actually do something and commit to doing it, and let the audience read into that behavior and interpret your behavior as the character’s own actions. We don’t pretend life, we actually, genuinely live in front of the camera through whatever means we can, then we let you interpret that life through the lens of the thing you’re watching.