The Dark Shadows Actors and Actresses conveying emotions?

[FireRose]

Which actor or actress on the show do you think did very well at conveying or had trouble conveying the following emotions in a storyline on the show.

Anger
Jealousy
Fear
Love
Hate
Annoyed
Boredom

Example: Grayson Hall always gets accused of over acting. Well the only time I ever see that is when she was in a scene where she had to show fear. She just didn't pull that off well. She seem to try to hard to convey that emotion and it just didn't work exactly the way she intended it to.


Now Grayson Hall had no problem with Love. As Julia everytime she looked at Barnabas it was clear she was in love with him and everytime Barnabas talked about some other woman. She conveyed Jealousy, Anger and Annoyed very well. Those emotions came across very loud and clear.

FireRose

[Julia99]

Sam Hall has said Grayson honestly couldn't portray surprise as nothing surprised her. . .

[michael c]

great topic firerose.

you're absolutely right about grayson hall.fear is just not her thing.she comes across as hysterical.
but she conveys the other emotions very well.

i was thinking that nancy barrett conveys several of these emotions very well.

when carolyn stoddard is angry you know it!think of the way she treated joe when they were dating.
jealousy is another specialty.when she was interested in burke devlin and he was spending time with vicki and laura she really expressed herself with sarcasm and accusations.
fear comes to mind when david was trapped in the crypt and no one could find him.she seemed genuinely terrified during this part of the story.
she seemed to hate laura and cassandra and her coldness spoke to that well.
annoyance is another emotion she does well.crossing her arms,pouting,acting petulant and again sarcasm.
i thought she expressed boredom well early on.it was obvious that she wanted to be anywhere other than collinsport and with that she created alot of drama around herself.

love i'm not so sure about.while she obviously loved her mother when it came to men it seemd more like need or infatuation than love.in this she comes across as very neurotic.

[stefan]

I think Lara Parker made jealousy and anger famous as Angelique.

Thayer David was also good with anger.

Jonathan Frid was tops for emoting guilt, fear and romantic longing.

John Karlen was very good at emoting fear.

I agree that Nancy Barrett was very good at conveying all sorts of subtle emotions without overacting.

KLS was great at being "wistful".

Alexandera Motlka conveyed innocence to an amazing degree.

[Raineypark]

John Karlen was very good at emoting fear.

He was absolutely brilliant at it.  And given that he was playing Willie Loomis, he could not have been more perfectly cast...

[AndreDuPres]

Lara Parker did a wonderful job with being smug--she has such a distinctive smirk!  Nancy Barrett could perform almost everything--others have noted annoyance, petulance, and anger, but I think she emoted love excellently, as well, especially as Melanie and even Carolyn occasionally.  True, Grayson is rather laughable in her horror scenes, but she's on top of things otherwise.  Selby was wonderful as a villain--he was grand with smug contempt as when his mind switched bodies.

[stefan]

I should also add that I think David Ford was excellent in conveying love. I really bought that Sam Evans loved his daughter Maggie and was devastated, if not ready to fall apart, when she became sick. That storyline was one of the best Dark Shadows. David Ford must have have also noticed it was great gothic drama because he was fantastic.

[Gothick]

I'd like to comment just how fine Joan Bennett is in certain of these scenes on Dark Shadows.  I particularly think of some of the Liz '66 storyline, the Jason Maguire sequence, Naomi mourning her daughter's death in 1795, and Judith in 1897.  As Flora, it was fascinating to see JB play a frivolous lady's novelist in the early weeks of 1840, given that I doubt JB had a frivolous bone in her body.

Not to mount the soap-box, but as I have written before, I think the whole concept of "realism" in acting is given far too much critical emphasis.  Only occasionally did a more muted, "realistic" style of acting play well on Dark Shadows... in the case of Grayson, you see this in some of her scenes as Hoffman in PT 1970.  By and large, DS was a big, theatrical canvas which had to be played with a carefully mixed blend of style, elan, and emotional commitment.  The commitment the regulars showed to the scripts, even when the latter went off the cliff, is truly inspiring.

G.

[Ian]

Excellent idea for a topic!

My personal thoughts on Louis Edmonds:

I think we all know that he was EXCELLENT at emoting anger. Just about any scene involving him in....just about any storyline you can find him angry about something.

I think that he tended to incorporate anger into a lot of his other emotions. As an example, as Roger...when David was lost in, he seemed to show a general concern for him, denoting the fear, yet he was still quick to anger and blame just about everyone around him for David's disappearance.

One opposite character, or so it seemed to me, from what I just described though is when he played Joshua Collins. You can definitely tell, especially by the end of the 1795 storyline, that Joshua is genuinely worried about Barnabas, and that he loves him. There was definitely some excellent emoting on his part there.

Fear I don't think he did THAT great with. There was still that smug thought that he would come back and "take over." The memory of in 1968 when Quentin's ghost had "overtaken" Collinwood is still haunting me. I keep hearing the "You haven't won! We'll be back!" playing over and over in my head.

[stefan]

You can definitely tell, especially by the end of the 1795 storyline, that Joshua is genuinely worried about Barnabas, and that he loves him. There was definitely some excellent emoting on his part there.

I agree with you there! Joshua Collins is one of my fav characters. Certainly he must not have been an easy character to play and LEdmonds deserves an A for his acting homework and insight. Mr. Edmonds did an excellent job of subtly allowing gentler emotions to filter through Joshua's hard-heart without turning him into a mush. He also somehow managed to convey the extreme apprehension, under Joshua's stoic and proud exterior, when he found out Barnabas was still alive and might be a murderer. Excellent work!

[PennyDreadful]

Not to mount the soap-box, but as I have written before, I think the whole concept of "realism" in acting is given far too much critical emphasis. 

Gothick, I'll join you on that soap-box because I feel exactly the same way.  If a role isn't played in a completely naturalistic manner, it apparently isn't considered "good" acting nowadays. *sigh*  Whatever happened to style?  What happened to all those awe-inspiring grand theatrical actors?  Unfortunately, they are certainly not on TV or in the movies anymore- and less and less in the theatre.

  Back to the topic at hand - I will echo the thumbs up for Nancy Barrett on all emotions.  Also, Jonathan Frid was excellent at portraying rage.  When he roars "WIIIILLLIEEE!!!", I still get scared.   

~Penny Dreadful~

[Miss_Winthrop]

One of my faves is Dennis Patrick when he played Paul Stoddard.  In particular, the hotel room scene when he knows his time is approaching and he has to pay up for the debt incurred many years earlier.  Great stuff! I also liked the part where Liz Stoddard shows up at his hotel room.  She was so cold, so devoid of emotion and so aloof.