The Intent to Live Reflection

Adrian Thornburg

I think the main thing that struck me from reading Larry Moss’s The Intent to Live is that

it feels more like a practical guide than some other acting books I have read. It falls somewhere

between Michael Caine’s Acting on Film, which is almost technical in how nuts and bolts it is,

and something like The Invisible Actor by Yoshi Oida, which feels almost exclusively artistic.

The Intent to Live definitely is a guide to acting truthfully, and Mr. Moss speaks in artistic terms

frequently. He talks about getting a scene to “sizzle” and become alive, or that a character’s

hidden objectives and emotional triggers can be “boiling” underneath their skin. However, this

language only serves to intensify the lesson on how to use the brain to keep from using it. What

I mean is, Moss describes what things an actor need to know, not just feel, in order for a

character to come alive. He goes from the very broad superobjective; the thing the character

desires above all else, the want that informs all their decisions the entirety of the story; and gets

more and more specific. He lays out a guide for studying a script that can reliably bring an actor

to feel the character in their belly.

Another thing I noticed is the examples he gives. Some of the acting books I have read

so far use only classic plays as examples of circumstances or to study characters. One, although

I cannot remember which right now, exclusively used William Shakespeare’s Hamlet to illustrate

every single one of their points. Since Larry Moss has worked with so many recognizable actors

of today, he can speak from experience the techniques and processes of actors like Helen Hunt in

As Good as it Gets, or Renee Zellweger in Chicago. These are movies and performances that

just about anyone can picture and relate to much more clearly than the multitudes of actors that

have played Hamlet. He does still use classic plays, even using Hamlet to explain given

circumstances. However, he does it in a way that you can see the scene he is talking about in

your head, and it is marvelous. As the reader, you get a sense of what the results of these lessons

could be. In fact, they literally are the results of his instruction.