What's the worst thing about filming in conditions like this?
It's a very beautiful house but it's very cold, and all filming is annihilatingly boring.
It's an extraordinary thing, you can't be an actor, especially a film actor, unless you can put up with the annihilating boredom of standing around in terrible conditions, although people are very kind and give you a lot of attention.
What is boring is the waiting around and then the endless doing it and the doing it again and again, because there are so many factors in filming which are outside the actors' hands.
So you've got to be able to put up with all that boredom and still stay in good humour, because you can't act if you're angry because it will get in the way. It will be all right if you're acting anger, that's fine. But normally you've got to be wry and on top of it because things change all the time, and you catch the director's eye and he makes a little sign and wants it shorter or quicker and then you do it and it's fine, but you've got to stay in great good humour.
Most of the time I find that quite easy really because I get on quite well with people and I do like laughing and I'm used to being contradicted and rejected.
That's another thing about an actor, you've got to be able to put up with rejection, but then I think actors, like Jehovah's Witnesses, are half in love with rejection.
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Father Bernard
