PERSONAL FEELING AMONG ACTORS.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 11, Issue 793, 27 July 1888, Page 2

PERSONAL FEELING AMONG ACTORS.

One of the questions put to actors and actresses by the author of a aeries of impertinent queries lately was whether " personal feeling," love or the reverse, toward the actor or actress with whom they were playing on the stage affected their actions,, and to what extent. I am led (says a writer in the, EcJio) to deal with this question, because the other day, in receiving from an actress the account Of her life, I noticed that she said, speaking of a certain part she had played, '* That was the time when I. was supposed to be in love with Mr So-and-So, with whom I acted." •" And were you ? " I asked. "So far from it," she replied, " that we seldom or ever spoke when we met off the stage. He was my personal antipathy ; but he was an excellent actor, and we were so well Buited to each other that people actually used to speak scandal about us. Despite the fact that the part suited me, and that it drew tremendously, I was really glad when it was over, and when the actor went to one theatre and I to another." . Talking to a second actress the other day of a part she played in a memorial matinee some time back, and of the wonderful effect she and a well-known actor produced on the audience, I was astonished to hear her say, " Yes, but what a horrid man ! I shudder when I think of him." " And yet," I replied, you seemed to carry the love scene in the play to perfection." " Yes, but 1 forgot the man in the actor, as all do, I think, who are thorough artistes." " That is precisely the reason why I do not answer the ' famous question ' at all," said an actor to me when I mentioned the subject to him, and asked for his opinion. V Fancy a man being asked to say in print what he felt towards or thought of the various actresses whom he has played prominent parts with. First of ail, it would be unfair to the adies ; then injurious to oue's self, and, finally, the public could only get a wrong mpression. I never knew but two cases where a man was thoroughly upset by his antipathy to the actress with whom he was cast. In one case she was vicious, and did what she could to throw him out by little petty tricks which she played ' him ; in the other case the excuse was a valid one, upon which I need not enlarge. ' But it must be noted that neither of these men were even mediocre artistes.