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I’ll admit it. I used to be a bit closed minded. (Ok, we’re all closed minded in some ways and I probably still am about a lot of things). But in this case, I’ve changed. As a person who was scarred for life from being exposed to scary movies at too early of an age, I’ve always been a fraidy cat when it comes to entertainment of the horror genre. In fact, once, when a former boss mentioned to me that he wrote horror novels in his free time, I started looking at him differently, maybe not trusting him as much as I did before. I’ve changed my tune since then and I have my acting career to thank. 

I remember working on the set of one of the “Paranormal” movies as an extra, and the actor who played the villain in the scene that day stood out to me as being one of the nicest and friendliest actors of any of my background gigs. I’d wondered if he was going out of his way to be friendly to contrast with the character he was playing. Knowing what I know now, I think there is a correlation, but not in that way. 

As an audiobook narrator, I get the privilege of playing all of the characters in a book. I may be cast initially because of my voice sounding perfect for the main character, who is usually good and likable, but I also have to realistically play all of the people who cause conflict for the protagonist as well. I can’t do a good job of that if I don’t have empathy for them too. 

It may sound like an impossible task. How can I have empathy for someone who does horrible things? If I’m narrating a book with a witch, shouldn’t I just use my voice to make the character sound like what we all know a witch should sound like? No. In fact, that’s a good way to turn off the listener and get labeled as a bad actor, even if the audience can’t put their finger on why they aren’t enjoying the performance.

Trying to get into the head of an evil person sounds scary. One might fear that they will take on some of the characteristics of the person. The trick is to figure out the basic needs and wants of that character and play those. Is the villain after money? power? revenge? All of us have had the need for those things in our lives, although hopefully not to the extent that we do evil things to achieve them. The villain just has much stronger needs and a different set of morals. It’s an actor’s job to find out those needs, and empathize with the character. Just like a commercial actor may pretend they are eating ice cream in order to convincingly sell yogurt, an actor may think of a time when they had a similar need to the villain’s, for instance, the need to eliminate a stubborn stain from a shirt, in place of the villain’s need to eliminate a heroic prince who is trying to break into the dungeon to save a princess. 

Nobody thinks of themself as “the bad guy”. Not even villains.  We may know that we have flaws, but we generally do what we believe to be the right thing based on our own set of morals. That’s what makes us human. Knowing this makes it much harder to treat anyone else as less than human, even if they are on the other side of some arbitrary moral line. 

Thanks for reading!

Rebecca H. Lee
 

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