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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Fair warning, OP.  Once you start watching Brit and Australian shows, irs hard to watch any thing on US TV except for a few cable shows and original Netflix and Prime shows.  The acting is so superior that you will cringe watching the starving blondes and pretty boys on US TV.  [/quote]

Oh - DH and I have already started noticing that! the acting is so SO far superior. I wonder why that is, that the quality of the acting is so much better. [/quote]

Some of it has to do with the way British and American actors are trained.  Americans are more likely to be trained in "method acting," which can certainly create great performers (Dustin Hoffman was an extreme method actor, for example).  But it also means that if  the source material is weaker, American actors may not be able to overcome it, because they haven't learned other ways to convey emotion and depth.  (My favorite story comes from the filming of the movie [i]Marathon Man[/i], which starred Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier.  Hoffman had filmed a scene in which his character had not slept for three days.  Hoffman looked like hell, and admitted that he had not slept for three days, either, in order to achieve emotional verisimilitude.  Olivier famously responded, "My dear boy, why don't you just try acting?")

A lot of British television and movie actors came up through the theater world, and many continue to do both.  And the ability to convey emotion even when you aren't feeling it yourself is even more important in live theater--you can't do multiple takes until you get yourself in the right head space, and you have to repeat the performance night after night.

And American actors are often chosen more for looks, so you have very attractive people who aren't the best actors.  [/quote]

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