You know who can’t act: Jerry Seinfeld.
He never could, but he built a prosperous professional career as a funny man turned sit-com star in Seinfeld for a good nine seasons.
Setting aside the fact that he, alongside Larry David, was the creative genius behind the lengthy television show, he was never an actor. A voice-over actor, maybe. But never a heavy, legit stage or screen presence.
But he did come up trumps on the T. V. screen. And make it good. Seinfeld still stands as one of the best comedy shows to ever come out of the Hollywood backlots.
Try and imagine if he could act. Imagine he was as good as his slapstick goofball neighbour Kramer (Michael Richards), his selfish ex-girlfriend Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), or his highly-strung and cowardly best friend George Costanza (Jason Alexander).
Or his rotund postman arch-enemy, Newman (Wayne Knight).
In actual fact come to think about it, it’s possibly better that he never went to acting school since the success of the show ultimately hinged on Jerry Seinfeld the comic writing the jokes and his friends and foes bringing them to life around him.
So I believe herein lies some method to the acting craziness.
But unlike Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Seinfeld didn’t actually meet a sorry end.
Despite falling one year shy of a decade on American and world T.V. screens, Jerry Seinfeld’s career and popularity only gained speed after the show that bore his name finished with the quartet of egoistical New Yorkers standing trial and being duly found guilty as innocent bystanders.
And ending up in prison.
Ironically, from there, the careers of the already mentioned real actors never really took off after the series box sets hit the retail shelves in time for Xmas and Chanukah.
The New Adventures of Old Christine never really hit the comedic mark.
And that racial outburst in an LA comedy club was not the kind of punch line we would have liked to remember the delightful Kramer by.
Possibly the one saving grace was Wayne Knight’s role in Basic Instinct’s infamous interrogation scene – though you probably failed to even realize he was there.
But then there was Jerry. He caused some buzz with Bee Movie, produced a reality Tv show based on marriage and relationship guidance, and at last returned to the stand up comedy stage to great acclaim – and with new material!
I believe the secret to his success is a thespian technique known as Method Acting, in which the actor basically never beaks out of character. Which was simple for Seinfeld, because he was always playing himself – a comedian, always at the beck and call of his audience and with an abiding Get Out Of Fail Card – and never a genuine actor playing a ‘role’.
So all he had to do was turn up, crack some jokes and be himself for 22 minutes an episode and before he knew it, he had worldwide fame, countless industry accolades and royalty payments the Queen of Britain would be jealous of.
And all since he couldn’t act.
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