acting sober

Here at Baroque Mansions we can’t really remember a time when we didn’t, to the question “What is your favourite movie?” answer: “Why, it’s The Philadelphia Story, of course.” This movie has everything. And one of the main things it has is Jimmy Stewart’s masterful drunk scene. (It’s the movie that made me fall in love with Jimmy Stewart. AND Cary Grant. To this day, my ideal man would be like a cross between those two and Gerard Depardieu.) (Come to think of it, he kind of is…)

Stewart won an Oscar for this performance. Interviewed about it afterwards, he said that the crucial thing he had realised was that most people, when they do a drunk scene, try to act drunk. But the thing most drunk people do, when they really are drunk, is try to act sober. So that’s how he played the scene.

Anyway it hardly matters how many times I see it – even this little clip – it still makes me laugh every time.

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