Actors with perfect imitations.

I recently went to see a series of ten-minute plays at a community theater in my neighborhood. One of the plays featured a couple with a newborn baby. The story opened with them in the midst of a quiet argument one night, both parents tired and stressed. Thus far, it was perfectly normal and straightforward.

At one point, Dad picked up a stuffed animal from the head of their bed and started speaking as though he were the animal to illustrate a point. He spoke directly to his wife (the baby was not supposed to be in the room during the scene).

As he spoke, he gave the animal a perfect pseudo-Muppet voice and started articulating its front legs as if the animal was expressing itself with its hands. It was clear that this puppetry was something the actor was good at. And in that talent, the actor unveiled a gripe that I have long held with many actors I’ve seen on screen and stage.

The actor playing Dad was clearly skilled with impressions. But was the character? This was a tired, anxious, confused man, father of a newborn, in the middle of a fight, who was not otherwise loud, performative, or sarcastic. Why would he suddenly have a picture-perfect voice ready to go for this toy? He was not putting on the voice to entertain the baby, as dads may be wont to do. Why would he not only put effort, but actually excel at this imitation?

Sure, it can be argued that this character is perhaps a natural mimic, and so his effort was just naturally what came out. But it happens way too often. Actors tend to put on pitch-perfect voices or accents when their characters mean to imitate someone, matching their target perfectly. It may well make sense for the actor to have this ability, but why would their character?

For example, an actor is playing a completely average, normal guy who does not have any particular talent or interest in accents, imitation, or public speaking. But then he starts telling a story to his buddies about his tough, hulking boss. He puts on a deep, gruff voice to imitate him —and that voice is suddenly extremely well done, as if the guy is an actor.

Or, a teenage girl is lamenting about taking her driving test at the DMV, and to illustrate just how weird and annoying the DMV employee was on their drive, she breaks out into a perfect mimicry of the woman’s shrill voice, maybe even complete with an annoying Brooklyn accent. This is even as the character is a bored, disaffected teenage girl who is not otherwise cinematic in any way.

While most people can imitate others at least slightly, it seems like actors can’t help but always create characters who impersonate targets with utmost skill and commitment. It seems like they don’t want us audience members to think THEY, the actor, can’t master the voice, in real life. They remind us that they’re talented, but they entirely forget that the character they’re playing has no reason to be. They forget that when average, normal people put on a voice or accent in a story, it's usually only in service to getting the point across, not as a means of showing off their ability to imitate.

Playing French happens to be a common one. If an actor plays someone who is recalling their meal at a French restaurant last week, they will inevitably imitate their server with a perfect French accent and articulate mannerisms.

While that may work for someone actually playing a French server, that isn’t what they’re doing! They’re playing an average Joe who is not an actor, not a mimic, and maybe not even very expressive. So why does Average Joe break out into a fully-realized French accent just because the actor who plays him can do so?

I feel like nobody is really grasping what I’m talking about, so go ahead and reread this entry again until you do.

With that, I am the only person in the history of the world to have ever published a thought about this. I’m just pissed I missed the TikTok boat where I could’ve condensed this all down to two sentences and overlaid it on a looping video of a sunny field and made a hundred thousand dollars. ✍︎