BUFFALO COUKIER-EXPRESS, Sunday, June 6, 1965
Psychotic's Role Very Challenging
"WHEN I signed for my part In 'Flame In The Wind," says Nancy Franklin, seen as Liz Grey In the ABC daytime serial, "producer Joe Hardy's Instructions to me were explicit: *Don't play the part of Liz Grey . . . become her.' " Till that minute, Nancy believed that actors borrowed mainly from their own experience in developing a character. "But Liz Grey smashed that theory. She is an institutionalized psychotic—something completely new to me."
When she left Hardy's office that day, she knew she had just taken on the most challenging role of her career. She had played a wide range of characters on Broadway and TV. "But in developing these parts I was able to relate the characters to people and events I remembered. But Liz was different. Now I knew what Joe Hardy meant—Liz had to spring solely from my imagination.
"IT WOULD be easy to play a hopeless, incurable psychotic," Nancy adds, "but Liz has a rational existence as well as her fantasies. She's a complicated woman of many layers, suffering unreasonable fears. I want her to evoke compassion among viewers, rather than become merely an interesting depiction of psychosis." Most of Nancy's effort takes place off camera . Actors usually develop and convey a feeling through dialogue and contact they have with each other In a scene. But most of Nancy's scenes are played alone.
By
Paul Raven ·
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