Character actor Edmund Gwenn famously quipped on his deathbed that “dying is easy, comedy is hard.” So if you’re new to the game and anxious about landing the funny, you’re not alone.
Knowing how to get into comedy acting and bring down the house once you’re there is a great skill for any actor – and it can expand the number of roles available to you. You could stumble into an unanticipated comedy career, or you could follow in the footsteps of dramatic actors who showed the world a new side when they took on a comedy part. Think about Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) or Kate Winslet in The Holiday (2006).
Eager to refine your comedic chops and learn the rules of comedy acting? Here are five tips to get you started.
JUMP TO
The difference between a joke landing or falling flat can be a matter of milliseconds. “Comic timing,” as it’s known, is as crucial for actors bringing a comedy script to life as it is for stand-ups during a set. It’s how you pace a line, pause after punchlines, and develop a rhythm with co-stars that allows for a little spontaneity in each performance: building up to jokes, subverting expectations and giving audiences time to laugh.
“Sometimes when there’s an interruption or word put in a gap, it looks like it’s improvised, but it’s actually rehearsed surgically with this real precision,” Steve Coogan said in an interview with British GQ. “‘So I pause there. You put that one word in there, and just when I draw a breath, you say that word.’ It’s really, really military precision.”
“It’s very musical,” comedian Victoria Wood told BBC Radio 4. “The whole thing: building up a rhythm, building up an expected pattern, and then breaking it.”
Take your comic timing up a notch by:
- Practising and experimenting in front of an audience – even if it’s only friends and family – allowing your performance to react to their reactions.
- Breaking down lines to identify the operative words you can emphasise or pause before or after.
- Analysing how professional comedians time their jokes.
- Giving yourself the freedom to slow down, pause, and build up to jokes.
- Altering how you say your lines until you land on the sharpest, most effortless back-and-forth rhythm.
Just as exploring and performing a character necessitates a deeper awareness of what Stanislavsky called their “given circumstances,” you can truly grasp what makes a character funny only by understanding who they are, what matters to them, and why they act as they do.
The comic actor Rowan Atkinson certainly understands his characters. He described Blackadder to GQ as “more a victim than anything else.… He is that slightly downtrodden but clearly quite intelligent man who genuinely thinks that he deserves better.” Mr. Bean, in contrast, is “essentially a child trapped in a man’s body.… He’s got the innocence, but also the anarchic instinct and the unpleasantness, the uncompromisingness of children.”
The two offer strikingly dissimilar characters and comic styles, but both are grounded in appreciation of how they think about themselves and interpret the world.
“There’s nothing less funny than somebody trying to be funny,” comedian Romesh Ranganathan told the Guardian. “I loved [stand-up comedian and actor] Jack Dee, then I met him and I became the least funny human to exist because of my desperation to say something amusing.”
On stage or screen, audiences smell awkwardness. Being funny is monumentally harder when you’re forcing it, while relaxed comic actors can prompt giggles simply because they feel natural and comfortable. Experimenting with delivery is also easier when you’re not feeling the pressure.
The best advice is simply to commit to it. Go all in and own whatever you’re doing – maybe something won’t land or you’ll look slightly ridiculous, but being able to continue is what makes a good comic actor. Leaving your comfort zone and surprising yourself often generates the most humorous performances. Improv is a great baptism by fire for vanquishing nerves. As Amy Poehler said: “There’s power in looking silly and not caring that you do.”
Actress Penelope Keith once described her young self as “very tall, very plain, and very long… I knew I wasn’t going to get very far on my looks, and so I thought I’d better be the ‘gag girl’.” It worked. Her statuesque frame and penchant for facial expressions suited snobbish characters like Margo Leadbetter in The Good Life (1975–1978) and Audrey fforbes-Hamilton in To the Manor Born (1979–1981).
Zero in on your own unique comedy selling points: Maybe you have a particularly expressive face, a naturally high energy level, or a distinctive voice. Lean into what makes you distinctive and how it can be made comedic. Think of how Ronnie Corbett employed his short stature or how Alan Rickman’s deep voice, slow delivery, and Shakespearean background was channelled into his bitter and regretful character in Galaxy Quest (1999).
“The best definition of humour I ever came across was from the philosopher Henri Bergson, who said it was ‘a social sanction against inflexible behaviour’,” John Cleese said in an interview with the Harvard Business Review. “What Bergson means is that if you behave appropriately for what is happening around you, you are not really funny.”
Inappropriate but still believable behaviour often manifests in exaggeration, which is a key comedy acting technique. Even the most grounded shows and films deviate from strict realism with actors amplifying certain aspects of their character and portraying them with exaggerated mannerisms. Cleese is a fantastic example, exaggerating frustration, egotism, and misanthropy to great comic effect in Fawlty Towers (1975–1979).
If you’re not quite tickling any funny bones, try pushing how your character speaks or acts a little bit further. It’s all part of heightening the comedic tone and surprising the audience into spontaneous laughter.