Why Alfred Hitchcock thought all actors were “cattle”
It was 1941, and principal photography had just commenced. One morning, the cast of Mr and Mrs Smith arrived on set to discover the studio populated by three young calves, each wearing the name of a cast member around its neck. Before coming to America, British filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock had upset the Hollywood film industry by describing all actors as “cattle”. This was his way of making light of the situation.
For Hitchcock, actors were an unfortunate necessity. “When a film has been properly staged, it isn’t necessary to rely upon the player’s virtuosity or personality for tension and dramatic effects,” he once said (via Raindance). “In my opinion, the chief requisite for an actor is the ability to do nothing well, which is by no means as easy as it sounds. He should be willing to be utilised and wholly integrated into the picture by the director and the camera. He must allow the camera to determine the proper emphasis and the most effective dramatic highlights.”
The best actor, then, wasn’t the one with the most training or the most dazzling eyes. No, the best actor, in Hitchcock’s view, was the one most willing to forget herself. It may be that this rather harsh and puritanical view of the acting profession resulted from Hitch’s stepping into the film industry when it was still silent. This was before the advent of the Hollywood studio system and well before actors were “stars” in any meaningful sense. Actors were more mannequins than they were narrative agents.
During his conversation with French director François Truffaut, Hitchcock was asked about his “all actors are cattle” comment. “Maybe I meant it; maybe I didn’t mean it,” he began. “It was accepted in a humorous way. But in a strange way, while I get on very well with actors, the bad ones – the badly behaved ones – are so badly behaved, to me, that the rest of actors get tarred with the same brush.”
Explaining himself, Hitchcock continued: “I can’t remember when I first made the comment. It may have been in the early days in England when we used to use actors who were playing in the theatre at the same time. And I know that when they had a matinee, they’d leave the set, I thought much too early for a matinee. They’d give themselves time for a very leisurely lunch, so I would have to rush the scene through to let the actor set off for his matinee. I felt that if he were as devoted to his work as I was, he’d be contented with a sandwich.”
Hitchcock’s distaste for actors seems to have been a reflection of their distaste for filming. Later in the interview, Hitch recalls overhearing two female co-stars discussing the day ahead. “One would say to the other, ‘What are you doing now, dear?’ And the other would say, ‘Oh, I’m filming,'” he recalled. “And she would use a tone of voice as though she was saying, ‘Oh, oh, I’m slumming. Which brings us to the point of those people who come into our business… into our medium for money only.”
Hitchcock required complete control over his craft, and he may also have felt that actors’ egos could easily become barriers on set. His favourite actors seem to have been those who allowed themselves to be lulled into the emotion he required of them. Anyone with too much agency was a danger. “If he wanted you to be angry, he would sometimes provoke you to a state of anger,” Marnie actor Diane Baker once said. “I remember one scene where I had to be strong and furious. He just stood there and wouldn’t look at me or wouldn’t talk to me before the take…. Later on, I realised it was all a tactic, but it added an extra element to the scene.”
Such behaviour may seem slightly overbearing now, but it didn’t stop Truffaut from singing Hitchcock’s praises. “In America, you respect him because he shoots scenes of love as if they were scenes of murder,” he told the American Film Institute in 1979. “We [the French] respect him because he shoots scenes of murder like scenes of love.”
