Kissing: An actor's manual

My friends today are incredulous at the thought, but I once acted Romeo in the school play, opposite a rather highly strung girl I liked well enough, but certainly didn’t fancy — an indifference I am sure she reciprocated. Our love scenes, in particular a pecking kiss, excited the Lower IV to uproarious mirth and, indeed, I could hardly keep a straight face myself.

Since then, however, I have maintained a prurient interest in how actors manage this delicate aspect of the profession: what actually goes on in those intimately torrid episodes? What is artfully faked, what is for real? What does a fellow do when he is unstoppably aroused? Is there a code of etiquette?

It turns out that the subject is shrouded in secrecy or, at least, a veil of embarrassment. I tried to prise solid information out of Geoff Colman, the distinguished head of acting at Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, but although he was enormously interesting about the culture of acting today, he was disappointingly evasive about the specifics.

“Our courses don’t ring-fence love or hate or any emotion outside a specific narrative context,” he says. “We don’t teach how to do kissing or sex in the abstract, any more than we teach how to love or hate or sit on chairs.”

But what do students feel about getting up close and personal with people they may not be attracted to, I asked.

“It doesn’t matter what you feel yourself,” he responded gnomically. “The point is what you tell the audience. After you’ve sweated it out in the community of the rehearsal room, social inhibitions fade — once a scene has been repeated and analysed five times in a morning, nobody can get carried away about anything. It’s all been choreographed.”

Cush Jumbo, one of his many former star pupils, confirms this, but doesn’t initiate me any deeper into the mysteries. “Acting students spend much of their time living and working in each other’s mental and physical pockets, so by the time it comes round to a big snog, we’re pretty relaxed about it,” she says. “Out in the real world, it’s slightly different: you just hope you’re working with someone who’s as nervous as you are about it.”

For further elucidation, I called my friend William Chubb, who remembers some instruction when he was at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. “We had a famous teacher called Rudi Shelly, and kissing got mentioned during his lesson on crying. His advice was very commonsensical, along the lines of: don’t think of it as a person that you’re kissing and try not to giggle.”

“I had to do sex once for a television drama called Extremely Dangerous. It was fun doing it, and involved flesh-coloured underpants and chaperones, but the results were rather embarrassing as it seemed to me that I made an unrealistic amount of noise. But I think you’ll find talking to young actors about sex is a minefield.”

Taking a deep breath and trying not to sound creepy, I consulted Eleanor Wyld, a terrific young actress currently touring in Barney Norris’s new play Visitors.

“Almost everything I’ve done since leaving drama school has involved a love or sex scene,” she sighs. “Love scenes are wonderful to do — full of big emotions. Sex scenes aren’t horrible exactly, but they can be terrifying. I’ve been lucky that all the guys I’ve worked with have been very considerate, but I have heard unprintable horror stories about other people going, erm… beyond the call of duty.”

Wyld continues: “Even with people you like and trust, these scenes feel exposing and awkward. “Rehearsing them tends to be giggly rather than sexy, and requires careful negotiation with modesty pouches and nipple patches. By far my worst moment was with my first long-term boyfriend. We had met when we were playing Romeo and Juliet, but eventually had a horrible bust-up. Then we were cast again as lovers in another play in which his character proposed marriage to my character. That really did require some serious acting.”