MEET THE EXPERTS
Who taught Margot Robbie to skate, Christian Bale to speak Cheyenne? Find out here.
>>>Acting isn’t just about knowing your lines and hitting your marks: Performers have to become instant experts in whatever their characters do best, and those specialized talents shift with every film. So, in order for the actors to become proficient in a new skill, studios call in outside help. Here are four experts in their field who stepped forward to teach sewing (“Phantom Thread”), ice skating (“I, Tonya”), Native American language and culture (“Hostiles”) and tennis (“Battle of the Sexes”) techniques that helped those films’ stars make it all look easy, natural and — hopefully — award-worthy.
SUSAN CLARK | SEAMSTRESS, “PHANTOM THREAD”
Expert résumé: Clark, a former teacher of dressmaking and tailoring and now a specialist sewing volunteer at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, was brought in to speak with director Paul Thomas Anderson, costume designer Mark Bridges and star Daniel Day-Lewis (as fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock) about mid-20th century couture dressmaking rooms and about the outfits themselves. Next, she was asked to appear in the film — Clark plays Biddy, one of Woodcock’s seamstress employees. “We weren’t allowed to tell anyone we met,” said Clark. “It was a secret.”
Lessons learned: Day-Lewis “in particular” asked Clark (and fellow V&A volunteer Joan Brown) to point out what could be improved or if something was being done wrong; that included assembling a lacy dress in the correct order. “Daniel had already learned to sew and make garments,” she recalls. “He was quite apt in sewing.”
Expert extra: The phrase “phantom thread” has no particular meaning in sewing circles.
Expert résumé: Former professional tennis player Spadea formed his own talent agency to help athletes get body double roles in films. While attending the casting for “Battle,” he was asked to try out and “it all flowed after that.”
Lessons learned: Spadea worked closely with star Emma Stone (as Billie Jean King) for nearly two months, though less intensively with Steve Carell (Bobby Riggs). “It comes down to technique and repetition,” he said of teaching actors to appear like champs. That applied to holding rackets at the correct angle and ensuring the actors hit the ball the way King and Riggs did. “It was like an art project that we had to re-create as closely as possible,” he says, though he adds he wishes they’d had more time. “It’s about having your brain train a whole motor system.”
Expert extra: Spadea played matches for Carell as Riggs, but also jumped in as a ball boy in one scene when another performer failed to do it convincingly.