Film Director Claims Actors Best When Hungry

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 38, 16 April 1948, Page 2

Film Director Claims Actors Best When Hungry

That hungry actors are best is the opinion of director Mike Curtiz. All actors, he believes, would be better if they didn’t eat at all. . • “Let them eat when they don’t work,” he said, ignoring the timeproven fact that most actors have to work to eat. “They cannot make love,” he explained, “with well-fed expressions on their faces. They get sluggish and dull and they,are not' romantic.”

Curtiz himself goes without lunch and most certainly would not indulge in hot cakes or bacon and eggs beginning a day. And, because he hestiated to go sb far as actually to order Elizabeth Taylor and Jimmy Lydon to abstain from food on the days the young love scenes were filmed for “Life With Father” he arranged his shooting schedule to do the scenes just before meal times. “That put a yearning look on their faces,” he said. “No one will be able to tell that it was a yearning for food. It is better for artists to starve.”