Character Development: Mal

In order to fully and personally develop my character for “Inception”, I have refrained from seeing the movie. When I think about my character Mal, I think mostly about her presence in the scene. I think of her as a constant dream like character. While she is present in the moment and is serious in her scene, she is able to act very calmly. I think that if I were to portray this in my scene, it will allow the scene to maintain its tense feeling, while giving an in depth look at Mal and how she reacts. In order to do this, I have thought about her posture and actions during this scene. It is hard for me to know fully what I want to do in the scene physically because we have not staged it yet. However I have thought of possible things that I can do to present my character as relaxed as possible during a passionate scene. For example, I thought that I might start sitting, and as the scene gets more heated, eventually I could stand, or lean toward Ryan (depending if he is sitting across from me). Once we do stage the scene, it will be more helpful in figuring out how I want to present my character and her body language. Another aspect of Mal that I have to portray is how sure she is of herself. The whole point of this scene is Mal trying to convince Dom to choose the reality that she is in. Through this, I feel that deep down she is desperate, but that she doesn't want Dom to know how she is really feeling. That being said, I want to pick out certain lines in the script that my character can immediately get more passionate about when delivering them.