Linda Hunt Speaks to Fans

Academy award-winning actress Linda Hunt last night told an audience of 200 students and local actors in the Kirkland House Junior Common Room that to understand the difference between film and theater acting "you have to go before the firing squad and learn about it on your feet."

"In theater you finally develop a whole, and your energy is put into rhythm and pacing. In film, you must be ready at any time for 'takeoff,'" Hunt said during a question and answer session following a screening of her televised performance in Harold Pinter's play, "The Room."

The recipient of an Oscar for her role in "The Year of Living Dangerously", Hunt also counts among her credits performances in "The Bostonians" and the motion piction version of Frank Herbert's "Dune", Among her stage credits, Hunt lists "Hamlet" and Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard."

Hunt said "The Room" is just one in a series of Pinter plays that will be produced for prime-time televison and directed by Robert Altman "for NBC or ABC, I can't keep them straight."

"On the surface, I don't know what it is about, but in the pit of my stomach I do know what this is about," Hunt said of the play, in which she stars as Rose Hudd, an elderly shut-in whose husband will not speak to her. "It's a very strange piece."

Hunt said Altman was interesting to work with because he allowed his actors freedom. "Bob is best at just making room for you to play, to do whatever," she said. "It's like entering a playpen with Bob."

Reluctant to impose his views on any of his actors, Altman chose to edit one character almost entirely out of the play in order to avoid criticizing the actor.

But Hunt said that a director's ability to edit out a performance in film poses an "alarming" problem not found in theater. "I've never felt really badly used by a director's editing. If you did, you'd never accomplish anything because acting is a collaborative process," she said.