ACTING A FILM BY SOPHIE FIENNES

ACTING brims with ideas, fearless performances and emotion, taking the viewer inside the experience of acting. Celebrated theatre makers Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, of the internationally acclaimed company Cheek By Jowl, reveal their process through this thrilling and immersive film from director Sophie Fiennes.

ACTING TRAILER

"Describing an actor’s process is notoriously tricky; Acting instantly soars to the top of the class. Observing as the blood is pumped into Shakespeare’s Scottish Play is a privilege awarded by Cheek By Jowl’s collaboration with Fiennes." SCREEN DAILY 2024

ACTING premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024 and in the IDFA Signed section of International Documentary Festival Amsterdam. In April 2025 Cate Blanchett hosted the film's London premiere at Barbican. Director Sophie Fiennes was given special focus at London's Ciné Lumière in May 2025, with screenings and events around ACTING in the Beyond Words Festival at The French Institute. The film continues to screen in festivals internationally.

In a derelict mansion on the outskirts of London, we witness eight actors - four Macbeths and four Lady Macbeths - work in pairs to play Shakespeare’s iconic and fated couple.

"There is a constant slippage between acting and living. It's fascinating, alarming and very often hilarious. Sometimes I think of ACTING as couples therapy, through the Macbeths. Only with Cheek By Jowl would such a film be possible." Sophie Fiennes

ABOUT CHEEK BY JOWL

Cheek by Jowl is the international theatre company of Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod. Its landmark productions, performed in more than 50 countries in the 44 years since the company was founded, have influenced the creation of theatre and the experience of audiences the world over. Actors including Adrian Lester, Tom Hiddleston, Daniel Craig, Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams, David Morrissey, Jason Issacs, Gwendoline Christie and Matthew MacFadyen all developed their talent working with Cheek by Jowl in their early careers.

Declan Donnellan, Nick Ormerod and the cast of ACTING : Grace Andrews, David Burnett, Amber James, Orlando James, Sophie Khan Levy, Jonathan Livingstone, Ekow Quartey, Hannah Young.

Donnellan’s new publication, THE ACTOR AND THE SPACE (2024), is described by Cate Blanchett as, “a hand grenade of a book.” His best-selling first book, THE ACTOR AND THE TARGET, was recently referenced by actor Jeremy Strong (Succession) in GQ magazine as one of the ten things he cannot live without, sending it viral almost 20 years after publication.

Cheek By Jowl

About ACTING director Sophie Fiennes

"Its a wonderful film and a thoughtful film. I think it shows something that could change theatre in this country forever. " Cate Blanchett, Barbican ScreenTalk 2025

"What Cheek by Jowl values isn’t a style but a condition: a shared alertness between actors, where meaning is discovered through encounter rather than imposed by interpretation. We work by stripping away the ornamental and the psychological until only responsiveness remains — one person truly answering another. On film, you can see the same principle in miniature: the camera registers not performance but relation, the flicker of thought as it moves between two people, alive, unpredictable, and exact." Declan Donnellan, 2025.

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