I was hoping someone would go with The Gentlemen - that was my second choice.
Angelus was an entertaining villain - and well the reason I got obsessed with Buffy in S2. I was also admittedly watching the series in 1997 mainly for Angel and Giles.
But I'm not certain the best thing was that you could tell Angelus and Angel were the same person. Boreanze basically plays himself. He's a "re-actor", he doesn't really create a character. And he just reacts to things. Works very well in television shows by the way, because unlike film or stage, you aren't given the character's motivation, back story or arc, because they writers tend to make it up as they go along. So in TV, all you really should do is "react" or get your lines right, and hit your marks, and follow the direction. And emote with the eyes. Of the shows he did, the hardest was Angel - mainly because the writers were "hands on" and Boreanze had no real control.
I recently watched S3 of Teen Wolf - and a young actor on that series plays a character who gets possessed by a Kitsun Fox Demon, and what that actor managed to do, and subtly at that blew me away. He does it with his eyes. And some subtle changes in body language. You know it's the demon, but you also know it's a dark side of the character. He changed how he talked, and various little gestures.
Boreanze's performance didn't. I also saw what Marsters did with Spike, the small little things he did when Spike got a soul, subtle, so subtle. And all with the eyes.
I remember Robert Carlyle telling Jane Espenson in a commentary on Once Upon a Time, that he looks at an actors eyes. That's where all the acting comes from - the eyes.
The problem with most television series, particularly the procedurals like Bones, Castle, Seal Team, is the actors aren't that interesting - they react, but they don't really emote that well. And I'm not as pulled in. Watch Anthony Stewart Head in Buffy - he does almost nothing, but his eyes say it all.
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Angelus was an entertaining villain - and well the reason I got obsessed with Buffy in S2. I was also admittedly watching the series in 1997 mainly for Angel and Giles.
But I'm not certain the best thing was that you could tell Angelus and Angel were the same person. Boreanze basically plays himself. He's a "re-actor", he doesn't really create a character. And he just reacts to things. Works very well in television shows by the way, because unlike film or stage, you aren't given the character's motivation, back story or arc, because they writers tend to make it up as they go along. So in TV, all you really should do is "react" or get your lines right, and hit your marks, and follow the direction. And emote with the eyes. Of the shows he did, the hardest was Angel - mainly because the writers were "hands on" and Boreanze had no real control.
I recently watched S3 of Teen Wolf - and a young actor on that series plays a character who gets possessed by a Kitsun Fox Demon, and what that actor managed to do, and subtly at that blew me away. He does it with his eyes. And some subtle changes in body language. You know it's the demon, but you also know it's a dark side of the character. He changed how he talked, and various little gestures.
Boreanze's performance didn't. I also saw what Marsters did with Spike, the small little things he did when Spike got a soul, subtle, so subtle. And all with the eyes.
I remember Robert Carlyle telling Jane Espenson in a commentary on Once Upon a Time, that he looks at an actors eyes. That's where all the acting comes from - the eyes.
The problem with most television series, particularly the procedurals like Bones, Castle, Seal Team, is the actors aren't that interesting - they react, but they don't really emote that well. And I'm not as pulled in. Watch Anthony Stewart Head in Buffy - he does almost nothing, but his eyes say it all.