Discover Nikkei

https://www.discovernikkei.org/en/interviews/clips/1679/

Her Approach to Preparing for Roles

I mean, you know, you just have to make your choice yourself. No one’s there, no one’s – when you audition, no one’s there telling you what to do unless you go to an acting coach and take private lessons. But I didn’t usually do that, I would just make up my own mind how to do the role. And when I did Mistress Ching, you know, playing the Chinese lord there, I – it’s just out of my head, you know. No one taught me or no one said, “This is how you should do it.” I just thought she would be very dramatic. So it’s mostly – whenever I’ve done something, it’s choices that I make as to how to do the role. If you’re doing a stage play and you’re rehearsing, and rehearsing, then you work with a director and maybe they give you adjustments, or something, but movies or television it – you know… Movies it takes a little more time, but television it’s very fast-paced. You just do it, and then move onto the next scene, next scene. What I like about plays is that you’re working on it – you’re fine-tuning that role, your relationship with the other characters. I feel like it’s always growing.


acting actors artists communication entertainers information theory movies sociology telecommunication television

Date: November 8, 2018

Location: California, US

Interviewer: June Berk

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Takayo Fischer, born in November 1932, is a Nisei American stage, film, and TV actress. During World War II, as a young child, she and her family were forcibly evacuated from the West Coast and spent time in the Fresno Assembly Center before being relocated to Jerome and Rohwer concentration camps. Fischer later lived in Chicago, Illinois, where, as a young adult, she won the crown of “Miss Nisei Queen.” She has appeared in dozens of major Hollywood films, including Moneyball (2011), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), and Memoirs of a Geisha (2005). She also appeared in the stage production of The World of Suzie Wong in New York in 1958 and many productions with East West Players in Los Angeles. (June 2018)

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