nonactorly

English

Etymology

non- +‎ actorly

Adjective

nonactorly (comparative more nonactorly, superlative most nonactorly)

1. Not actorly; nonactorish.
   • 2014, Wendy Lesser, Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books, page 81:

     Delivering those perspective-shaping lines in his own flat, Midwestern, nonactorly voice, occasionally standing among and even touching the audience members as he spoke, David Cromer personally cemented the connection between the play's reality and our reality, for we knew that as the director he really was the play's stage manager.

   • 2018 September 24, Richard T. Jameson, “Review: The Thin Red Line”, in Parallax View:

     Apart from the little-known Caviezel — who has a wonderful, nonactorly woodcut of a face, suddenly breaking into a lopsided, backcountry grin — the most prominent are Sean Penn as the existentialist-without-portfolio Sergeant Welsh; Elias Koteas as the caring “battlefield lawyer" Captain Staros; Nick Nolte as his nemesis, the classically educated, heartless careerist Colonel Tall; and Ben Chaplin as Private Bell, haunted and sustained by dreams of his faraway wife.

   • 2023, Aaron Hunter, Martha Shearer, Women and New Hollywood:

     Kael bemoaned the lack of bona fide movie stars circa 1968. the year in which Funny Girl was joined at the top of the box office by the narratively and formally ambitious, and decidedly nonactorly 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the special effects take the front seat.

   • 2023, Hannah Freed-Thall, Modernism at the Beach:

     The author's insistence that the part be played in a "mild blank tone," and that Winnie speak her lines with "vocal monotony," "tranquility," and "transparency" also likens her to Bardot, who famously performed all of her roles with a nonactorly minimum of expressivity.