This chapter unpacks the three empathetic connections that western screen actors solicit as part of creating realist acting’s verisimilar illusion. These connections position the actor as the “observer”—the one who solicits the empathetic relationship—and the sel(ves) with whom she aspires to connect as her “target.” The major exception to this pattern is the performative connection, wherein the actor presents herself as a target for an anticipated observer in the audience by intentionally pushing herself towards that spectator’s attention.

In unpacking these three connections, this chapter attempts to qualify how various twentieth-century American acting traditions prioritize specific empathetic connections over others as key to their Method’s conception of compelling acting, often supported by training exercises for developing appresentations towards that prioritized connection. These training exercises are best understood as the conditioning of tactics for soliciting the empathetic bonds, rather than prescriptions for ensuring them: neither actors nor acting come with assembly instructions. The emphasis here is on the actor’s attempt to form an empathetic bond with her target, hence the recurring use of the word “solicitation.” Simply put, not all acting is compelling; the connections are essential but there is no guarantee that they will each be adequately realized by every actor in every performance.

Realist screen acting is the solicitation of three complementary and simultaneous empathetic relationships: an intrasubjective relationship between the actor and her character; an intersubjective relationship between performing actors and among actors as characters; and, a performative empathy between the performing actor and her audience. These empathetic relationships collectively enworld the quotidian actor as the situational actor-as-character within the fiction. The actor’s transformation from quotidian self to situational self is a strategic reorganization of her quotidian bodymind schema into a situational configuration that is not inherently recognizable as the actor’s quotidian self. And yet, the bodymind movements within this self-reorganization are what solicit the actor’s necessary empathetic connections with her situational self, her fellow actors and surroundings, and her anticipated audience as a self-reinforcing, iterative, dynamic system. In placing the solicitation of empathy at the center of a model of realist acting, this study examines how each empathetic relationship solicits and sustains its appresentations and its target’s intentional pull, with the ultimate goal of producing verisimilar performances.