Full Metal Jacket...Acting

Full Metal Jacket is a great movie and most of the actors are amazing. Even more, this movie covers all the bases of acting. Why do I say this? Well, I’ll explain. When studying Chapter 5, we were introduced to the different types of actors that can appear in a movie: the chameleon actors, personality actors (that either take their personas from role to role or play against it) and non-professional actors. If we take Sergeant Hartman’s character, played by R. Lee Ermey a real life sergeant, we can see a non-professional actor at work. This character brings a feeling of realism, because we are in the presence of an actual army sergeant. The way he expresses himself and acts around the recruits, with such control, arrogance and strength gives total accuracy. It even gives this feeling of being there, being screamed at. And that is the purpose of using a professional from another field, to give realism and accuracy to the role.
In the other hand, we see a performance by Vincent D'Onofrio, Private Pyle, who is known as “the human chameleon”, for the wide variety of roles he has played and for the quality of his work. This is proven when watching the development of his role in Full Metal Jacket. Throughout the movie, we can see Private Pyle evolve from a dumb, slow, even retarded cadet to a mad, angry, crazy marine. The transformations and the intensity given to this character can be seeing as two different roles in the same performance. What do I mean by this? It’s easy, if we watch Private Pyle at the beginning of the film and then compare it to the Private Pyle in the middle of the film, they are totally different. They can be alienated. Vincent D’Onofrio gave us a taste of his capability. There is no need to see other performances by D’Onofrio since here we can see how he can transform, not even from role to role but from moment to moment.

Finally yet importantly, we can see Matthew Modine playing Private Joker. In this case, we know that M. Modine has played a few roles as a veteran, not exactly the same role but they are alike in certain ways. However, he is known for working against his persona, even though his personality can show a bit in all his roles. It has been said by his co-star actress Kelli Williams, “He's so good, you never actually see him acting, He can disappear into different roles, and you never know what to expect. He's a rarity.". In the other hand actor Eric Stoltz says, Modine’s acting comes from his personality. So by this, several other comments and his performance in Kubrick’s film we can assume he is a personality actor. But it most be distinguished that he fits in both styles of actors: the personality and the chameleon actor. In this case, it’s a matter of point of view and most be open to interpretation