Character Profile

Death, also known as the Grim Reaper is frequently imagined as a personified force, due to its prominent place in human culture. In some mythologies, the Grim Reaper causes the victim's death by coming to collect them. In turn, people in some stories try to hold on to life by avoiding Death's visit, or by fending Death off with bribery or tricks.

DEATH IN OTHER CULTURES

Slavic

In Poland, Death, or Śmierć, has an appearance similar to the traditional Grim Reaper, but instead of a black robe, Death has a white robe. Also, due to grammar, Death is a female (the word śmierć is of feminine gender), mostly seen as an old skeletal woman.


Scandinavia

In Scandinavia, in Norse mythology death was personified in the shape of Hel, the goddess of death and ruler over the realm of the same name, where she received a portion of the dead.[8] In the times of the Black Plague, Death would often be depicted as an old woman known by the name of Pesta, meaning "plague hag". She wore a black hood. She would go into a town carrying either a rake or a broom. If she brought the rake, some people would survive the plague; if she brought the broom, however, everyone would die.


India
In Hindu scriptures, the lord of death is called King Yama. He is also known as the King of Karmic Justice (Dharmaraja) as one's karma at death was considered to lead to a just rebirth.


Basic traits of my version of "Death":
- Enjoys his work
- Precise, clean but edgy
- Show off
- Loves himself

I will be looking at the character Death as a sly, laid back and manipulative kind of person. I want him to be a 'professional geezer' kind of person and will be basing some of my characterisation on the Tom Hardy's representation of the Kray twin's. Twin brothers Ronald "Ronnie" Kray  and Reginald "Reggie" Kray were English gangsters who were the foremost perpetrators of organised crime in the East End of London during the 1950s and 1960s. With their gang, the Firm, the Krays were involved in armed robberies, arson, protection rackets, assaults and the murders of Jack "the Hat" McVitie and George Cornell.
Tom Hardy plays them as very self assured and confident. They are not afraid of anything and it is interesting to put that trail into Death, as Death has nothing to fear, not even dying.

This character is very different to anything I've had to play before and I am finding it challenging. Physically, Death needs to be a large presence, and although height is on my side in that sense, I am not wide/muscular and I need to make up for that and make sure I'm pushing my physicality and my posture to the maximum. 

We have also looked at animal studies and using animal like traits to personify our character.

I will be comparing Death to a snake. 

Marlon Brando studied a gorilla as part of his preparation for playing Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. He observed and imitated the gorilla’s behavior and then incorporated parts of it into his performance. He watched how the animal stood, how he stared, how he moved, how he roared. 

There are 5 components to animal studies:

Breath - How the animals breath affects the movement

Spine - Some animals have upright spines, straight spines, bent spines etc...

Weight - Heavy or light?

View of the world - How do they see their environment? hostile or passive?

Rhythm of life - How does your animal live? Agitated and paranoid as prey? Or relaxed as a predator.

I have found some useful questions to use when doing animal studies. I will answer them for my character: 

• If your body is your animal’s body, how does it feel?
My presence is bigger than my physical body. I want it to feel like I am bigger than I actually appear.

• Where is it heavy?
The animal is heavy at it's head.

• How does it move its mouth? Its ears? Its cheeks?
It's mouth moves fast and silently. A snake doesn't have ears, they have vestiges of the apparatus for hearing inside their heads, and that setup is attached to their jaw bones, so they feel vibrations very well and may hear low-frequency airborne sounds. It is almost like how Death is on another plane of existence and sees and hears things mortals do not.

• How does it lie down, sit, crawl, walk, or roll over?
Snakes can only move by slithering but it does so almost silently. It can sometimes lift it's head up and come into a attack position when it feels threatened.

• Are its eyelids heavier or lighter than yours?
Snakes have no eyelids. Each eye is covered with a single, transparent scale. These eye scales protect the eyes from mechanical damage, and prevent the eyes from drying out, just as an eye lid would do. Just like how Death doesn't spare or miss any living man, a snake never blinks and will never miss a thing.


Biblical views of snakes
People have an instinctual fear of snakes that stems back for thousands of years. It probably started out as a survival instinct, when there was no literature or way of telling which snakes were harmful or not. On the other hand, biblical literature has encouraged us to fear snakes for an entirely different reason. Other people simply misunderstand snakes, thinking that they are slimy, nasty creatures.

Snakes (and serpents) get plenty of attention in the Bible, which mentions them over 80 times. They are always seen as loathsome creatures, associated with poison and craftiness, quite similar to how I want Death to be portrayed. 

Another person who would be good for character inspiration is Mark Lamarr:

He has that perfect cheeky, sarcastic comedy to him and I am going to try and incorporate him into my acting.