How to make yourself cry: An acting coach's secrets for on-command emotion

Tears are unique to humans, but human infants share distress calls with most other mammal and bird young, often when separated from their mothers.

Crying extends far beyond infancy. A University of Pittsburgh research paper on the neurobiology of human emotional crying puts it this way: “Tearful crying facilitates social connections.”

We cry when we’re happy, we cry when we’re sad, we shed tears when we see our favorite actors going through a fictional breakdown. Here’s what to know about emotional expression.

How to make yourself cry

According to Charlie Sandlan, artistic director and master teacher of acting at the Maggie Flanigan Studio in New York City, physical tears are the least important part of expressing emotion. But if you want to emote convincingly or produce some real tears on camera or onstage, you’ll need to start with your imagination.

Sandlan teaches the Meisner technique, created in the 20th century by actor Sanford Meisner. The Meisner technique revolves around this motto: “Acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.”

Try this: start by daydreaming offstage about something heartbreaking or frustrating or upsetting to you. It doesn’t have to be something that’s happened to you, just something that would evoke that particular emotional response. You have to know your triggers – the things that bring you to life, the things that humiliate you, the things that break your heart.

“In a daydream, you can triumph over injustice, you can be enraged by injustice, you could be heartbroken by injustice,” Sandlan says. “Once you understand that about yourself, as an actor it’s a little piece of gold because I can use that cord in me in an imaginative way.”

Once you’ve got that feeling, attach yourself to it when you’re in a scene to keep it going. With enough practice in emotional accessibility, you’ll be able to easily tap into that feeling for several takes or shows – you may even produce some real tears in the process.

The most important thing to remember is not to force it. While most people think the ability to cry on cue is the hallmark of a good actor, Sandlan says “crocodile tears” won’t do anything to move an audience. Sometimes it’s better to portray raw, real emotion without a single drop.

“It’s not about the quantity of your emotional life, it’s about the quality,” he says. “The best actors understand that emotional life is fluid.”

Once you’ve gotten this down, it’s time to perfect your emotional expression. The difference between an emotional breakdown in life and acting is that acting is aesthetically pleasing – Sandlan says. It can be uncomfortable, but it shouldn’t be filled with voice cracks and so overwhelming that you can’t tell what’s going on.

Sometimes the most touching moments are when an actor successfully portrays someone trying their hardest to hold back tears and failing.

“You can’t hide what you don’t have,” Sandlan says. “You have to be fully alive and then you’ve got to try to keep (it) together.”

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How do actors cry?

Some actors do use a little help from the makeup department to produce tears. There are eye drops, Vaseline-based products and even menthol tear sticks to irritate the eye.

Acting guru Cate Blanchett herself shared last year that she was taught to turn upstage and pull a nostril hair to make herself cry.

But when you watch her act, Blanchett is a masterclass in emotional technique – take this scene from TÁR, for example. Here’s what director Todd Field told The New York Times about her performance: “Something happened to her, and the entire history of this room, this character’s childhood dream of salvation from it, combined with the disgrace she’s experienced, hit Cate like a wave. She had so fully embodied this character that she simply broke down.”

“When you watch them work, they don’t strain, there’s no effort involved,” Sandlan says, naming Timothée Chalamet, Sarah Paulson and Jason Bateman, among others. “They’re not trying to feel – it just happens to them because they’ve done homework.”

I want to cry but I can’t. What now?

Even non-actors can take a lesson from the acting world on how to cry. If you’re reading this story not because you want to ace an audition but because you’re struggling to emotionally release, here’s what can help.

The first step is to embrace feeling without judgment or embarrassment. Stigmas around emotional release make it feel embarrassing or humiliating to publicly (or even privately) experience, whether it's pure, unbridled joy or unrelenting sadness.

“It’s terrifying at first because you think ‘I’m gonna lose control, I’m losing my mind, something bad’s gonna happen to me’ because we're terrified of emotion,” Sandlan says. “And really all you’re going to have is an experience and every time you do it, it gets easier.”

You can also take a cue from acting warm-up exercises – focus on your breathing, relax your body and soften the mouth and jaw.

The third step is to practice listening to others and having empathy. More empathetic people are also likely to cry in response to other people’s tears or human distress, research shows. When you can put yourself in other people’s shoes, you can get in touch with your own emotions as well.

“The more open you can be, the more empathetic you can be to another person’s pain, you can come to life, you can be moved,” Sandlan says. “Whether you’re trying to illuminate something beautiful about the human condition or something disgusting, it’s all in there because you’re human.”

But emotional release and crying don’t have to go hand-in-hand – tears often only feel beneficial afterward only when you’re in “good emotional shape” or in a controlled situation.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How do I make myself cry on command? Actor's tips for tears on cue.