What does "mannered acting" mean in relation to a movie performance?

B

Buzzle

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And just because an acting performance is "mannered" does that mean it's bad? For example, in The Big Lebowski, would that be considered "mannered acting"? But I also thought that those actors acted the characters very realistically even though the characters themselves were really unrealistic; the actors seemed sincere. So I'm not too sure what "mannered acting" means exactly
 
I would say that "mannered acting" is when you can't get past the fact that the actor IS acting. Instead of the audience being swept up in the story, or believing that the character they are watching is a real person, they are thinking "wow! what ACTING!" Like Al Pacino in "Scent of a Woman" or William Hurt in virtually everything.

The best example of "mannered acting", played strictly for laughs, is Jon Lovitz's character "Master Thespian"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Thespian
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/85/85dthespian.phtml (I couldn't find a clip)
 
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