Performance conjectures

Been thinking about performance. Here are some conjectures.

Good actors...
1. Know how to act naturally on camera.
2. Know how to hit a mark naturally.
3. Are emotionally expressive.
4. Have a sense of energy communicated on screen.

Very good actors...
1. Are inventive--they find new and meaningful ways to do things beyond stereotypes.
2. Understand the idea of "withholding," the idea that things want to remain hidden on one hand, but reveal themselves anyway. In other words, knowing how to play a scene such that emotion and thought are expressed despite one's best attempts to withhold them.

Great actors...
1. Present themselves on screen in a compelling way but maintain absolute mystery about how this is being done. My favorite example is Al Pacino in The Godfather. He looks like he is doing absolutely nothing. Yet he projects enormous magnetism.