Robin Williams, an American actor, is known for his improvisation skills. He gracefully floats between one-liners, cultural references and impersonations so skillfully that the audience has no clue what has hit them. It has come to the point where film makers don't bother handing him a script; in Disney's Aladdin, most of his lines were adlibbed. In the 1978 film Mindy and Mork, they simply wrote in sections where his character could stray from the script and just start adlibbing in front of the camera. What would Julian Fellowes, writer of Downton Abbey, have to say about all this?
"Any actor who makes up twenty percent or more not on the page, dies. Let's get that absolutely clear."
-Julian Fellowes
It appears that there is a difference of temperment between these two creative geniuses- I truly wish we could put them on the same set together and watch them battle it out vocally like true raconteurs.
If you've got 45 seconds of time not preoccupied- check out the full interview at Masterpiece Online.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/watch/downtonabbey2_fellowes_improv.html
