Character Acting

A fellow designer recalled an episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio with Benicio Del Toro, in which he explains his method for immersing himself in a new role: he would make the character’s wallet, replete with all manner of ID cards and other ephemera, and carry the wallet with him for the months leading up to shooting. (It should be noted that neither I nor this designer could find evidence of this interview.) Del Toro's methodology speaks to the ability of design objects to act as invitations into other worlds and characters.

Directly referenced during a scene in North by Northwest in which Roger tries to assert his identity (“I don’t suppose it would do any good to show you a wallet full of identification cards, driver’s licenses, things like that”), I decided to create the wallet as another example of translating dialogue into visual form. Creating Roger’s wallet, however, led me to consider graphic objects as invitations into a world, a story, and a character. As Del Toro alluded, the ordinary wallet can function much more deeply: if we adopt it as our own, who do we become?