by Greg Fisher
8. March 2011 13:19
Playing a blind man is always a demanding task, and many actors have had difficulty making it look believable. Neil Patrick Harris, who is now mostly known for the TV show How I Met Your Mother, decided to use something that, ironically, is usually used to improve vision: contact lenses.
However, on the set of his new film, Beastly, the actor did not wear standard contact lenses. Instead, he got a prescription for special, opaque lenses that made him virtually blind.
As Harris said in an interview given as part of the film’s promotional campaign, he had problems finding the right way to play a blind person, especially when it came to performing simple everyday tasks, such as picking up a glass of water or knotting a tie. Consequently, he went to see an ophthalmologist, who prescribed him a set of opaque contact lenses. The actor started wearing them and everything started to be easy, as he could not see anything and was forced to behave like someone who has lost his sight.
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